In association with the International Commission of Jurists

General

25 Mar

Just in time for Michelle Obama's speech in Beijing extolling the benefits of free speech and a President Obama/President Xi summit, the NY Times published an article detailing how the U.S National Security Agency infiltrated the systems of Chinese telecom infrastructure giant Huawei.  According to documents the Times obtained from the Edward Snowden leak, the NSA "obtained information about the...

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24 Mar

As widely reported in the press last week, President Obama announced sanctions against Russian and Ukrainian officials.   On Thursday, March 20, the “blacklist” was expanded to 2 banks and 20 officials, as detailed in this press release from the US Treasury.     Separately, the EU imposed sanctions on 21 individuals, including Russian military commanders. The U.S. goals, President Obama said,...

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24 Mar

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa The Pentagon has reported that the Obama administration is sending about 150 Special Operations troops along with military aircraft to Uganda to help in the search for warlord Joseph Kony. Suspected Boko Haram fighters have detonated a bomb in a crowded marketplace in northeastern Nigeria killing at least...

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22 Mar

This week on Opinio Juris, we continued last week's YLS Sale Symposium with a post by Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen describing Sale's legacy as a game of cat and mouse between law and politics, a post by David Martin on the realms of policy and law in refugee protection. In a two part post (1, 2), Guy Goodwin-Gill looked at state practice preceding Sale and...

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18 Mar

In a matter of days, we have gone from talking about the illegality of Russia’s military intervention, to issues of the Crimean referendum, to Russia's recognition of Crimea as a new state. While these events have moved quite rapidly, they are not really surprising: arguments over attempted secessions often shift from the question of the legality of the secession itself...

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18 Mar

Last week, the U.S. Senate held confirmation hearings for Vice-Admiral Michael S. Rogers to replace General Keith Alexander as head of U.S. Cyber Command.  It's interesting to see how both men received almost identical written questions in their respective 2014 and 2010 hearings.  More interesting perhaps are the similarities and variations in their responses with respect to how international law operates...

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17 Mar

[ Dr. Anna Dolidze is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law, the University of Western Ontario.] On Sunday the inhabitants of the Ukrainian Autonomous Republic of Crimea voted in a referendum on whether Crimea should become part of the Russian Federation or regain the status under the 1992 Constitution as part of Ukraine. A March 11, 2014 Declaration of...

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17 Mar

[Boris N. Mamlyuk, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Memphis School of Law.] Julian Ku makes an interesting observation regarding Russia’s fact-based arguments in support of Crimea, versus what most commentators see as a weak legal case for self-determination.  Over the past week, I’ve tried to offer several mapping exercises in order to explore the expanding...

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17 Mar

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa US Navy SEALs have boarded and taken control of an oil tanker that escaped earlier this month from a rebel-held Libyan port with armed men at the helm. Nigerian security forces have committed human rights abuses as they fight a near five-year Islamist insurgency by the Boko Haram...

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15 Mar

We had a busy week on the blog, so if you haven't been able to keep track of it all, here is a summary of what happened. We continued the Ukraine Insta-symposium with posts by Remy Jorritsma on the application of IHL to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and by Sina Etezazian on Russia's right to protect its citizens in the Crimea and Ukraine's right...

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14 Mar

University of Memphis law professor Boris Mamlyuk criticizes most U.S. international law commentary on the Crimea/Ukraine crisis for failing to take seriously the Russian point of view. I've noticed several commenters here have also complained about our pro-Western bias.  Part of the problem is that there is a dearth of international law commentators writing in English in favor of the Russian legal...

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13 Mar

Our thanks to all who have contributed to the conversation here on Opinio Juris about the many legal issues related to the situation in Ukraine. Over the past week we have had guest posts on topics such as Russian rule-breaking as power politics, the use of force under international law, the international humanitarian law issues involved in the Crimean crisis,...

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