I wrote a couple of weeks ago about my experiences in Georgia in the early 1990s, monitoring the various conflicts - Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and the then-Georgian civil war in Tbilisi. I noted that those secessionist conflicts were marked on each side by ethnic cleansing as extreme as anything I saw in the Yugloslav wars (a country which I also...
(First, before anything else, a welcome to Eric Posner back to the blogosphere, lately of Slate's Convictions (in the same shutdown that gave OJ the welcome opportunity to snag Deborah Pearlstein) and now of Volokh Conspiracy, where Eric has been posting particularly related to the resurgence of Russia.) I have been writing in my own draft work this summer about the...
I would be remiss if I did not mark, here at Opinio Juris, the fifth anniversary of the tragic death of UN diplomat and humanitarian Sergio Vieira de Mello, who died in the terrorist attack on the UN's Baghdad headquarters in 2003 along with many other aid and relief workers. And also - it receives far less attention, alas -...
There is nothing international law specific about this pedagogically-oriented post. But as the new fall semester begins for many readers of this blog, I am curious about where OJ readers stand on the question of limiting or prohibiting laptop use or internet access in classrooms. I have written on my regular blog about this topic, as have many other professors....
I have this gnawing suspicion that the only two law professors deeply interested in battlefield robotics are Glenn Reynolds and me. Nonetheless, when it comes to battlefield bots and the law, you can take satisfaction that you will have Heard It Here First, unless, of course, you read Instapundit. As I've said in earlier posts on this subject (and here and...
As events move, I fervently hope, to an end to fighting in Georgia, international law discussions of the war will inevitably return to perennial themes - the authority to use force, the role of the Security Council and the Charter, the rationales and precedents offered for and against each side's use of force, and so on. So let me introduce...
Those of us who teach International Business Transactions often face the pedagogically tough situation of having students whose knowledge of basic business and finance varies enormously, from those who were business undergraduates to those who were art history majors. In my case, my IBT class typically also has half to two thirds foreign LLM students whose undergraduate studies in law...
Military analyst at AEI Fred Kagan has offered a list of provocative possibilities for where the Georgian-Russian war goes next (HT Rich Lowry at NRO, here; I have not been able to find an original link but will amend this when one is available. Here it is - you can read Fred Kagan's updates at the Institute for the Study...
My thanks to Chris for posting on the Georgian conflict as it has unfolded. I've been watching, unsure what exactly to say about policy. I'm still unsure. I mean, it's easy to agree with both the Obama and McCain campaign reactions (I paraphrase) ...
As I've mentioned before, I'm completing a short, popular, non-academic, policy book on US-UN relations. The genesis of the book, however, was the run-up to the UN reform summit, the General Assembly summit (and accompanying final document) of September 2005. My editors have been beyond patient in waiting for me to finish this not-very-large project. But I must say that the...
I have been away from DC, isolated in an office at the Hoover Institution with the internet mostly turned off, completing a short book on US-UN relations. So I have not been participating in - from the posts I have managed to read - the quite marvelous Wittes Long War discussion. But I surfaced long enough to find out that...
Ordinarily I do not blog on articles or discussions that seem to me entirely muddle-headed; life is too short. However. (Admittedly irritating digression: Life is particularly too short here at the Hoover Institution, Stanford, where I am spending a few weeks finishing a book manuscript on US-UN relations in the next administration, whosever it happens to be. The weather in Palo...
