So thanks for the opportunity to exchange on my new book Humanity's Law. I have been following the relationship of law to post conflict and political transition for many years now. The puzzle that occasioned this book was the apparently expanding role of law in periods of conflict, and the way the law at issue departed from traditional international law...
We’re pleased this week to host a discussion of Ruti Teitel's new book, Humanity's Law, just out from Oxford University Press. Ruti is Ernst C. Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law at New York Law School, where she directs the Institute for Global Law, Justice, & Policy. She is also Visiting Professor, London School of Economics. The book is a major contribution...
The eurozone is on the verge of meltdown, taking whole economies and banking systems with it, and spreading to the US through the systemic interwiring of the international financial system. Or not. European meetings to avert disaster are coming unglued and the moment when the markets simply stop turning over debt and re-lending is finally at hand, with a tipping...
Opinio Juris learns with sadness of the passing of Judge Antonio Cassese, one of the pioneers of international criminal justice, following a long battle with cancer. If you like, leave any remembrances or tributes in the comments. For my part, I remember Judge Cassese most from the 1980s, at various international humanitarian law meetings, and then particularly around the time...
As yesterday's killing of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi is celebrated in Libya and around the world, we should take a moment to ponder what it means for the long quest to discover the truth about the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. I write this from the perspective of a former State Department lawyer who had been assigned to the...
Just a quick note on the news reports about the internal Obama Administration legal debate over the use of cyberattacks in the Libya conflict. These reports seem to confirm Stewart Baker's complaint that cyberwar capabilities are being shaped by legal concerns as much as, if not more than, policy goals. Two small observations: 1) Following David Fidler's point here, how is...
Via The Multilateralist, a speech by Shiv Shankar Menon, a former Indian foreign minister and senior security official: "[W]hile domestic societies have evolved or are evolving towards rule of law, international society is still much closer to primeval anarchy...
[Rishi Gulati lectures on Public International Law at the University of New South Wales in Australia.] At 9.24am on 12 October 2011, surrounded by chants of “democracy is dead”, a suite of 19 bills (the Clean Energy Bills or the Carbon Tax Bills) were passed in the Lower House of the Australian Parliament. It must be borne in mind that those 19 bills won’t...
David Bosco, my American University colleague and author of the always interesting The Multilateralist blog at Foreign Policy, has posted an interview between him and Joel Wuthnow (Princeton’s China and the World Program) on China’s diplomacy at the UN Security Council. Among many interesting exchanges, this comment on China’s overall role in the world: The mainstream thinking in Beijing is that China should avoid...
