Weekend Roundup: March 9-15, 2014

We had a busy week on the blog, so if you haven’t been able to keep track of it all, here is a summary of what happened.

We continued the Ukraine Insta-symposium with posts by Remy Jorritsma on the application of IHL to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and by Sina Etezazian on Russia’s right to protect its citizens in the Crimea and Ukraine’s right to use of force in self-defence. A post by Greg Fox and one by Tali Kolesov Har-Oz and Ori Pomson discussed the limits of government consent to intervention, while Robert McCorquodale discussed Crimean self-determination and the international legal effect of a declaration of independence. Ilya Nuzov provided a transitional justice perspective; and Rhodri Khadri examined if any useful lessons for the Crimean crisis can be drawn from the solution to the Åland Islands. Julian responded to Boris Mamlyuk’s critique on US international law scholars by exploring Russia’s position.

A second symposium this week, introduced here by Tendayi Achiume, Jeffrey Kahn and Itamar Mann, summarized the presentations of last weekend’s symposium at Yale Law School on the rise of maritime migrant interdictions twenty years after the US Supreme Court’s Sale judgment. Ira Kurzban described the events leading up to the Sale judgment and Jocelyn Mccalla discussed the impact of Sale on Haitian immigration and advocacy. In a two part post, Bill Frelick discussed the international and US domestic initiatives to counter Sale‘s implication that the non-refoulement principle does not apply extra-territorially. Azadeh Dastyari put the spotlight on the lesser known use of Guantanamo Bay for the detention of refugees. Maritime migrant interdictions are not a uniquely US phenomenon, as demonstrated by Paul Power’s discussion of Australia’s “Stopping the Boats” policy and Meron Estefanos’ post about the impact of the EU’s refugee policy on Eritrean refugees. Bradley Samuels used the example of non-assistance at sea in the Mediterranean to discuss the increasing reliance on architectural representations of space as evidence in litigation.The symposium will continue next week, so stay tuned!

In other posts, Kristen Boon updated us on the latest developments in the Haiti cholera case, and John Knox, the UN Independent Expert on Human Rights and the Environment, guest posted about the mapping report he presented to the UN Human Rights Council earlier this week. Despite their win, Kevin declared the Katanga conviction a difficult day in the office for the OTP. Kevin also asked us to identify a historical figure in a picture of the ’70s, and was disgusted by a phishing e-mail preying the situation in Syria.

Finally, Jessica compiled the weekly news and I listed events and announcements.

Many thanks to our guest contributors and to all our readers for the lively discussions this week!