As of early 2009, it's officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia. (Okay, news travels slowly to Philadelphia; perhaps to your town, too?) That may seem like a technical change, but Stanford geographer Martin W. Lewis makes the case that it gives the lie to the very concept of nationhood as we conventionally understand it: The idea of the nation-state has become...
Julia Preston's lead story in yesterday's NYT Times highlighted the shift to state governments as immigration battlegrounds. Several are looking to be SB 1070 copycats. I don't think those will go anywhere in the face of quiet but intense opposition from the business community, who want the cheap labor and who don't want to be in the cross-hairs of the...
We've been light on blogging with the holidays this week. So, as 2010 comes to a close, I thought I'd open a comment thread for those readers still trolling the blogosphere this week to note your favorite Opinio Juris post of the year. For me, it turns out I'm fond of bird dung, at least when it becomes grounds for exploring...
To all OJers everywhere who celebrate it, Merry Christmas, and to everyone a joyous holiday season. It is snowing large wet flakes here in DC on Christmas morning. In my case, my wife and I drove down on Thursday to Chapel Hill, North Carolina and drove my wife's elderly parents up to DC to join us. Other family have arrived...
Another Indian diplomat gets the treatment, this time in Austin. Colum Lynch has this useful wrap in WaPo on the issue of diplomats and security screening, see also my post about another recent incident in Mississippi. I don't get it: Why don't diplomats get a pass, like crew? Has there ever been a terrorist attack undertaken by an accredited diplomat? It...
From a new pamphlet, Why Does Sovereignty Matter to America? Merry Christmas from the folks at the Heritage Foundation: [T]oday, our sovereignty faces new threats. International organizations and courts seek to reshape the international system. Nations are to give up their sovereignty and be governed by a “global consensus.” Independent, sovereign nations will be replaced by “transnational” organizations that reject national...
Consider three different takes within the last two weeks on the rise of China and impliedly American decline, with different preoccupations. The first is historian Paul Kennedy’s take in TNR. It’s a puzzling admixture of “don’t worry, it’s just a rebalancing that was bound to happen if you take the long view,” and “do worry, because the moves the US is...
Secretary Clinton yesterday released the much-awaited first Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review. It's an important document, and if implemented (a big if, given the shift in Congress and threats to cut State's funding) it would have important consequences on the ground. The central theme of "civilian power" has a nice ring to it in the context of situating diplomacy, a...
Video here. (Downfall producers seem to have unblocked these parodies, which had been taken down some time ago for copyright reasons. Lawprofs might be entertained by this one, clearly composed by someone in our ranks -- the mindset of someone who's taught for a while is perfectly satirized in a way that no outsider could, ever.)...
Having received a number of emails complaining about how I counted the size of various faculties, I have decided to remove both posts. As I made clear in the original post, my count was not designed to be scientific and excluded -- rightly or wrongly -- a number of categories of scholars that some might believe should have been included. ...
I always wish I had more opportunities to blog about international environmental law (IEL), especially in light of recent developments (and thanks to Dan Bodansky for keeping our readers' abreast of all the happenings in Cancun). For those of you who have a similar affinity for IEL, check out the new(ish) blog from the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL). It's...
Buried in a post from Ben Wittes at Lawfare is a suggestion (in response to HRW's Tom Malinowski) that the Espionage Act shouldn't apply outside US territory to non-citizens: [T]his statute has a nuance that makes one pause before treating it as just another extraterritorial application of American law. That nuance is that the entire moral force of a...
