In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Author: Chris Borgen

13 Jul

I want to quickly point to a post from late last month at EJIL: Talk! that I just recently came across. Tolga Yalkin considered the argument that international investment arbitration as a system is fundamentally biased. Considering arguments set out by Professor M. Sornarajah of the University of Singapore, Yalkin wrote: Sornarajah advanced the proposition-enjoying increasing purchase in the international legal community-that bilateral and...

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13 Jul

Amos Guiora has a new essay at Jurist about judicial review and decision-making in the executive branch. It begins: Judicial review is judicial review. It is all or nothing. Sitting as the High Court of Justice, the Israeli Supreme Court proved that once again this week. The facts of Ashraf Abu Rahma vs. The Judge Advocate General (HCJ7195/08) are simple: the Israel...

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07 Jul

Coming Anarchy has pointed out this article from The Daily Telegraph about the increasing calls for Flanders to secede from Belgium and how this may be aided by the rise of the EU. Before getting to the main issue, I just have to note the snarky opening from the article: The notion that breaking up a country as insignificant as Belgium could lead to anything more...

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03 Jul

Thomas Barnett has pointed out a map in Business Week that is coded for the sovereign bond rating of each country (the map is a click-through from this page).  What Barnett calls the "Old Core" (the U.S.,  Canada, western Europe, etc.) tend to have the highest ratings, the "New Core" (Brazil, Russia, India, China and other rising powers) have the...

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28 Jun

Moises Naim of Foreign Policy has an essay in the new issue called "Minilateralism: The magic number to get real international action." His piece has spawned reactions from the bloggers at FP.com. Naim's essay is the latest volley in a debate on "big" or "small" multilateral action should be; however, although he and other bloggers do a good job setting out the...

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26 Jun

It seems likely that Spain is about drastically curtail its universal jurisdiction law--the law that had been used by Magistrate Baltasar Garzon to go after Augusto Pinochet--such that it really won't be universal jurisdiction at all.  While some (many?) of my international law colleagues may view this as a step backwards, I welcome this adjustment as a prudent move that will foster...

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26 Jun

Frequent Opinio Juris commentor Patrick O'Donnell has an informative post at Ratio Juris about shari'ah and jurisprudence in Islam. It begins: Having recently introduced the subjects of constitutionalism and democracy vis-à-vis Islam, I thought it would help to say a few basic things about Sharī‘ah and fiqh, in particular as they have bearing upon our concerns about human rights and democracy, concerns of...

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24 Jun

Foreign Policy.com reports: "Cloture passed on a 65-31 vote," a Congressional source relays at 11:30am. "There was applause in the Senate gallery after the vote was announced. Republicans are threatening to exercise their right to use all 30 hours of floor debate before permitting a final vote, so Koh may not be formally confirmed until tomorrow." See also IntLawGrrls.  Yesterday, by the...

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17 Jun

Once more, the online world of the metaverse (a term to encompass online virtual communities like Second Life, Entropia, etc.) reflects "real world" economic transactions. (See this and this for background.) The latest story (via Futurismic) is how an executive of Ebank, a bank set up in the metaverse Eve Online, illegally sold the deposits and collateral of its depositors...

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16 Jun

In the latest chapter of its attempt to consolidate its power over Georgia regarding the South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Russia has vetoed the continuation of the UN mission in the region. According to the AP: Russia has exercised its veto power in the U.N. Security Council and brought an end to the nearly 16-year-old U.N. observer mission in Georgia and breakaway...

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