I don't know what to make of this report about a controversial device used to repel teenagers and children by using a high-pitched frequency only young people can hear. The mosquito works by emitting a pulse at 16-18.5 kilohertz that switches on and off four times a second for up to 20 minutes. It emits an irritating, high-pitched sound that can...
Peyton Cooke has an interesting paper on the status of "intelligence" activities in international and domestic law. It doesn't seem to be on SSRN, but it is "Bringing the Spies in from the Cold: Legal Cosmopolitanism and Intelligence under the Laws of War," 44 USFLRev 601 (Winter 2010). The argument takes up Eric Posner's critique of "legal cosmopolitanism," as a...
I kind of expected this would turn out this way, but it does the Rwandan government no credit that they finally released jailed U.S. law professor Peter Erlinder, albeit on bail and due to concerns about his health. Needless to say, I doubt Professor Erlinder will be returning to Rwanda anytime soon. Peter Erlinder, the American lawyer jailed inRwanda after being...
Interesting story in the NYT about the U.N.'s difficulty in creating a fair and effective system to resolve internal disputes, especially employee disputes. Last July, the U.N. created a new Dispute Tribunal composed of independent judges to remedy a much despised previous system. But the new Tribunal, and the U.N. bureaucracy's unwillingness to cooperate with it, is getting some tough...
It is worth also considering the views of those critical of the entire ICC effort to the define aggression and bring it within the ICC Statute. Brett Schaefer at Heritage offers this final take, which he calls the U.S. effort a qualified success due to its ability to delay implementation and to insert "understandings" into the ICC Statute. [T]he U.S. was...
Over at AidWatch (William Easterly's blog), guest blogger Moussa P. Blimpo puts up a post on the role of universities in development in poor countries, in Africa and elsewhere. There are a lot of tradeoffs, explicit and implied - should universal primary education take precedence over university education, for example. What is the role of universities in poor countries in...
John Bellinger has a nice op-ed today pointing out that the 112th Congress is on course to set a record for the fewest treaties ratified during a single session of Congress. Despite the presence of 59 Democrats, the Senate has approved only one treaty (a tax agreement with France) during the 112th Congress. The Obama administration must make more vigorous efforts...
The news out of The Hague today is the genocide convictions of Popovic and Beara, both of whom the ICTY trial chamber found to be key leaders of the Srbrenica massacre of 1995. Each was sentenced to life imprisonment, among the longest sentences for the ICTY. Lesser convictions and sentences were handed down to five other former Bosnian Serb officials....
Now that the U.S. military has a CyberCommand, is it time for the U.S. to begin talks on a CyberWarfare Arms Limitation Treaty with Russia and other nations? (CALT?) The new Cyber Command chief says...
OJ's good friend Marko Milanovic has offered a super-substantive response to my brief comments re self-defense in my not-yet-response to Professor Alston's report on targeted killing and drones. I will have things to say about that and also my reactions to the interior of the Special Rapporteur's report - happy to say that I avoided any $100 a day fines...
The Gaza Flotilla raid has launched an unbelievable amount of public commentary related to public international law because so much of the debate is framed around the legality of Israel's raid, its blockade of Gaza, etc. Some of the discussion has been interesting and useful (see again Kevin's posts on legality of the blockade). But then there is the continuing...
I want to take a moment to salute Kevin for his post on the legality of the Gaza blockade, which has drawn a record 94 comments and thousands of page views. Talk about fostering discussion and debate! Kevin has put his finger on the key legal issue: the legality of the blockade. While the question of whether excessive force was used...
