In association with the International Commission of Jurists

General

07 Mar

Russian Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev yesterday announced a legislative initiative to fast-track citizenship for non-resident native Russian speakers. He didn't single out ethnic Russians in Ukraine, but the context says it all. The citizenship shift (variations of which have been floated since the Maidan erupted last month) would allow Russia to amplify its protective justification for the action in Crimea....

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06 Mar

As Julian mentioned, the Crimean parliament is attempting to achieve the secession of Crimea through the use of a parliamentary vote and a referendum. More legal rhetoric in the midst of political crisis. Back in 2007 and 2008, Russia, the U.S. and the EU used quasi-legal arguments to try to explain why one could support the independence of Kosovo, but...

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06 Mar

President Obama issued an executive order this morning imposing entry bans on those responsible for actions that "undermine democratic processes or institutions in Ukraine," "threaten the peace, security, stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity of Ukraine," or involve "misappropriation of state assets of Ukraine or of an economically significant entity in Ukraine." Sec. 2. I hereby find that the unrestricted immigrant and nonimmigrant...

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06 Mar

We have invited several academic luminaries to post here at Opinio Juris over the next few days about the crisis in Ukraine, with particular emphasis on Russian intervention in Crimea. As we have done in the past with other symposiums, we also welcome young academics to submit guests posts for possible publication. We can’t guarantee we will publish every post...

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03 Mar

[Expanding and moving this up from the comments section of my previous post.] In a comment to the previous post, reader "Non liquet" noted that: The UN Security Council Meeting was interesting in this regard today. Reportedly, the Russian Ambassador to the UN stated he received a letter from the former President of Ukraine dated 1 March requesting intervention of the Russian...

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03 Mar

[I ended my previous post stating that I would next consider the options available to Russia, Ukraine, the EU, and the U.S. But then this conversation started… I’ll come back to the “next steps” question in a following post.] Julian, Eric Posner, and others look to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and its takeover of Crimea and see the limits of international...

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03 Mar

While Russia was stealing all the attention over the weekend, a small group of assailants wielding knives killed at least 33 people and injured over a hundred in the main railway station of Kunming, China.  China's government has called these "terrorist attacks," and has hinted it is linked with Uighur separatists in China's northwestern Xinjiang province.  But the failure of the U.S....

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02 Mar

Eric Posner on international law and Ukraine ("exhaustively", in his own description): The international law commentariat has been pretty quiet about the most important geopolitical event so far this year. Hello? Anyone want to offer an opinion? Let me fill in the silence: 1. Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine violates international law. 2. No one is going to do anything about it. International law...

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02 Mar

Saturday began with reports that Russia had seemingly used private security contractors to take control of the airport in Simferopol, Crimea. Then reports (like this one from CNN) of President Putin requesting from Russia’s Parliament an authorization to use military force in Ukraine because of “threats to the lives of Russian citizens and Russian military personnel based in the southern...

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02 Mar

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa The World Bank has suspended a planned $90m loan to Uganda meant to strengthen its health care system after its president signed into law a bill prescribing harsh jail terms for homosexual offenses.  More than 200 migrants seeking to enter Europe have stormed over a fence into Spain's...

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01 Mar

This week on Opinio Juris,  we closely followed the situation in Ukraine. Julian argued that international law principles are unlikely to provide a solution for the crisis since it would require the US and Russia respectively to defend or reject principles they have rejected or defended in other crises. He also reassured Daily Mail readers that the Budapest Memorandum does not...

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