Author: Chris Borgen

How could I have missed this? According the Guardian: The principality of Liechtenstein has decided to make itself available to private clients, from $70,000 (£43,000) a night, complete with customised street signs and temporary currency...

As well as John Dehn, whom Peggy has previously welcomed, we would like to welcome Michael Scharf to guest blogging with us for the next couple of weeks. Mike is probably well-known to many of our readers, especially those with an interest in international criminal law. He is the John Deaver Drinko-Baker & Hosftetler Professor of Law and director of...

Read the Harry Potter books and/or seen all the movies?  Concerned about the post-conflict issues after the end of the War with Osama bin Laden Voldemort? The folks at Foreign Policy have got your back, tying together recent articles on post-conflict studies with the Harry Potter universe. (Warning: Spoilers!) Who knew Hogsmeade and Kandahar could have so much in common?...

A while back, I wrote an article on how states use the rhetoric of international law (specifically self-determination) as part of their broader foreign policy initiatives. Li Hong, the Secretary-General of China's Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, has an op-ed in today's China Daily that embeds law-talk (in this case the international law of outer space and multilateralism more generally) in...

Humberto Leal is scheduled for execution in Texas on July 7th. A Mexican national, Leal was not notified of his right to consular assistance under the Vienna Convention of Consular Relations. In light of the International Court of Justice's decision in the Avena case (Mexico v. U.S.), Congress is currently working on legislation to bring the U.S. into compliance with its international...

If you had been thinking about submitting a paper or a panel proposal for the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law but had missed the deadline, despair not!  The deadline has been extended to this Friday, June 24th.  The webpage for submissions is here. And, in case you hadn't seen it already, this is the theme statement...

Passed along by Tony Anghie: The Asian Society of International Law will be holding its Third Biennial Conference in Beijing, China, on August 27th and 28th. The topics that will be addressed include human rights, international economic law and private international law, the law of the sea, climate change, disaster management, and the international law relating to security and conflict. A...

Over at the Harper's Magazine site Scott Horton interviews Laura Dickinson about her new book Outsourcing War and Peace: Preserving Public Values in a World of Privatized Foreign Affairs. Horton begins: Waging war and engaging in diplomacy would generally be reckoned among the most important powers of any sovereign. Yet as Laura Dickinson argues in her new book, Outsourcing War and...

The Gottingen Journal of International Law has just made available online its new special issue that focuses on the relationship between resources and conflicts. This issuse is the result of a symposium which was held this past October. The sixteen papers are organized around the four panel themes: (a) resources before, during, and after conflicts; (b) actors of armed conflicts and international...

The video is here. No big surprises. Dellinger's argument is based on the post-9/11 Authorization for the Use of Military Force and that under international law "you can kill enemy combatants."  Dellinger explains that drones attacks on other al Qaeda members are legal too. However, regarding drone attacks, I wish he hadn't said that that there was "a policy judgment" to be made...