In association with the International Commission of Jurists

General

09 Feb

If you happen to be around Charlottesville tomorrow, Friday, February 10, you might want to come over to a symposium on how to resolve conflicting legal norms in US and foreign courts: The conference – organized by the student-run Virginia Journal of International Law and the John Bassett Moore Society of International Law – will explore how to resolve conflicting legal norms...

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08 Feb

My brilliant St. John's colleague Adam Zimmerman recently posted his thoughts on global trends in the area of mass settlements at Prawfsblawg.  He argues that American-style "bottom up" approaches to class actions has been converging with the "top down" approach prevalent in Europe and other jurisdictions.  Questions about how to compensate large groups of claimants (e.g., victims of the BP...

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07 Feb

Although I've blogged with Opinio Juris for more than six years now, I would never describe myself as a frequent blogger; at my best, I'll give you 2 posts a week, more often just one.  Of late, however, my blogging has been even more sporadic. Here's the reason: After more than two years of work, of which the last 3 months were...

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07 Feb

Just a note to point you to OJ's Twitter feed, which you can find here.  We link to posts on the blog, but there's also added content in the form of pointers to other items that might be of interest to OJ readers. For those of you that haven't taken up the habit, some serious material is floating around the Twitterverse...

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05 Feb

I am delighted to announce that Jens Ohlin, Associate Professor of Law at Cornell -- and one of my very favorite international criminal law scholars -- will be guest-blogging with us for the next two weeks.  Here is his bio: Professor Ohlin specializes in international law and all aspects of criminal law, including domestic, comparative, and international criminal law....

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02 Feb

The cool place for international law this weekend will be Santa Clara Law School, out in Silicon Valley, whose Santa Clara Journal of International Law is hosting a conference on "Emerging Issues in International Humanitarian Law." The eminent IHL scholar Louise Doswald-Beck will be the keynote speaker, and the panels hit on key issues looking into the future - my...

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01 Feb

I don't know how credible this report is: WikiLeaks may soon take a page from 1960s-era British pirate radio broadcasters and move operations offshore. Financial backers of embattled WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange are reportedly in the market for a boat that would maintain the watchdog site's servers in international waters to avoid U.S. legal authorities, according to FoxNews.com. I also don't know...

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31 Jan

This op-ed from today's NYT reinforces a new orientation towards Mass Atrocity Response Operations (the name of a project founded by Sarah Sewall out of the Kennedy School that is enjoying some traction with the Obama Administration).  Drones can be deployed in reconnaissance efforts to detect and document human rights violations. The twist here: it doesn't have to be governments doing the reconnoitering. Drones...

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31 Jan

Political scientist James Fearon has posted (complete with graphs) the results of his own study of whether nuclear states are more or less likely to engage in war in the years following their acquisition of  nuclear weapons.  Here's his bottom line: [F]or each of the nine states that acquired nuclear capability at some time between 1945 and 2001, their yearly rate...

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26 Jan

[This post is part of the Third Harvard International Law Journal/Opinio Juris Symposium.] I want to thank Scott Kennedy for his insightful comments. Kennedy’s work has been instrumental in increasing our understanding of the forces driving the rising use of trade remedies in China and other emerging powers. He is certainly correct to point out that many questions remain unanswered. My hope is that this article will spark others to join in examining this phenomenon and debating the consequences of maintaining the global antidumping regime in its current form. I agree with Kennedy that the methodology for the retaliation analysis is not as robust as one might hope. As I myself note in the discussion of the methodology in the article, my approach presents a real risk of Type I errors. I did try to limit the possibility of Type II errors by examining whether an action may be in response to another protectionist tool besides antidumping sanctions and found little change in my results. But the possibility exists that my approach may be both over- and under-inclusive in what it considers to be retaliation. Proximity in timing is but an indicator of a retaliatory motive, and I agree with Kennedy that further confirmation through case studies would help buttress my retaliation argument. Unfortunately, I found that policymakers involved in deciding antidumping petitions were willing to only go as far as to discuss overall trends, but not specific cases, even when promised anonymity. This reticence limited my ability to rely upon case studies in my methodology. Here’s to hoping that others will find greater success in getting government officials to open up further about specific cases in future studies.
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