Weekend Roundup: June 16-22, 2012

This week on Opinio Juris, we continued last week’s discussion on the US debate on ratification of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea with a follow-up post by Craig Allen, addressing the Convention’s extended continental shelf revenue sharing and its compulsory dispute settlement. John Noyes’ response to last week’s post by Steven Groves discussed why ratification would create more stability for US claims with respect to the extended continental shelf. He also responded to Jeremy Rabkin’s concerns about compulsory arbitration, but the latter didn’t find the precedents on compulsory arbitration reassuring.

Another symposium this week focused on Paul Schiff Berman’s book “Global Legal Pluralism: A Jurisprudence of Law Beyond Borders”. The symposium, introduced here by Peter Spiro, kicked off with a post by Paul Berman outlining the book’s argument. Jeff Dunoff criticized the book for paying insufficient attention to the issue of international regime interaction; Janet Levin offered suggestions of how the work could push beyond its own boundaries; and David Zaring applied Berman’s cosmopolitanism to international financial regulation. Peter Spiro offered two thoughts on community formation and the role of international law to test, and if necessary, limit community practices. Hari Osofsky commented that there are multiple visions possible of global scale and worried about inequality in legal orderings. Paul Berman’s closing post offered “three responses and a quibble”.

A stand-alone guest post by Jonathan Hafetz discussed how habeas reviews of Guantanamo detentions turn a blind eye to the length of the detention.

In our regular posts, Duncan Hollis discussed the parallels between the Enrica Lexie dispute between India and Italy and the seminal Lotus case; Roger Alford discussed how extraterritorial application of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act could jumpstart anti-corruption prosecution in other OECD countries, and Julian Ku posted about Germany v Greece in the Euro 2012.

Peter Spiro asked whether the pending Supreme Court ruling on Arizona’s SB1070 will make any difference and whether Julian Assange will live out his days in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Peter also pointed to the plight of persons of South Sudanese descent residing in Sudan who have become stateless after South Sudan’s secession.

As always, Kevin Jon Heller kept us up-to-date with ICC news, discussing the ICC’s Appeals Chamber’s “farewell present” to Moreno-Ocampo. He continued to write about Melinda Taylor’s detention in Libya, criticizing Australian’s foreign minister’s radio interview on the issue as well as the reporting on the reasons for her detention in the Libya Times. He followed up with a Guardian article reporting that Melinda Taylor is being interrogated. Kevin also thought that the ICC was risking its credibility with its statement on Melinda Taylor’s detention. In a more technical post, Kevin explained his argument regarding article 89(2) Rome Statute and the obligation to surrender.

Deborah Pearlstein drew our attention to Anne-Marie Slaughter’s candid article about work-life balance for professional women. Since you’re probably reading this during the weekend, I will stop interfering with your work-life balance and just quickly point out that it’s not too late yet to participate in our readers’ survey and enter the sweepstakes to win a $100 Amazon gift voucher.

Thank you very much to our guest contributors and have a nice weekend!