Symposium on Harold Hongju Koh’s New Book

To celebrate the launch of our new website and new members, Opinio Juris will be holding a symposium over the next two weeks on Harold Hongju Koh’s new book, The Trump Administration and International Law, which was just published by Oxford University Press. (You can get a 20% discount by clicking on the OUP advertisement to the right of this post.) Here is the publisher’s description:

Will Donald trump international law? Since Trump’s Administration took office, this question has haunted almost every issue area of international law. One of our leading international lawyers-a former Legal Adviser of the US State Department, Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, and Yale Law Dean-argues that President Trump has thus far enjoyed less success than many believe, because he does not own the pervasive “transnational legal process” that governs these issue areas. This book shows how those opposing Trump’s policies during his administration’s first two years have successfully triggered that process as part of a collective counter-strategy akin to Muhammad Ali’s “rope-a-dope.” The book surveys immigration and refugee law, human rights, climate change, denuclearization, trade diplomacy, relations with North Korea, Russia and Ukraine, America’s “Forever War” against Al Qaeda and the Islamic State, and the ongoing tragedy in Syria. Koh’s tour d’horizon illustrates the many techniques that players in the transnational legal process have used to blunt Trump’s early initiatives. The high stakes of this struggle, and its broader implications for the future of global governance-now challenged by the rise of populist authoritarians-make this exhausting counter-strategy both worthwhile and necessary.

Regular readers will recall that we held a symposium last February on the article that eventually became this book. The new symposium is much more ambitious and will feature contributions from the following scholars:

• Susan Biniaz
• Laurie Blank
• Daphne Eviatar
• Shaheed Fatima
• Jean Galbraith
• Jenny E. Goldschmidt
• Sean D. Murphy
• Stephen Pomper
• Rita Simieon
• Rachel Stohl
• Dire Tladi
• Beth Van Schaack
• Mark Wu
• Sam Zarifi

We will post Harold’s introduction tomorrow morning and the first comment tomorrow afternoon. We will then post two comments on the book each weekday until we run out of comments. At the end of the symposium — or perhaps even sooner — Harold will respond.

We hope you will enjoy the symposium — and the new website!