I'm pleased to announce that Opinio Juris is hosting its latest book discussion this coming week. We will feature International Law in the U.S. Supreme Court (CUP, 2011), which was edited by David Sloss, Mike Ramsey, and Bill Dodge. In the interest of disclosure, I would note that two Opinio Juris regulars participated in the volume: I authored the second chapter on how the...
As I discussed in a recent post, "the new age of self-publishing is fast approaching the world of legal scholarship. It will just take a few legacy scholars to create a norm cascade that will rock the world of legacy publishing." Self-publishing is the new, new thing. We've already embraced it with blogging and SSRN, and now some...
With Julian's many interesting posts on UNCLOS, I thought I would flag for our readers Andrew Guzman's interesting essay published on SSRN entitled the "Consent Problem in International Law." Here's the abstract: The legal obligations of a state are overwhelmingly based on its consent to be bound. This commitment to consent preserves the power of states, but also creates a...
Though I am generally upbeat about the use of drones in military applications, one must recognize design flaws: The Navy's latest multi-million pound drone has the unfortunate feature of starting to self-destruct if the pilot accidentally presses the space bar on his keyboard ...
A quick note to suggest that those interested in intelligence and surveillance topics check out the latest issue of the Journal of National Security Law & Policy, which features a host of interesting articles on U.S. and international law and intelligence collection by folks like Geoff Stone, Craig Forcese, and Steve Vladeck. I’d especially recommend the piece by David...
Having just returned from Asia, which is awash in disputes over territorial sea rights and exclusive economic zones, the U.S. domestic debate over ratification of the Law of the Sea Convention seems almost quaint. Unlike pretty much every country in East Asia, the U.S. does not have any serious boundary or other kind of dispute that is likely to be...
The International Court of Justice issued a "provisional measures" order today in a dispute between Thailand and Cambodia over a World Heritage temple located near or on the boundary between the two nations. The request for provisional measures was brought by Cambodia, which sought the withdrawal of Thai troops from around the temple. The ICJ granted this request, but went...
The U.S. government has recently announced it will recognize the Benghazi authority as the "legitimate" government of Libya. But is it departing from international practice or the international law relating to statehood and recognition in order to do so? I have to admit I haven't followed the recognition of state vs. the recognition of government issue very closely (OK, not at...
So I leave the country and the blogosphere for a few months, and what happens? (Well, beside that "war" in Libya), circuit courts have gone all negative on my argument against corporate liability under the Alien Tort Statute. In addition to the D.C. Circuit's recent decision, the Seventh Circuit (speaking through Judge Posner) went out of its way to reject...
[This post is part of the Second Harvard International Law Journal/Opinio Juris Symposium.] In 2007, I authored two papers -- one for a military audience and another for a legal one -- arguing that debates over the law's response to the growing range of cyberthreats would likely track ongoing debates over law's response to terrorism. In that context, we've seen 4 options...
Yes, it's true. There must be dozens, perhaps even hundreds of newborns who are extended US citizenship every year even though they are "not subject to the jurisdiction thereof." Find the evidence in a report from the restrictionist Center for Immigration Studies here. Perhaps I shouldn't be so snarky: the report is a pretty interesting one. It certainly plows new ground. ...
It's likely old news to most OJ readers, but we should still note in passing that the DC Circuit, in a divided panel, handed down an important ATS case, John Doe VIII v Exxon Mobil Corp. It is noteworthy, among other things, for straight-out rejecting the Second Circuit's Kiobel ruling, which held that there is no such thing as corporate...
