In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Events and Announcements: March 29, 2015

29 Mar

Calls for Papers Opinio Juris' own Peter Spiro will be the keynote speaker at the Skilled Migration Conference on Unravelling the Talent Tale: Skilled Migration Policies between National Images, Membership Bonds and Economic Priorities on September 15, 2015 at Sheffield University School of Law. The organizers are calling for paper considering a range of questions targeting the interrelation between attracting skilled migrants and redefining community...

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26 Mar

Just Security published a post by Laurie Blank, Geoffrey Corn, and Eric Jensen yesterday criticizing two surveys that are interested in how laypeople think about IHL's principle of proportionality. Much of what the authors say is absolutely correct, particularly about the need to recognize that assessing ex post the ex ante decision-making process of military commanders is fraught with difficulty and likely...

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24 Mar

My friend Rogier Bartels published two excellent posts at Just Security over the past few days (here and here) in which he argues that it is inherently perfidious to launch an attack from a military object disguised as a civilian object. Just Security has just posted my lengthy response. Here is how I conclude the post: At the risk of sounding like an...

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22 Mar

I just learned -- much belatedly -- that Chinua Achebe, the great Nigerian novelist, died two years ago today at 82. Here is a snippet from his 2013 obituary in the New York Times: Nadine Gordimer, the South African novelist and Nobel laureate, hailed Mr. Achebe in a review in The New York Times in 1988, calling him “a novelist who...

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22 Mar

Calls for Papers The Columbia Human Rights Law Review (HRLR), in collaboration with the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute (HRI), is publishing a symposium edition about the relationship between the U.S. ‘War on Terror’, sometimes referred to as the ‘Forever War,’ and human rights law. We invite proposals on topics of your own framing consistent with the symposium’s general purpose of advancing...

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17 Mar

[Sonya Sceats is Associate Fellow in the International Law Programme at Chatham House where she leads a project on the implications of China’s rise for the international human rights system. Follow @SonyaSceats and @CHIntLaw] China punches below its weight in the development of international law, despite its growing international power and the participation of Chinese representatives and experts in various international...

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11 Mar

Another complementarity fight is brewing, this time between the ICC and Cote d'Ivoire concerning the fate of Simone Gbagbo. In 2012, the ICC issued a warrant for her arrest, claiming that there are reasonable grounds to believe she is responsible as an indirect co-perpetrator for the crimes against humanity of murder, rape, other forms of sexual violence, and persecution. Just yesterday, however,...

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09 Mar

Most of the US Senate's Republican membership has signed an open letter to Iran's leaders "informing" them about the nature of the U.S. constitutional system with respect to international agreements.   It is actually a very accurate statement of US foreign relations law, even if it is a little strange and potentially intrusive into the President's foreign affairs power. It...

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09 Mar

Events The Conference of the African Association of International Law will take place in Libreville, Gabon from 29 – 31 August 2015. Deadline for submissions of abstracts: 15 March 2015. The African Association of International Law (AAIL) is pleased to announce its 2015 conference entitled: International Economic Law and Development in Africa: Challenges and Opportunities. The working languages of the Conference are English and French. Submissions are welcome...

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