This week on Opinio Juris, Julian kicked off on a lighter note with a Chinese cartoon on the maritime dispute between China and the Philippines. IHL and ICL lawyers were well catered for throughout the week, starting with a guest post by Michael W. Lewis, who discussed two more issues raised at the Boundaries of the Battlefield symposium: "elongated imminence" in response to an armed...
Calls for Papers The International Law Discussion Group of the University of Edinburgh is launching a call for papers for its biennial spring Doctoral Symposium to take place on June 17-18, 2013 on Regime Interactions. Abstracts are due by March 1, 2013. More information can be found here. The quarterly journal, Transnational Legal Theory, is soliciting submissions for a Symposium on William Twining's Montesquieu Lecture...
This week on Opinio Juris, Duncan was thrilled that the Supreme Court had finally reached a decision on whether to grant certiorari in Bond v United States, a case that requires revisiting Missouri v Holland. Julian though questioned whether Bond v United States will matter, although he gave his own two cents on the treaty power and federalism later. Julian clearly got more excited...
The week on Opinio Juris started off on a lighter note with Ken's post on the Obama Administration's response to a petition to build the Death Star. And although the administration's answer encourages readers to "pursue a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field", our comments raised the question of customary inter-stellar law. The pop cultural fun continued later with...
Calls for Papers Applications are due this week on January 15 for a workshop on European and transnational rulemaking in Amsterdam between July 1-5, 2013. More information can be found here. The Committee of Non-State Actors of the International Law Association (ILA), The Institute for Transborder Studies (ITS) at Kwantlen Polytechnic University, the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies, Oxford Brookes University, in collaboration with the...
This week on Opinio Juris, Kevin responded to Eugene Kontorovitch's post over at The Volokh Conspiracy on the comparability of Israel's settlement of the West Bank to Turkey's settlement of Northern Cyprus, by arguing that both settlements are not comparable. Eugene rebutted by advancing five reasons why Turkey's settlement is the graver violation of international law. Reflecting on Zero Dark Thirty, Deborah wrote about the responsibility of film makers for...
More than 100 people were killed in bombings in Pakistan yesterday, and Pakistan Human Rights Watch is sounding alarm bells about increasing Sunni-Shia violence. Tensions in Kashmir are rising with Pakistan now claiming that India has killed another of its soldiers. Three women, including a founding member of the PKK, were assassinated at the Kurdish Information Centre were they worked in Paris. The...
Another day, another drone strike? Pakistani officials are reporting a second drone strike in as many days in North Waziristan, killing at least four. Ethnic violence has claimed almost twenty lives in South-East Kenya. A lavish ceremony has welcomed back the ARA Libertad to Argentina, after ITLOS ordered its release from seizure in Ghana. Syrian rebels have released 48 Iranian hostages in a...
Over the holidays here at Opinio Juris, the comments section of Kevin's post on the distinction between the legality and the morality of drone strikes was a hive of activity. The post itself was a follow-up to a first post in which Kevin applied a comparative criminal law lens to argue that under the broader understanding of intent prevailing outside...
The UN Security Council has placed sanctions on two rebel groups, Democratic Republic of the Congo's M23 and Rwanda's FDLR, for alleged war crimes in the DRC's eastern region. North Korea's Kim Jong-un, in a rare speech, has called for an end to the confrontation between his country and South Korea. Syria's PM has reportedly said that President Assad is willing to respond to any initiative to begin peace...
Upcoming Events The next session of the Joint International Humanitarian Law Forum takes place on January 7, 2013 at the IDC Radzyner School of Law. Adv. Sigall Horovitz will give a talk entitled "Think Different – Why Israel Should Join the ICC Rome Statute" – a discussion following the UN General Assembly resolution to recognize Palestine as a non-member State observer, and Adv. Ido Rosenzweig will talk on...
This week on Opinio Juris, Kristen Boon followed up on her discussion last week about changes towards more transparency and fairness in the UN's Al Qaida sanctions regime. Craig Allen contributed a guest post on the ITLOS' interim order for the release by Ghana of Argentina's ARA Libertad. UNCLOS was also central to Duncan Hollis' post on China's submission to the Continental Shelf...
