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Search: Syria Insta-Symposium

07 Mar

...act of a regional power that simply lacks the array of international legal actors, tools and institutions to pressure its most critical neighbor in more internationally acceptable ways. In fact, Russia’s attempts to internationalize its neighborhood revisionism have found few overseas backers, as Syrian President Assad’s current lone supportive voice underscores. In the wake of the 2008 Georgia War Moscow’s vigorous diplomatic efforts to secure international recognitions for Abkhazia and South Ossetia yielded few successes- just Nicaragua, Venezuela and three small Pacific island states, one of which embarrassingly revoked. By...
07.03.14 | |

09 Mar

...against premature recognition and foreign-installed regimes) — the internationally authoritative criterion for an apparatus’s standing as the State’s government (Roth, at 30). First, it should be noted that the “effective control” doctrine conforms to the Montevideo criteria, according to which international personality is found in a territorially coherent political community under the long-term effective control of an independent government (Roth, at 7). Moreover, granting the effective government the legitimacy to act in the international arena stems from the effective government’s capability to fulfill its international obligations (UN Doc. S/1466). Accordingly,...
09.03.14 | |

09 Mar

[Remy Jorritsma (LL.M.) is a lecturer and teacher at the Department of International and European Law of Maastricht University.] This contribution intends to demonstrate that Ukraine and Russia are involved in an international armed conflict, triggering the application of International Humanitarian Law (IHL). In particular, this post explores two relevant issues: the question of valid consent, and the legal qualification of the recent military hostilities. In the Security Council meeting of 1 March 2014 the representative of Russia asserted that [the Prime Minister of Crimea] went to the...
09.03.14 | |

18 Apr

...DOJ or in the SEC context to be charged by the company’s primary government regulator. The impact on the company’s market capitalization upon indictment or civil charging is likely to be much greater than the FCPA fines or penalties the DOJ and/or SEC are seeking. Indeed, in the FCPA’s 35 year history only two companies have put the DOJ to its burden of proof at trial and both companies ultimately prevailed. The first instance, involving an issuer occurred in 1991, and the second instance, involving a private company, occurred in...
18.04.13 | |

23 Apr

[Roger L. Phillips is an international criminal law practitioner. He also maintains Communis Hostis Omnium , a blog about maritime piracy. This post is cross-posted there.] The majority opinion in Kiobel precludes Alien Tort Statute claims for foreign conduct against foreign victims, leaving a small door for potential future claims that involve extraterritorial conduct so long as they touch and concern US territorial interests. But, when does a claim “touch and concern” the territory of the United States? Roger Alford notes that piracy may present an incident of...
23.04.13 | |

22 Apr

“[E]ven where the claims touch and concern the territory of the United States, they must do so with sufficient force to displace the presumption against extraterritorial application. Corporations are often present in many countries, and it would reach too far to say that mere corporate presence suffices.” That is the operative language in Kiobel. Which raises the question, if mere corporate presence is not enough, what kind and how much territorial activity within the United States is enough? After Kiobel, that will be a critical question for future...
22.04.13 | |

19 Apr

[Ishai Mooreville is an attorney at Baker & Miller PLLC, Washington, DC. His forthcoming article on the 1795 Bradford Opinion regarding the Alien Tort Statute can be found here.] The opinions expressed in this article belong to the author alone, and the author has not received any compensation from any party for writing this article. The question of personal jurisdiction over the defendant in Kiobel, which was raised during oral argument and mentioned in passing in Justice Breyer’s concurrence, may have had a significant effect on the outcome...
19.04.13 | |

19 Apr

A few posts yesterday suggest that the reports of the death of the ATS have been greatly exaggerated. Oona Hathaway argues that “[t]hose celebrating the demise of the ATS may thus find themselves surprised to discover that the end result of the Supreme Court’s decision yesterday may not be the end of the ATS after all, but instead a renewed focus of ATS litigation on U.S. corporations.” Marty Lederman argues that “the language and history of the ATS provide no basis for wholly rebutting the presumption against extraterritoriality;...
19.04.13 | |

13 Mar

...are any more submissions for potential posts, we need to receive them by 3:00 pm Friday (US Eastern Time) so that those selected can be posted this weekend. Although this symposium is drawing to a close, we at Opinio Juris will continue writing about the ongoing issues in Ukraine. Once again, thank you, everyone, for participating in this discussion and contributing to our understanding of the situation in Ukraine. We hope you will continue to participate as we continue exploring the international legal issues in the conflict over Ukraine’s future....
13.03.14 | |

12 Mar

...and Crimea stand out. Both share historical antecedents in Imperial Russia and strategic geographical locations. Both are also home to local majority populations separated by a political border from their ethno-linguistic kin-states (Sweden and Russia), and distinguished by location from “kin-nationalities”, e.g. the Swedish and Russian-speakers that constitute minorities in mainland Finland and Ukraine proper. Strong secessionist urges in both communities were curbed with autonomy regimes, albeit more recently and less successfully in Crimea. Finally, the Åland case, like today’s Crimea, presented a rare opportunity to resolve a thorny geopolitical...
12.03.14 | |

12 Mar

[Ilya Nuzov is an Assistant Researcher with the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and a PhD student in International Law at the University of Geneva. His main research area concerns transitional justice in Eastern Europe.] Much has been said in recent discussions on the Ukraine crisis in an attempt to qualify the ongoing Russian intervention as one kind of violation of international law or another and to ascertain possible legal and political repercussions for either state. (See previous posts in this symposium by Robert McCorquodale, Greg...
12.03.14 | |

18 Apr

[Christopher A. Whytock is a Professor of Law and Political Science at UC Irvine School of Law] I do not think the Court’s opinion in Kiobel means that ATS litigation in federal courts is going away any time soon. First, make no mistake, the “presumption against extraterritoriality” applied by the Court in Kiobel is a new creation that is likely to give rise to further litigation. In at least three ways, the new presumption is different from the Morrison-style presumption used by the Court to determine whether a...
18.04.13 | |