Opinio Juris Welcomes State Department Legal Adviser John Bellinger

Opinio Juris is very pleased to announce that John Bellinger will be guest blogging with us for the week of January 15. As our readers well know, Bellinger is the State Department Legal Adviser, the top lawyer at the Department of State. In that capacity he is the principal adviser on all domestic and international law matters to the Department of State, the Foreign Service, and the diplomatic and consular posts abroad. Full details of his bio are available here.

The format will be as follows. Bellinger will post six posts over the course of next week. The discussion will begin on Monday morning with an introduction to the Legal Adviser’s office, and then turn to substantive discussions of the treatment of detainees, international humanitarian law, and sovereign immunity.

Bellinger has kindly agreed to permit open comments to all his posts. As is typical for this blog, we expect and anticipate that all comments will be substantive, responsive, and civil. The permanent contributors will moderate any comments that depart from this norm. We also have invited prominent scholars and commentators to post as guest respondents. Bellinger will conclude his stint as a guest blogger with a final post that responds to some of the more salient comments during the week.

We very much look forward to an exciting week of contributions from John Bellinger.