Professor Elena Baylis hosted a really terrific workshop on socio-legal approaches to international law at the University of Pittsburgh last week. Elena has a blog post up at Intlawgrrls that explains how the workshop came to be. As one of the law professors in a group that was split evenly between anthropologists and legal scholars, I learned a lot about...
Almost a decade ago, Tom Friedman famously scoffed at the idea of a "Microsoft Navy" defending the shipping lanes of the Pacific. But technology has a way of moving us in unforeseen directions, raising the possibility not just of aggressive cyberwarfare, but of cyber-defense forces. So, when hackers (allegedly Russian in origin) took down Civil.ge, the official English-language official Georgian news cite, Georgia turned to Google Blogspot...
I have had the distinct pleasure of spending my spring and summer as a visiting scholar at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. SAIS offers a program of studies in international law and organizations (something only a handful of other public policy/political science graduate programs in the the U.S. can boast about), with a full range of courses in public international law and...
I will join the chorus of praise for this terrific book. But I want to add briefly to Peter’s critique of Ben’s premise that the current threat from transnational terrorism has us in a “long war,” by looking at what this means for broader foreign policy – one that encompasses, but it is not driven by, domestic legal policy. The book correctly,...
I was struck by this piece tucked away in today's Washington Post, noting that Pat Kennedy, Under Secretary for Management at the State Department, had to remind diplomatic personnel in Germany that they were prohibited from attending Barack Obama's speech today in Berlin. It is a mark of just how unprecedented Obama's current overseas visit is, mixing as it does official...
Past and current presidents of the American Society of International Law today urged leaders in Congress to take legislative action to comply with the ICJ decision in Avena and halt the executions of Jose Medellin and the other affected death row inmates until the review required by the ICJ has been carried out. Full text of the letter is here. So, readers, is...
I am thrilled to report that our friend and colleague Janet Levit has been named the new dean at the University of Tulsa Law School. Janet is an accomplished international law scholar and has proven her considerable management skills as the interim dean at Tulsa since last fall. She is also an alum of Opinio Juris, and a warm and supportive...
In conjunction with the announcement of our new partnership with Oxford University Press, Opinio Juris is pleased to roll out our redesigned site. A lot of hard work has gone into the redesign and we want to thank Seth Elalouf of Spacesuit Group Design for his technical and design support during our migration to a new hosting platform and...
Before I offer my initial thoughts about the “Between the Wars,” it is only fair that I join Ken in disclosing my own biases. I joined the Foreign Service the year before the fall of the Berlin Wall and left the State Department at the beginning of the second Clinton term. My final post, fittingly enough, was in Berlin. ...
Professor Tracey Epps sends along the following announcement about a new women's group for those teaching or researching in the field of international economic law:Women in International Economic Law (WIEL), a new global organization in international law, will hold its organizational meeting from 1.30 to 3 pm on Tuesday 15 July, in conjunction with the inaugural meeting of the Society...
Nick Kristof asks the right questions about the lack of outrage against Robert Mugabe among the leaders of African states and discusses what may be the best solution to the horrors that have gripped Zimbabwe over these past months: Africa’s rulers often complain, with justice, that the West’s perceptions of the continent are disproportionately shaped by buffoons and tyrants rather than...
Susan Franck forwards the following call for papers for what looks to be an interesting and well-timed conference:The ASIL's International Economic Law Interest Group will hold its biennial conference in Washington this year just after the U.S. Presidential election, on the timely theme of "The Politics of International Economic Law: The Next Four Years." The conference committee has just...
