The Obama administration announced the demise today of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have done nothing to promote America's energy independence but everything to promote climate change: President Barack Obama on Wednesday rejected a Canadian company's plan to build a U.S.-spanning, 1,700-mile (2,700 kilometer) pipeline to carry oil across six U.S. states to Texas refineries, raising the stakes...
Here's an actual headline from Fox Nation, part of that fair and balanced news organization we all know and love: Sovereignty's a bitch, isn't it?...
Jens Ohlin has continued the conversation about IHL and IHRL at LieberCode. Here is a snippet, self-servingly chosen because I want to comment on it: It strikes me as curious that human rights activists are so quick to cabin CIL application of the IHL rules of IAC to NIAC. To my ear, it is one of the great advancements...
There has been much debate the past couple of days about whether the bomb attacks that have killed at least three Iranian nuclear scientists since 2010 qualify as terrorism. Glenn Greenwald and Kevin Drum on the left and Andrew Sullivan on the right say "yes"; many of their readers (see Greenwald here) and the editor of Technology Review say "no." ...
The media has been abuzz the past couple of days about a video that shows four U.S. Marines urinating on dead Taliban soldiers. The military's response to the blossoming controversy has been admirable. In addition to the Pentagon quickly confirming its authenticity, the Navy has stated that it is "deeply troubled by the video. Whoever it is, and whatever the...
I want to call readers' attention to a very useful new essay written by Emory's Laurie Blank, which is forthcoming in the William Mitchell Law Review. Here is the abstract: Targeted strikes – predominantly using drones – have become the operational counterterrorism tool of choice for the United States over the past few years. Targeted killing can...
I am delighted to announce that Lt. Col. Chris Jenks -- currently the head of the International Law Branch at the U.S. Army JAG, an occasional contributor to Opinio Juris, and my very first PhD student (my colleague Gerry Simpson is his other supervisor) -- has accepted a tenure-track assistant professor position at SMU's Dedman School of Law. Chris will...
I think there is little doubt where I stand on the merits of the Chevron litigation, so I am not going to get into the substance of the dispute here. But I have an honest question that I am hoping someone will answer. Let's assume, for sake of argument, that Chevron is correct to argue that the $18 billion judgment...
Great news -- an appeals court in Ecuador has upheld the $18 billion damages award imposed on Chevron for the damage caused by its deliberate dumping of more than 18 billion gallons of toxic waste-water in the country, known as the "Rainforest Chernobyl": The lawsuit deals with pollution of the rainforest by energy company Texaco, which Chevron bought in 2001. Chevron...
We hope you never left, but in case you have not been keeping up with Opinio Juris over the holiday season, here is what you missed: 1. Two excellent blog posts setting the record straight about the NDAA, graciously provided to us by two experts on the subject, Marty Lederman and Steve Vladeck. You can find Part I here and Part...
This post will seem like an extended plug for my own work, so apologies. But I wanted to offer a few thoughts on the legal issues raised by Ruti's excellent post, the politics of which -- with one exception, noted below -- I completely share. First, Ruti asks whether Libya should be able to claim the right to try to Saif...
In the comments to my previous post, I described refusing to allow comments on a blog as an "act of cowardice." Ben Wittes, one of the contributors to Lawfare, a blog that does not allow comments as a matter of policy, doesn't appreciate the description: Anyone who wants to understand why Lawfare does not take comments need only take a brief...
