General

Libya and the Three Modes of the Security Council

In my forthcoming book on US-UN relations (appearing this summer from Hoover Press), Living with the UN, I describe three different “modes” of the Security Council.  By this I mean ways in which the Security Council might function, for some given situation, in regards to international peace and security.  (An early version of this is found in this paper on the Security Council in a multipolar world at SSRN, and I will post a non-final-edited version of the chapter from the book to SSRN as well.)  The three modes are:

• The Security Council as the “management committee of our fledgling collective security system.”  The phrase “management committee” comes from Kofi Annan, who used it repeatedly in his final months as Secretary General.  It refers to the Security Council as acting as a genuine “corporate” whole to make global determinations and take action regarding international security.
• The Security Council as the “concert of the nations,” acting as the conduit great powers, or at least a sizable number of them, in concert toward some end that has at least some blessing or acquiescence or non-veto by the members of the Security Council.  The difference from the management committee is that the Council acts  functionally not as a “corporate” body but instead a group of great powers, an agglomeration and not an entity.
• The Security Council as the “talking shop of the nations.”  In this mode, the Security Council is just that — a negotiating space for the great powers, in which one hopes they reach a modus vivendi with respect to themselves and others.

DeGirolami on the ECtHR decision in Lautsi v. Italy: Display of Crucifixes within “Margin of Appreciation”

My St. John's colleague Marc DeGirolami has a post up at Mirror of Justice summarizing today's European Court of Human Rights decision in Lautsi v. Italy.  The full decision is at the ECtHR's website here.  At issue in the case was the display of crucifixes in Italian public school classrooms. In 2009, the ECtHR ruled against Italy's display of the...

Libya No-Fly Operation: What Comes Next?

Now that the supporters of a no-fly zone over Libya have got the legal authority they required  -- both international and domestic (I agree with Peter that the president does not need additional congressional authority to vote for and contribute to a UN SC action) -- what comes next? Despite herculean efforts by the punditry to analogize the situation in...

Call for Papers: Inaugural ASIL Research Forum

Kal Raustiala asked that we post the following.  Sounds like an excellent initiative on ASIL's part. Call for Scholarly Papers The Inaugural ASIL Research Forum November 4-5, 2011 The American Society of International Law calls for submissions of scholarly paper proposals for the inaugural ASIL Research Forum to be held at UCLA Law School on November 4-5, 2011. The Research Forum is a new initiative...

Would Libya No-Fly Zone Require Congressional Authorization?

Bruce Ackerman and Oona Hathaway say yes; Jack Goldsmith, no.  I'm with Jack on this one.  Especially as authorized by the UN Security Council, there's solid precedent for proceeding without an advance congressional okay.  As Jack points out, Kosovo is probably the closest analogy in terms of the scope of the operation (a case in which authorizing legislation was voted...

ASIL Annual Meeting and the WCL-Lieber Society Event

Alas, I won't be at ASIL this year, and apologies to everyone, as I will miss seeing folks.  But I did want to flag particularly the meeting that Kevin mentioned in his post, taking place on March 23, co-sponsored by my law school, Washington College of Law and ASIL's Lieber Society, on emerging issues in the law of armed conflict.  It...

Takeaways from the Raymond Davis Episode

Now that it appears to have been resolved with the payment of "blood money" to the families of those killed by Davis, there may be some lessons here. First, the compensation element poses an interesting precedent.  Though presumably ex gratia and at least nominally made by Davis in his personal capacity, payment makes victims whole while avoiding the risk of politically...

East Coast Travels (Updated)

I don't get to the East Coast of the U.S. very often these days, so I thought I'd mention that I will be in Boston and DC next week, in case any Opinio Juris readers want to meet up.  I will be giving a lecture on the Karadzic trial (with a bit of discussion afterward about the ICC and Libya)...

Does AP I Art. 75 apply to NIAC’s?

There has been a good deal of discussion both here between Kevin Heller and Cully Stimson and over at Lawfare by Jack Goldsmith, Gabor Rona and John Bellinger on the impact of the Administration's declaration on Additional Protocol I and it's possible effect on hearsay admissions in military commission hearings. While I agree with Jack and Kevin that it should not...

Egyptian Constitutional Reform: Presidential Eligibility Clause Only a Birther Could Love

This from Gianluca Parolin in EUI's excellent EU Democracy Observatory on Citizenship on proposed changes to Egypt's constitution regarding presidential eligibility: The current text (albeit suspended) requires the candidate to be an Egyptian citizen born of Egyptian parents.  The proposed text further requires the candidate and his (sic!) parents never to have acquired a foreign citizenship (thereby excluding...

Let Slip the Coasean Bribes of War

I am in transit and can’t comment on this now, but Ian Ayres offers this post via Freakonomics blog and Balkinization on war-time bribes to officers on the other side to switch sides or not fight.  Thoughts?  (Update:  I hope these links work now to the original articles.) I have a mildly technical and pedagogical question ... in what sense are these bribes “Coasean?”  If you wanted to use this as an example for a 1L class on law and economics, how would you explain this clearly and non-technically as being “Coasean”?  How might you formulate this as a final exam question for 1L Law and Economics.  No, I’m not going to use a question formulated on a blog post on the actual exam, but maybe as a sample question on how Coasean reasoning can be applied to things that 1Ls might not have imagined.  So I have this nagging pedagogical question — in what sense are these bribes “Coasean” — and that being so, what assumptions are being made about the nature of the bargaining situation to make it consistent with the three standard assumptions about Coase bargaining?

Kristof had previously suggested that the U.S. should assure safe passage for Libyan defectors. But the officer’s story reminded me of an alternative, more economic, incentive deployed in Iraq, where the U.S. offered defecting officers cash to lay down their arms. As reported by Fred Kaplan inSlate in 2003: A fascinating piece in the May 19 Defense News quotes Gen.Tommy Franks, chief of U.S. Central Command, confirming what had until now been mere rumors picked up by dubious Arab media outlets—that, before Gulf War II began, U.S. special forces had gone in and bribed Iraqi generals not to fight. “I had letters from Iraqi generals saying, ‘I now work for you,’ ” Franks told Defense News reporter Vago Muradian in a May 10 interview. The article quotes a “senior official” as adding, “What is the effect you want? How much does a cruise missile cost? Between one and 2.5 million dollars. Well, a bribe is a PGM [precision-guided munition]—it achieves the aim, but it’s bloodless and there’s zero collateral damage.” A “Smart Bribe” can be a lot cheaper than a “Smart Bomb.” Gideon Parchomovsky and Peter Siegelman (friends and coauthors) have published a fascinating article detailing the pros and cons of bribing enemy combatants to switch sides.

Ayres includes a chart from the Parchomovsky and Siegelman article that walks historically through instances of such bribes in wars in the past and the results; I’ll stick it below the fold, but you can get a more readable view at Ayres’ original post.

Does French Recognition Have Any International Law Consequences?

I have some views, but they are not entirely solidified, so let me put this out as a question.  France has recognized the the rebels as the sole legitimate representatives of the Libyan people, and withdrawn its recognition of the Qaddafi government.  If that is so, what, if any, are the international law consequences of that recognition? I understand that many...