In conjunction with our friends from Prawfsblawg, Conglomerate and IntLawGrrls, Opinio Juris (in the person of me) will be hosting a happy hour (Einmaliger Stammtisch) at the margins of the Law & Society meeting in Berlin at Deponie No. 3 at 9 pm Wednesday, July 25. The locale has food as well as drink, so do come by and...
The NYTimes Lede has the story: Britain’s most senior judge, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, announced on Thursday that, starting Jan. 1, the wigs would no longer be worn in most trial courts; neither would gowns. Ending (at least for now) a long, hot debate over whether and how to modernize and simplify the elaborate standards of formal court dress, Lord...
Well, at least it is scheduled to start today in federal court in Birmingham, as the Wall Street Journal reports here. The claims alleged by plaintiffs are that Drummond Co. -- a privately held US-based mining company-- collaborated with Colombian paramilitary members in the deaths of three union organizers at a Drummond mine in Colombia in 2001. If...
One of the ways to heighten student and faculty interest in international, comparative and cross-cultural legal issues is to examine those issues through the lens of traditional domestic topics. Nothing seems more "local" than criminal defense. The newly published Second Edition of "Cultural Issues in Criminal Defense," edited by Linda Friedman Ramirez, an attorney in Florida, should put...
Let's set aside for the moment the issue of whether Paul Wolfowitz's tenure as World Bank President was doomed from the start because of his role as chief architect of the Iraq war, and his apparently single-minded management style. Viewed solely from the perspective of the broad anti-poverty mission of the World Bank and its work in promoting open,...
Marty Lederman has terrific posts here and here on the import of James Comey's riveting testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this week. I link to it here for our non-American readers who might have missed it. (Maddeningly, this profoundly important story has not been afforded the wall-to-wall coverage cable news reserves for Anna Nicole Smith's baby custody...
AALS and ASIL are co-sponsoring a mid-year conference in Vancouver, BC June 17-20 on the theme "What's Wrong with the Way We Teach and Write International Law?" Full details, including on-line registration, can be found here. This should be a great opportunity to recharge the batteries, engage in some serious discussion — in both panel format and in...
The American Branch of the International Law Association has sent out a call for panel proposals for International Law Weekend, which takes place October 25-27 in New York City. This year's theme is "Toward a New Vision of International Law," and as co-chair of the conference, I encourage proposals from the broad academic community but also from private...
Anne Applebaum has some interesting observations over at Slate about the global repercussions of the Virginia Tech shooting. While some of the foreign press coverage has (predictably) focused on the prevalence of guns and violence in American culture, some of the reaction overseas appears to have simultaneously transcended national differences and underscored the local nature of the loss: This...
Paul Wolfowitz, who, according to an intriguing profile in this week's New Yorker, has made the fight against government corruption a center piece of his tenure as World Bank President, was forced to issue an apology for arranging a job for his "significant other" (a World Bank employee) at the State Department. As the NYTimes reports, Wolfowitz's favorable treatment...
Nancy Rogers, AALS President and Dean of Ohio State Law School, appears to take the law professor blogging phenomenon seriously. For those, like me, who missed her presidential address at the AALS meeting this January, she focused a large portion of her talk on the challenges and opportunities of "e-scholarship" and blogging. Here is an excerpt: I propose that...
A special thanks to Elizabeth Cassidy of UN Watch for her terrific month-long guest blogging stint at Opinio Juris. It was a first for us: guest blogging by an NGO on the ground at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. The highlights of Elizabeth's blogging include an excellent summary of the debate over the Darfur resolution,...
