Well, at least it is in Michelle Bachmann's world: I would say it's a unified message. It really is about jobs and the economy. That doesn't mean people haven't [sic] forgotten about protecting life and marriage and the sanctity of the family. People are very concerned about that as well. But what people recognize is...
How could I have missed this? According the Guardian: The principality of Liechtenstein has decided to make itself available to private clients, from $70,000 (£43,000) a night, complete with customised street signs and temporary currency...
Read the Harry Potter books and/or seen all the movies? Concerned about the post-conflict issues after the end of the War with Osama bin Laden Voldemort? The folks at Foreign Policy have got your back, tying together recent articles on post-conflict studies with the Harry Potter universe. (Warning: Spoilers!) Who knew Hogsmeade and Kandahar could have so much in common?...
This article by Steven Rosen about the legality of a Palestinian state and a short response by Josh Keating touch on this issue. In short, Rosen argues for some independent legal standard for determining statehood (and Palestine doesn't meet it), such as the Montevideo Convention, while Keating basically argues that there are no such standards. A good and useful...
I want to call readers attention to Dan Joyner's new book, Interpreting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, just out from Oxford. I haven't had time to read it yet, but it looks fascinating -- and the cover is beautiful. Here is the summary: The 1968 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty has proven the most complicated and controversial of all arms control treaties, both in...
A while back, I wrote an article on how states use the rhetoric of international law (specifically self-determination) as part of their broader foreign policy initiatives. Li Hong, the Secretary-General of China's Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, has an op-ed in today's China Daily that embeds law-talk (in this case the international law of outer space and multilateralism more generally) in...
I want to call readers' attention to Douglas Guilfoyle's article "The Mavi Marmara Incident and Blockade in Armed Conflict," which is forthcoming in the British Year Book of International Law. (Subscription required.) It's absolutely superb -- comprehensive, analytic, and above all fair. Indeed, its conclusions differ in important ways from those of the UN HRC report, the Turkel Commission inquiry...
Professor Cecilia Marcela Bailliet of the University of Oslo has a very useful post over at IntLawGrrls on possible criminal punishment for right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik. Contrary to what has been reported elsewhere, according to Bailliet it is possible that Breivik could get life in prison for the death of 76 persons in last week's shooting. Here's...
David Hicks is back in the news here in Australia, because the DPP has announced that it intends to seize any royalties he receives from the sale of his book, Guantanamo: My Journey. The DPP's decision has received a great deal of criticism, for a variety of reasons: Hicks accepted a plea because the US government threatened to put him...
I want to thank the editors of Opinio Juris for hosting this forum and inviting me to participate, the editors of the Volume under review for their magnificent work in putting together such an impressive and comprehensive set of essays, and Andrew Kent for his thoughtful response to my contribution to the Volume. Let me here take up the two main...
I’m grateful to the regulars at Opinio Juris for inviting me to comment on INTERNATIONAL LAW IN THE U.S. SUPREME COURT, because it’s an especially valuable work. I admire the industry displayed by the contributors to this volume. They have gone through a vast number of...
When Bill Dodge, Michael Ramsey and David Sloss approached me to write a chapter for their forthcoming book, I told them that I would be interested in doing so as long as I did not have to rehash the tired contemporary debate about constitutional comparativism. They quickly agreed and I had the good fortune to write a chapter on...
