David Bernstein has another snide post about Human Rights Watch today, this time concerning a presentation Sarah Leah Whitson gave about the Middle East at a panel discussion. I won't bother debating Bernstein's characterization of the presentation; you can watch it here. I'm more interested in the ease with which Bernstein disposes of the extremely complicated international-law issues raised by...
I want to thank Opinio Juris for having me over the next couple of weeks as a guest-blogger. I noticed that Eugene Kontorovich's thought-provoking posts last week dealt primarily with the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. My posts to start will not be that focused. If I had to discern one overarching theme for...
Readers may have noticed we didn't have much to say about last week's ICJ judgment in Costa Rica v. Nicaragua, which involved disputed water rights in the San Juan river (the full judgment is here; for those interested in a short version, the ICJ Registry's summary is here). Well, Marko Milanovic of EJIL: Talk! (and a former OJ guest blogger)...
As we celbrate the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, it brings to mind that state of space programs and of space law. Space law has long been the preserve of public international law, with the Outer Space Treaty, the Moon Treaty, and the International Space Station (ISS) Agreement. However, the rise of commercial space ventures is providing much...
There's gall -- and then there's the Sudan: Sudan said on Monday it had referred Chad to the U.N. Security Council, accusing its neighbour of launching an air raid inside Sudanese territory. Sudan's army said two Chadian planes attacked a region inside the west Darfur district on Thursday -- the fourth raid Khartoum says N'Djamena has carried out in Sudan in two...
Last week I wrote a post about secessionism in Flanders and regionalism in Europe, more generally. That post had been inspired by a post by "Chirol"at the blog Coming Anarchy. I now see that Chirol followed-up his original Flanders piece with an essay considering a possible future of microstates in Europe. He wrote: I’ve put together a map of the future of Europe in 2020....
A recent poll conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.org has found that the public in four Muslim-majority and African countries support the ICC's arrest warrant for Bashir, despite the fact that the governments in those countries oppose it: That's remarkable -- but the results of another question, designed to assess support for intervening in Darfur, by force if necessary, should the much-feared...
It takes a special kind of stupid to be Pat Buchanan. Last night, in response to a question from Rachel Maddow about whether his hostility to elevating a Latina to the Supreme Court makes sense given that 98% of Justices (108/110) have been white, Buchanan said: "White men were 100% of the people that wrote the Constitution, 100%...
The Wall Street Journal has the story: After six days of grueling debate, Iceland's parliament voted narrowly Thursday to apply to join the European Union -- an institution from which the country long stood proudly apart. But a binge of overseas expansion by Iceland's buccaneering banks led to a towering stack of bills that couldn't be paid when the credit crunch cut...
David Bernstein is in high-dudgeon mode again about Human Rights Watch's fundraising in Saudi Arabia. This time, he is up in arms about a statement Ken Roth made to The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg during a recent email exchange. Goldberg asked Roth if his "staff person attempt[ed] to raise funds in Saudi Arabia by advertising your organization's opposition to the pro-Israel...
Following-up on my recent post on assessing systemic bias in international investment arbitration, readers may be interested in a recent article by Susan Franck of Washington & Lee University entitled Development and Outcomes of Investment Treaty Arbitration. Here's the abstract: The legitimacy of investment treaty arbitration is a matter of heated debate. Asserting that arbitration is unfairly tilted toward the developed world,...
[Kenneth L. Gartner is a partner with Lynn & Gartner in Mineola, New York and an adjunct professor at Touro Law School. He has served as a New York State District Court judge] The classic formulation of the basic premise underlying the Arab-Israeli “peace process” is “land for peace.” Its proponents thus categorize the so-called peace process as...
