In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Author: Chris Borgen

31 Mar

Tomorrow, the Center for International and Comparative Law (CICL) of St. John's University School of Law will have its inaugural symposium. Peggy and I are CICL's Co-Directors, and we are looking forward to what we hope will be a great kick-off. The symposium, entitled Challenges to International Law, Challenges from International Law: New Realities and the Global Order, is co-sponsored by...

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24 Feb

"Libya"and "humanitarian intervention" are being used more and more often in the same sentence.  Over at Ratio Juris, Patrick O'Donnell has a round-up of  blog posts and opinion pieces concerning humanitarian intervention and the situation in Libya. Patrick's post is especially helpful for anyone trying to get up to speed on this issue as it includes a bibliography on humanitarian intervention, more...

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04 Jan

  What will daily life in Jerusalem be like a century from now? This is the theme of the Jerusalem 2111 International Animation Competition, organized by the Association of Planning and Conservation- Jerusalem (Beit Hamodel).  The blog io9 has a post with links to some of the submissions, which include visions of a depopulated Jerusalem under UN control, what looks like a...

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15 Nov

Gotta say, even though I write about issues of self-determination, secession, and statehood, I didn't expect to read this on the front page of the Arts and Leisure section of the Sunday New York Times: At a glance it looked like any small-town fair, with smoke wafting from the barbecue, families gathering around picnic tables, music percolating over loudspeakers and doting parents...

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29 Oct

William Gibson (appropriating Gertrude Stein's bon mot about Oakland, California) said of cyberspace: "there is no there, there."  While this captured the feeling of Gibson's fictional cyberpunk protagonists, it obscures all the physical "theres" that make cyberspace possible.  A student post at Infranet Lab called Re-Link:The Physical Network of Data is a quick visual primer on all the stuff of cyberspace...

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20 Oct

Peggy has already posted on this, so this is just a reminder that ILW 2010 starts today (October 21) in New York City. The website of the American Branch of the International Law Association has this description: On October 21-23, 2010, the American Branch of the International Law Association and the International Law Students Association will present the annual International Law...

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04 Oct

A while back I wrote a sort post on the violent political economy of rare earth elements, also known as REE's. A recent Congressional Research Service report (.pdf is here) describes the central (and until recently under-reported) role of REE's in the modern economy and national security infrastructure: Some of the major end uses for rare earth elements include use in automotive...

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03 Oct

The Summer 2010 issue of Cabinet has an interview with Professor Christina Duffy Burnett of Columbia about the legal status of islands.  When we've written about this issue here on Opinio Juris, we thought of issues relating to how islands can affect claims to underwater resources, or the question of Guantanamo as a legal black hole, or the issue of climate change and sinking islands....

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03 Oct

On behalf of all of us at Opinio Juris, I want to thank Amos Guiora for taking time to blog with us this past week about his new book, Freedom from Religion. We would also like to thank Paul Cliteur, John Lentz, and Mark Movsesian for guest blogging with us as well and providing such an interesting and informative discussion...

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30 Sep

One aspect of Amos’ proposal that I think needs to be emphasized is that he suggests curtailing certain types of speech because of certain hoped-for practical advantages in counter-terrorism. It is, essentially, a utilitarian argument. However, taking his suggestion on its own terms, I am not persuaded that the U.S. undertaking a new policy of curtailing religious speech would in...

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29 Sep

We are very pleased to host for the next three days a discussion of Amos Guiora's new book, Freedom from Religion: Rights and National Security(Oxford 2009).  Amos is probably well known to many readers of this blog, a professor at the University of Utah's S.J. Quinney College of Law and a retired Lieutenant Colonel from the Israel Defense Forces Judge...

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