On Friday, the ICJ issued its judgment in Sovereignty over Pedra Branca/Pulau Batu Puteh, Middle Rocks and South Ledge (Malaysia/Singapore). A summary sent by the ICJ stated thatit had found by 12 votes to four that Pedra Blanca/Pulau Batu Puteh, a granite island in the Straits of Singapore on which a lighthouse stands, belongs to Singapore and has done so...
Wednesday’s NY Times had a good essay by Thomas Friedman on the current evolution of the global distribution of power. He argues that there are actually three shifts taking place: The first shift is due to our “oil addiction”:Let’s start with the most profound one: More and more, I am convinced that the big foreign policy failure that will be pinned...
Having grown up on Green Lantern comics (and having one friend quip that she thinks that explains my becoming an international lawyer), I was nonetheless somewhat stunned to come across the following on Wagner James Au’s New World Notes blog, which covers the evolution of Second Life, the online “virtual world”:Second Life has a Darfur, so it’s sad (though...
The first part of this post's title is also the title of a new article at Time.com. (Note: on CNN.com, they title the article "Time to Invade Myanmar?") And so begins the latest iteration of the humanitarian intervention debate. After a recap of the situation in Myanmar, the article notes:...
I'll strike this up to strange timing. On the same day of reports of increasing tensions between Russia and Georgia, including Russian troop movements along the Russian/Georgian border and an increase of Russian forces in the Georgian breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, CNN runs a piece on...
Our own Duncan Hollis was cited by Justice Breyer in his Medellin dissent. Justice Breyer cites to Duncan's essay A Comparative Approach to Treaty Law and Practice, which is from the book National Treaty Law and Practice, co-edited by Duncan, Merritt R. Blakeslee, and L. Benjamin Ederington. The first cite to Duncan's essay appears on page 11 of the dissent....
One last note regarding the discussion of Treaties' End...
I again want to thank Oona Hathaway for joining us in this discussion of her article Treaties’ End. As I mentioned in my opening post, her article is both rich in historical detail and deploys impressive empirical research. I will turn to the historical argument in a later post, for now I want to focus on an aspect of...
The last couple of months have been very good for the study of foreign relations law. First, there was Marty Lederman’s (Georgetown) and David Barron’s (Harvard) two part article on the President’s Commander-in-Chief power when used in opposition to Congressional limitations. Now, we have Yale Law Professor Oona Hathaway’s analysis of the Constitution’s Treaty Clause and the modern practice of...
At the heart of the Ecuadoran/ Colombian/ Venezuelan tensions, there is a dispute over the facts that has legal implications as to whether Colombia’s military action was self-defense or anticipatory self-defense (which, as many would see it, would make it aggression). As CNN explains:[Ecuadoran President Rafael] Correa told reporters in Quito that [Colombia’s Presdient Alvaro] Uribe told him the...
Joshua Keating of Foreign Policy has a new essay, How to Start Your Own Country in Four Easy Steps. He begins:With Kosovo unilaterally declaring independence and a host of wannabe states looking to follow its lead, you might be thinking it’s about time to set up your own country. You’ve picked out a flag, written a national anthem, even...
Professor Tony Arend of Georgetown has posted a legal analysis of Kosovo's declaration. Tony considers some of the same analytic territory I cover in this post and this post (Res 1244, the Quebec case, the defintion of a "people,") and his whole post is well worth the read. I will focus on one point of Tony's analysis, in which he touches...
