In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

07 Jul

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Burundi's parliamentary elections on Monday were not fair or free and human rights were violated, the United Nations said on Thursday. Middle East and Northern Africa US President Barack Obama has said that the US-led coalition battling fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was...

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05 Jul

Events From 10-11 July 2015, as part of its summer Institute in Transnational Law, Duke Law School will be hosting a conference on the topic of “comparative foreign relations law.”  The conference, which will be held at the University of Geneva, will consider similarities and differences in how nations (and the European Union as an entity) handle various issues of foreign relations law,...

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03 Jul

Laurie Blank published a post yesterday at Lawfare entitled "The UN Gaza Report: Heads I Win, Tails You Lose." The post accuses the Independent Commission of Inquiry's report on Operation Protective Edge ("Gaza Report") of "completely undermin[ing] the foundational notion of equal application of the law" with regard to three areas of IHL: warnings, civilian vs military objects, and compliance. None of Blank's...

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02 Jul

[Gregory H. Fox is Professor of Law and Director of the Program for International Legal Studies, Wayne State University Law School.] In the aftermath of the Iraq occupation, a vigorous debate began over the legitimacy of the Coalition Provisional Authority’s (CPA) vast reform of Iraqi legal, political and economic institutions (see Gregory H. Fox, The Occupation of Iraq, 36 Geo. J....

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01 Jul

Kimberly Prost, the current UN Ombudsperson, will be leaving her post in mid-July when her term expires.   However, no replacement has been appointed, nor has the UN implemented a transition plan for her eventual successor.   The issue of what will happen to the current cases before the office, or to individuals who are unlucky enough to apply for delisting after...

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29 Jun

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Suspected Islamist fighters attacked a town in western Mali near the border with neighbouring Mauritania before dawn on Saturday, leaving 12 people dead, including three soldiers and nine attackers, the defence ministry said. Al Shabaab militants detonated a car bomb and battled African Union troops at a peacekeepers'...

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25 Jun

I met Mike Lewis during my first year of law teaching at Cornell Law School. Mike was scheduled to give a lecture at the law school about torture and I was invited to give a commentary on his presentation. Mike had pre-circulated the paper that the presentation was based on. I disagreed with his thesis and pressed him sharply on...

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24 Jun

As regular readers know, Mike and I often sparred on the virtual pages of Opinio Juris. By and large, we did so civilly. But on occasion -- such as when we were debating whether the Bush admininstration's "enhanced interrogation" regime qualified as torture -- things became heated. I made him mad. He made me mad. I doubt either of us...

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23 Jun

We are very sorry to mark the passing of Professor Michael W. Lewis of Ohio Northern University. Mike spoke and wrote with rare authority as someone who was not only a leading international law and national security scholar who engaged in broader public discourse (see his many debates, presentations, and interviews), but also as a former Naval aviator and TOPGUN graduate,...

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22 Jun

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa South Africa's main opposition on Sunday called for a full investigation into the government's failure to arrest Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, who is due to face charges of genocide at the International Criminal Court. Somali armed group al-Shabab has claimed responsibility for an attack on a military compound...

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