March Madness at Opinio Juris

As March draws to a close, I thought it would be helpful to recap some of the great blogging that has been going on at OJ. Some of these represent new directions for the blog, and it would be great to hear from our readership what you like and what you would like to see more of in the future.

• We have had an abundance of guest bloggers. See these excellent posts from David Sloss on the death penalty, Iran, international law and democracy, and constitutional textualism in treaty interpretation. For the first time we have on-the-ground blogging from the UN Human Rights Council from UN Watch’s Elizabeth Cassidy. We thank David for his contributions and look forward to hearing more juicy tidbits from Elizabeth as the Council winds up its business.
• Students from the Yale Journal of International Law joined in the guest blogging with their reporting from the YJIL “New” New Haven School Conference. Thanks to students Jessica Karbowski and Jose Minan for their contributions.
• Linking the professoriate to practice, we also had timely commentary on the Sinochem forum non conveniens decision at the Supreme Court from Chris Whytock and the victorious litigation team, Greg Castanias & Victoria Dorfman of Jones Day.
• We noted this month the entry of several new international law blogs to the blogospere: Check out what’s going on at AIDP blog, IntLawGrrls and 1948 blog – the latest entries on our blogroll. It is great to see the international law blogspace expand and deepen.
• The work of the American Society of International Law loomed large this month. With the Annual Meeting scheduled to begin today, we had some provocative and thoughtful previews of the meeting from co-chairs Chantal Thomas, Charles Hunnicutt and William Aceves.
• The OJ regulars have been active too, representing our usual electic and diverse commentary on current events and new scholarship. Roger engaged in some double-blogging here and at Huffington Post on the UCLA Nuclear Threats conference. Julian and Kevin found some rare common ground in a series of posts on the ICC and Sudan, Duncan argued for compensation for the “comfort women” enslaved by WWII-era Japan, Peter pondered the relevancy of international legal scholarship, and Chris celebrated (ambivalently) the 50th anniversary of the EU. As for me, I organized the participants of the first Opinio Juris on-line symposium, which launches later today.

Most important, we issued a cordial invitation to our readership to attend the 2nd Annual Opinio Juris Reception this Friday, March 30 at the Fairmont Hotel in Washington, D.C. at 7:30 pm. See you there!