It is difficult to overstate the horrors the US inflicted on Cambodia from the air during the Vietnam War: 230,000 sorties involving 113,000 different sites; 500,000 tonnes of bombs, as much as the US dropped in the entire Pacific theatre during WW II; at least 50,000, and probably closer to 150,000, innocent civilians killed. Even worse, that bombing campaign, along with...
[Alonso Illueca is Adjunct Professor of International Law at Universidad Católica Santa María La Antigua (Panama) and holds an LL.M. from Columbia University, where he specialised in Public International Law. His main fields of research include recognition of states and governments, the law of treaties, and the use of force. Sophocles Kitharidis is a sessional academic at Monash University and...
PHAP -- Professionals in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection -- is advertising two positions in Geneva that might be of interest to readers. The first is Policy Coordinator: The International Association of Professionals in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection (PHAP) is looking for an experienced policy professional to support the association’s efforts to foster new perspectives on critical issues affecting the humanitarian sector...
A terrific event is coming up in NYC Friday, March 10, 2017, 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. at the New York City Bar. Ian Johnstone, Jacob Katz Cogan, Thomas G. Weiss, and Anjali Dayal will discuss the Future of International Organizations. The Moderator will be Mona Khalil of Independent Diplomat. The speakers are editors and contributors to the Oxford Handbook of International Organizations. This...
[Ralph Janik is a researcher at the University of Vienna Faculty of Law, Department of European, International and Comparative Law.] The presidency of Donald Trump obviously has a manifest impact on international law. After all, he and his administration do not seem to be overly interested in observing international law. Does Trump’s “America First”-policy ultimately imply a comeback of Hegel’s conceptualization of...
Apparently, being named Charles and having vast military experience is all the rage in the blogosphere these days. Last week I mentioned Charles Blanchard's new blog. And this week I want to spruik Charles Dunlop's new(ish) blog, Lawfire. Charlie is a retired Major General in the US Air Force (where he served, inter alia, as Deputy Judge Advocate General) and currently serves as Executive...
[Dr. Mohamed Helal is an Assistant Professor of Law, Moritz College of Law & Affiliated Faculty, Mershon Center for International Security Studies – The Ohio State University. From 2002-2003 Dr. Helal was a member of the Cabinet of the Secretary-General of the Arab League, and from 2005-2009 he served on the Cabinet of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Egypt,...
Last March, the ICRC released an updated Commentary on the First Geneva Convention of 1949 (GCI), the first installment of six new Commentaries aimed at bringing the interpretation of the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols of 1977 to the 21st century. The updated Commentaries serve as an interpretive compass emerging from more than 60 years of application and interpretation of the...
The blog is a one-man show, and that man is Charles Blanchard -- former General Counsel of both the Air Force and the United States Army, current partner at Arnold & Porter in DC. The blog will focus on national-security law, which Chuck "define[s] pretty broadly -- to include topics such as climate change and immigration as well as defense policy." Recent posts...
I would like to thank Opinio Juris for hosting this symposium. Additionally, I would like to thank the distinguished contributors for their thoughtful and provocative posts. In this final post of the symposium, I offer a few brief responses to the contributors. Carmen Gonzalez hopes that activists will deploy the treaty supremacy rule in conjunction with the Convention on Elimination of...
[Paul Dubinsky is an Associate Professor of Law at Wayne State University School of Law.This is the eighth post in our symposium this week on treaty supremacy.] For those who have followed David Sloss’s work over the years, The Death of Treaty Supremacy is an eagerly anticipated arrival years in the making, and it does not disappoint. One finds in this volume,...
[This is the seventh post in our symposium this week on treaty supremacy.] I share with the preceding commentators’ praise of David Sloss’s book, The Death of Treaty Supremacy, and agree with their assessment that it is an important work of legal history and of doctrinal clarity on the question of treaty supremacy as a feature of federalism and the doctrine of...
