Kevin and I have still never met in person, but we've already had our first twitter encounter last week on the legality of a U.S. military response to the attacks that killed the U.S. Ambassador in Libya (as well as three other Americans). Although the news reports on the attacks are not exactly clear, some have suggested that there is...
On November 1, 2012 at 4pm, the Columbia Law School Center for Constitutional Governance and the American Society of International Law are organizing a Panel Discussion on International Law and the South China Sea. Speakers are Henry S. Bensurto, Sir Daniel Bethlehem, KCMG QC, Harold Hongju Koh and Coalter G. Lathrop. Professor Bernard Oxman will moderate. On December 4-5, 2012, Human Rights First will...
I want to call readers' attention to an excellent new article by James Stewart (UBC; currently a Global Hauser Fellow at NYU) that is forthcoming in the Journal of International Criminal Justice. Here is the abstract of the article, entitled "Overdetermined Atrocities": An event is overdetermined if there are multiple sufficient causes for its occurrence. A firing squad is a classic...
As Peter's post yesterday noted, there's a growing push to fundamentally re-align cyberspace governance via amendments to the ITU Regulations, which are set to be negotiated in December in Dubai. I'm not sure that the ITU is up to the task. But I do agree that the time is ripe for States and other stakeholders to agree on first principles...
[Jan Wouters is Professor of International Law and International Organizations, Jean Monnet Chair Ad Personam EU and Global Governance, and Director of the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies and Institute for International Law at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven) and Sanderijn Duquet is a Junior Member of the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies.] We would like to take a moment to...
[Joost Pauwelyn is Professor of International Law and Co-Director of the Centre for Trade and Economic Integration, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.] Thank you to Professors David Zaring, Tai-Heng Cheng and Chris Brummer for their truly insightful and extremely helpful comments. Our book, and this discussion, is clearly only the beginning of a much longer debate on what,...
[Chris Brummer is Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center] Joost Pauwelyn, Ramses Wessel and Jan Wouters have assembled a remarkable cadre of leading intellectuals to tackle some of the toughest issues of international law—what explains informal international lawmaking, what are the legal questions flowing from it, and, as my comments will discuss, examining the key concept of accountability. With...
[Jan Wouters is Professor of International Law and International Organizations, Jean Monnet Chair Ad Personam EU and Global Governance, and Director of the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies and Institute for International Law at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven).] Once we conclude that IN-LAW is not devoid of impact and cannot be ignored as a normative process, the question...
Jack Goldsmith offers five thoughts today at Lawfare about the D.C. Circuit's Hamdan II decision. I agree with two of his thoughts -- that the government is free to rely in future prosecutions on alternatives to material support (MST) such as aiding and abetting terrorism, and that (sadly) al-Bahlul could be detained indefinitely if he is ultimately acquitted by his...
[Ramses Wessel is Professor of the Law of the European Union and other International Organizations at the University of Twente] First of all many thanks to Prof. Tai-Heng Cheng for taking the time to respond so eloquently to the parts on legality and normativity in our book on Informal International Lawmaking. Because of his knowledge of the area (as for instance reflected in...
A quick reminder from FOB ("Friend of Blog") Professor Ruth Wedgwood that the American Branch of the International Law Association's International Law Weekend 2012 will be held next week in New York City. The full program is here, and includes several other FOBs as well as several of our permanent contributors. And here is a message from Professor Wedgwood herself:: The...
[Tai-Heng Cheng is the international disputes partner of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP in New York. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of his firm or its clients.] Congratulations are due to the authors of Informal International Lawmaking, and especially to the editors, Professors Pauwelyn, Wesssel and Wouters, for their keen observations and appraisals of the global decisionmaking...
