I have been in Santiago, Chile for the past few days keynoting an international law conference at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. It's an impressive law school in one of the most beautiful cities in South America. I was fortunate to arrive on the eve of the fortieth anniversary of the defining moment in Chilean history: Augusto Pinochet's...
With the focus now on the Russian proposal to bring Syrian chemical weapons under “international control,” questions that remain include how would this actually work? Who would take control? One likely participant in the implementation would be the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the implementing body for the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). From the OPCW website: As of today...
Normally, we post our conference announcements weekly, but we just got word of one tomorrow that's worth flagging. The British Institute of International and Comparative law (BIICL) will be holding a Rapid Response Seminar tomorrow, September 11, from 4-6 pm to discuss 'Humanitarian Intervention, International Law and Syria'. As the title suggests, the conversation will discuss whether humanitarian intervention falls...
An inadvertent suggestion by John Kerry may have provided a solution to the international stalemate on Syria, as it led to a Russian proposal to bring chemical weapons under international control for destruction. The US is open but sceptical to the proposal, as are its allies. Syria's foreign minister has welcomed the proposal, tacitly admitting in the process that the...
[Travel and other expenses related to my participation in the "100 Years Peace Palace" program provided by the Government of the Netherlands and Radio Netherlands Worldwide.] August 28th marked the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. It was also the 100th anniversary of the completion of the Peace Palace at The Hague. Two dreams from...
OK, I have to admit I was not familiar with the Pacific Island nation of Kiribati before reading this article, but I was heartened to learn that the U.S. signed a maritime boundary treaty with it on Friday. Sometimes supporters of U.S. ratification suggest that it would be almost impossible to work with Law of the Sea signatories like...
In the UK, the government released a brief note which described the legal theory justifying a strike on Syria. The note may have had flaws, but it certainly offered a basis to evaluate the UK government's view of international law. In the United States, the equivalent appears to be conversations between the White House Counsel and Charlie Savage of the...
Residents in northeast Nigeria say at least 13 vigilantes and five Boko Haram members have been killed after the group launched attacks on the town of Benisheik. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad denied that he was behind a chemical weapons attack on the Syrian people, as the White House pressed ahead with the effort of persuading Congress to approve a military strike to punish...
You never know, President Obama might turn things around. On the other hand, things sound bad on the Hill. The Administration would have to run the table to get a yes-vote from both houses of Congress (it's uphill even in the Senate). It may not be too early to start writing the post-mortems. The key mistake Obama made was going to Congress...
For a number of years now, I've enjoyed watching TED talks and TEDx events on a variety of subjects in the realms of science, design, and society. TED may be an acronym for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, but TED talks already go well beyond those topics and tomorrow, September 9, there will be a TEDx event on issues of international justice. TEDxHagueAcademy...
Calls for Papers A workshop on Sociological Inquiries into International Law will take place at the London School of Economics on May 16, 2014. The aim of this workshop is to help bring contemporary international law scholarship into a closer conversation with a number of inspiring and theoretically rich literatures on law and markets deriving from traditions of thinking within sociology and...
As Samantha Power (the new U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.) demands unilateral action and rages against the deadlocked Security Council, it is worth thinking again about the odd structure of the UNSC and its veto power for P-5 members. In this light, I would point our readers to an interesting piece by Andrew Carswell forthcoming in the Journal of Conflict...
