It's finally seeping into the mainstream consciousness that the U.S. tax system works very aggressively against citizens abroad, even those who are citizens in name only. Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, is renouncing his U.S. citizenship after he had to pay a hefty IRS tab on capital gains on the sale of his London home. Johnson was born in the U.S....
On February 12, the UN Security Council unanimously passed an important new Chapter VII resolution – Resolution 2199 - to respond to terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria. This resolution is significant for four reasons. First, the resolution specifically targets the supply of oil. In other words, it attempts to degrade the supply chain and the support networks. The preamble refers...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa A female suicide bomber has killed at least ten people at Damaturu Central Motor Park, a bus station in the northeast Nigerian city. Boko Haram fighters attacked a village in Chad on Friday, the first known lethal attack in that country by the Nigerian militant group, which killed several...
The White House has proposed a draft resolution authorizing the President to use military force against ISIL (also know as "ISIS" or simply the "Islamic State"). While it is laudable that the president is asking for specific congressional authorization for military strikes against ISIL, I remain troubled by several aspects of the proposal. First, the passage of the proposed resolution would replace the existing...
Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit (and of the University of Tennessee Law School) has a short op-ed in USA Today celebrating the first official US government statement of support for the private exploitation of resources on the moon. As Reynolds describes it: Bigelow [a private US company] has decided that it wants to go to the moon, and — here's the real...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Boko Haram fighters waged twin attacks Sunday in Niger, their latest front in a widening regional insurgency, with a market bomb blast sowing panic. At least two people were killed when Somali militants al Shabaab attacked the house of a senior police official in the semi-autonomous region of...
This week on Opinio Juris, Kevin argued that the CIA and Mossad violated the Terrorist Bombing Convention in the 2008 bombing of Imad Mughniyah, Hezbollah’s international operations chief. Kevin also responded to Ryan Goodman's Just Security post on Serdar Mohammed. A second part of that response is still to come, but Kevin already flagged the ICRC's November 2014 Opinion Paper on detention in NIAC. Kevin also...
I am pleased to announce that a new ILA Study Group on sanctions has been formed. Larissa van den Herik and I will be working together, with the support of a group of sanctions scholars and practitioners, to address questions of individualization, formalization and interplay in multilateral sanctions. Here are the three aims of the group: To evaluate the individualization and...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Malian rebels fought pro-government militia in the northern village of Kano overnight, three security sources said, firing rockets and briefly kidnapping at least 20 people in the latest spike of violence between armed groups. Chadian forces have killed 120 militants from Boko Haram in a battle in the...
This week on Opinio Juris saw Deborah note the publication of current Guantanamo detainee Mohammedou Slahi's diary and her review that appeared in the Washington Post about it. Peter offered further commentary on his first post on John Boehner’s invitation to Benjamin Netanyahu to address the US Congress, specifically in terms of what the invitation says about constitutional change. Though he never met him in...
Today, the ICTY Appeals Chamber affirmed genocide convictions in the Srebrenica case, Prosecutor v. Popović et al. The full Appeals Chamber judgment is here. The PDF document is 792 pages (including a few short dissents), which is long-ish but certainly not extraordinary by ICTY judgment standards. In my opinion, the most critical part of the judgment relates to the connection between the defendants, their Joint...
Ian Henderson may be mad at me. He asked for fewer posts on foreign relations. But he also asked for more posts on treaties. I have a new paper up that tackles both topics -- An Intersubjective Treaty Power. For those of you who are interested in such things, here's the abstract: Does the Constitution require that U.S. treaties address matters...
