In association with the International Commission of Jurists

General

11 Sep

China has dispatched patrol ships after Japan has said it will nationalize two disputed islands in the East China Sea.  The Afghan Taliban have now denied a report that they would enter into peace talks with authorities.  Saeed al-Shihri, second-in-command of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has been killed, according to Yemini authorities. Foreign Policy has more here. The United States has transferred...

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10 Sep

Violence in Syria continues, with reports stating that scores of government forces have been killed by bombing in Aleppo.  The UN has called for an increase in humanitarian aid for Syria amidst the ongoing violence while the European Union has agreed to increase sanctions. Leaders from Japan and China have met amid tensions regarding disputed islands in the East China Sea. Japan has...

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09 Sep

My colleague Mark Movsesian has a post at the St. John's Center for Law and Religion Forum concerning the case of Ramil Safarov. He begins: At a NATO conference in Hungary in 2004, an Azeri officer, Ramil Safarov, murdered one of the other participants, an Armenian officer named Gurgen Margaryan. Actually, that doesn’t quite capture it. Safarov broke into Margaryan’s room,...

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08 Sep

At the start of the US academic year, Peggy welcomed Stephen Walt's recommendation, though not his reasons, that wannabe foreign policy wonks study international law, and Roger Alford posted about James Phillips and John Yoo's analysis of international and comparative law all-stars at the top 16 US law schools. The Republican and Democratic conventions also caught our bloggers' attention. Julian Ku posted about...

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07 Sep

James Phillips and John Yoo have just published a thoughtful analysis critiquing Brian Leiter's approach to ranking faculty relevance. They suggest that what we should be looking at is all-stars, not superstars. If you measure a school based on their all-star line-up rather than their superstars, the results are dramatically different. Here's how they put it: Faculty can...

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07 Sep

The International Economic Law and Policy Blog is reporting on a case filed against the WTO in a US District Court seeking a declaration that the "ruling of the Appellate Body of the WTO concerning the Country of Origin Labeling Act is null and void in the United States and throughout the world" on the basis that US law prevails over the WTO...

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06 Sep

President's Obama's speech this evening to the Democratic Convention spun citizenship as a central theme: We believe in something called citizenship – a word at the very heart of our founding, at the very essence of our democracy; the idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another, and to future generations. . . . Because we...

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06 Sep

The Liberian Daily Observer has reported that Judge Sow of the Special Court for Sierra Leone has been called by the defense team of Charles Taylor and will testify in his appeal. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has accused both the government and the rebel forces in Syria of human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law. Mahmoud Abbas, the leader...

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05 Sep

 I had a good day yesterday. I received a package in the mail from Oxford containing copies of my book -- The Oxford Guide to Treaties. It represents the culmination of a three year effort on my part to compile a comprehensive and current guide to treaty law and practice.  To do this, I started with a fairly simple premise...

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05 Sep

According to state media, Mauritania has extradited Ex-Libyan spy chief Al-Senussi to the Libyan authorities instead of to the International Criminal Court. A court in London found Britain responsible for the 1948 killing of 24 unarmed Malayan civilians who were shot dead by British troops during a campaign against Communist insurgents. In the next nine months, Scotland will introduce a bill to...

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04 Sep

Thanks to a couple of kind retweets by Peter, our twitter guru, some readers might have noticed that I have joined the twitterverse -- @kevinjonheller.  I don't know how often I will be tweeting; I much prefer blogging as a medium of communication.  But feel free to follow me, if you are so inclined. That said, two caveats.  First, I don't...

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