Kofi Annan gave his final public speech today as UN Secretary General. He chose to give it in a place full of historical resonances: Independence, Missouri, the birthplace of Harry Truman, the American President most associated with the UN. In part, this may be viewed as a rebuke to President George W. Bush, who has been the sharpest...
The member-states of the UN elected the membership of the International Law Commission yesterday. For the first time since the founding of the ILC in 1947, the United States does not have a national sitting on the Commission. This is bad for U.S. diplomacy and it may be indicative of the shifting sands of power at the UN. The...
HISTORY & DEVELOPMENT OF ISLAMIC LAW The Origins and Elements of Sunni and Shi’a Jurisprudence WHEN: Monday, November 6, 2006; 6:30 to 9 p.m. WHERE: New York City Bar Association (42 West 44th Street) The New York City Bar Association will present what may very well be the most distinguished panel of academic Islamic law scholars ever assembled for the public in the Western Hemisphere....
Huh? Yes, well, as mentioned in the update to my earlier post, observers thought this battle would come to a draw and a compromise candidate would be needed. After 47 rounds of inconclusive voting, that is indeed the case. Originally there was talk of Mexico as a compromise, but Panama received the consensus support in the end. Actually, the...
Well, it’s a start, I guess. In the absence of President Jed Bartlett ruminating about the legality of assassination on the West Wing, it’s actually this science fiction series that engages issues of international law/ international relations more than any other TV show. Including probably the evening news. On last week’s episode, a sitting President authorized a...
Noah Feldman has the cover story from today’s NY Times Magazine on the fear over an "Islamic bomb." His essay not only covers the oft-cited “Iran bombing Israel” scenario, but also mentions the risk of Sunni-Shiite war across the Middle East, concerns of the results of a Saudi break-up, and more. But, unlike some essayists who simply spin nightmare scenarios, Feldman...
In case you haven’t seen this otherwise, here is a report from the Christian Science Monitor about Vice-President Cheney’s defense of waterboarding where he refers to it as a “no-brainer.” I wonder how John McCain is feeling now. The Monitor quotes at length from McClatchy:In the interview on Tuesday, Scott Hennen of WDAY Radio in Fargo, N.D., told...
The government of Sudan has announced that it will expel Jan Pronk, the senior United Nations official there, for what he has written on his blog. My first reaction was “UN officials have blogs?” (Actually, I am struck by this—it used to be that diplomats shunned attention, now public diplomacy is becoming a crucial part of modern diplomatic strategy.) But...
My colleague Brian Tamanaha has the story over at Balkinization. Check it out… ...
OK, I guess election battles for Security Council seats don’t amount to no-holds-bar extreme fighting but this one is pretty heated as far UN politicking goes. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has set his sights on this seat. Even though it is a rotating seat on the fifteen-member Council, and thus without a veto, it can still provide added political...
Following up belatedly on Duncan's post, I just wanted to point readers to a previous attempts we had at Opinio Juris to draft a list of "International Law 'Must Reads.'" ...
Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk has won the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature. Some of you may remember that last year there was a dust-up when Harold Pinter, the British playrwright, won the Prize although many considered it to be Pamuk’s year. (We debated the politics of the issue here on Opinio Juris.) Pinter had made recent headlines for...
