A warm welcome to Jacob Cogan and his new blog, International Law Reporter. Cogan—an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati College of Law and a former colleague of mine at the State Department Legal Adviser’s Office—describes his blog in general terms, covering “scholarship, events, and ideas in international law, international relations, and foreign affairs law.”...
In commemoration of Mother’s Day, I wanted to review a wonderful play I saw in London over the weekend. The play Kindertransport by Diane Samuels personalizes the story of almost ten thousand unaccompanied Jewish children who traveled from Germany to England in 1938. But really the play is about a refugee child and her mother, and the struggle...
The U.S. Trade Representative's Office has released some further details on its agreement with Congress to incorporate international labor standards into future U.S. free-trade agreements. Here are a couple important new institutional innovations. (1) Violations of international and local labor standards will apparently be subject to the same international dispute resolution mechanisms as the rest of the trade agreement. This...
President Bush has always insisted that he only went to war with Iraq as a last resort, in response to Saddam's refusal to disarm:"Of course, I haven’t made up my mind we’re going to war with Iraq." [10/1/02] "You said we’re headed to war in Iraq — I don’t know why you say that. I hope we’re not headed to war...
Thanks to a recent bilateral arrangement, you can now enjoy Indian mangos in the United States. To hear Indians talk about this, the issue is more important than nukes or Kashmir. The first shipments arrived this week in New York. Fruit flies had been the problem; irradiation the answer, a good enough one for USDA. (The US,...
My time as guest blogger here at Opinio Juris is coming to an end. Many thanks to Chris and the other permanent contributors for inviting me, as well as to all of the readers and commenters of my posts. I've enjoyed it, and I certainly hope you did too. All the best, Marko ...
Oxford University Press has just launched a new online database called International Law in Domestic Courts. It is edited by Professors André Nolkaemper and Erika de Wet of the University of Amsterdam. The Board of Editors includes Dinah Shelton and Ralph Steinhardt, among other luminaries. The goal of the database is to collect all the major domestic...
President Bush and Democratic leaders in the U.S. Congress have reached an agreement on a bipartisan trade policy to be applied to all future U.S. free-trade agreements. According to one account, the new policy commits U.S. trade partners to adopting and enforcing laws that abide by basic international labor standards as outlined in a 1998 International Labor Organization declaration....
I had lunch today in London with a very prominent British international law scholar and, of course, the main topic of conversation was Tony Blair. I will not reveal the name of the person to respect confidences, but will outline the gist of his impressions. He said that Tony Blair has done many good things in the domestic...
AALS and ASIL are co-sponsoring a mid-year conference in Vancouver, BC June 17-20 on the theme "What's Wrong with the Way We Teach and Write International Law?" Full details, including on-line registration, can be found here. This should be a great opportunity to recharge the batteries, engage in some serious discussion — in both panel format and in...
Many people today think of humanitarian law or the law of armed conflict as essentially part and parcel of human rights law. This is, of course, historically incorrect, as the law of war predates human rights law by centuries, the latter truly emerging only in the crucible of World War II. Philosophically, however, the idea that humanitarian law guarantees a...
In a shameful day for British criminal justice, David Keogh and Leo O'Connor have been convicted of violating Britain's Official Secrets Act for leaking a confidential memorandum between Bush and Blair that quotes a threat by Bush to bomb Al Jazeera's headquarters in Qatar:The memo was a note of a meeting between US President George Bush and the British Prime...
