My vote for the most important international case for the month of August is Sarei v. Rio Tinto. I have already given you my quick read of the case here. So I have invited one of the leading international environmental law professors to give his take on this important case. Here is what John Knox of Wake...
I hope readers have enjoyed the “virtual roundtable.” If you happen to be in Philadelphia for the APSA meeting, we’re hosting a happy hour tomorrow night from 5:30-7:30 at the Continental Midtown. The Continental Midtown is centrally located at 1801 Chestnut St. If you can't find us, ask the maitre d' to point out where the APSA happy...
Julian’s thoughtful post can be located within a larger literature that states “nationalist” objections to domestic court use of international tribunal decisions. One underexplored question in this literature is whether nationalists should ever support domestic court use of international decisions. Another is whether internationalists (i.e., those typically sympathetic to international norms and bodies) should ever oppose domestic court...
Just a quick note to point out that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit issued a potentially important decision Tuesday rejecting what it suggested would be an impermissible delegation of administrative authority to decisionmaking bodies created by the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. (This decision would be worth noting even if it...
I'm very grateful to Tomer Broude (travel safely, Tomer!) both for organizing this APSA roundtable as well as suggesting this online "preview." I've enjoyed all of the terrific contributions of the APSA attendees and look forward to hashing some of these questions out in person on Friday. Indulging my prerogative as a co-host (at least in the blogosphere),...
New Zealand is a remarkably progressive country when it comes to immigration issues. Exhibit A: the government has recently offered permanent residence to Zimbabweans living in New Zealand who fled the Mugabe regime, even those who are HIV+: Yesterday the Government urged hundreds of Zimbabweans who fled the Mugabe regime to come forward and apply for permanent residency under a...
In his Roundtable Post, Kal Raustiala raises questions relating to one important aspect of the design of international tribunals: who get's the ball rolling, or in other words - who has standing and the right to bring a suit to the tribunal. I agree with his basic distinction between private actors as "fire alarms" (or whistle blowers) and states as...
When we talk about international law and U.S. federal courts, we do so most often in the context of national courts as an alternative to international tribunals. But it is also possible to conceive of U.S. federal law, which is now the principal business of U.S. federal courts, as a system of supra-state law supreme over state law, in...
Student blogger (and budding future law professor and regular Opinio Juris reader) David Schraub has an exclusive two-part interview with Tom Friedman. You can read the interviews over at The Debate Link here and here. Plenty of insights regarding the Middle East, Lebanon, Iraq, the Bush Administration, and the future of "liberal hawks" in the Democratic...
I know that some other international law professors are using this blog as a study aid for their public international law classes. And many of those law professors are using the Dunoff, Ratner and Wippman book, International Law: Norms, Actors, Process. So I wanted to raise a minor issue that came to mind today as I was...
What do Formula-One racing and international law have in common? A little bit more than they used to. Consider the following from the BBC:Cyprus is making an official complaint to motor sport's world governing body over what it calls a political "trick" at the Turkish Grand Prix. The Turkish Cypriot leader, Mehmet Ali Talat, presented the Formula One...
Having done no empirical work on the subject whatsoever, I have no idea whether there are any real world cases that fit this theory. However, at least in theory, one plausible reason for empowering new institutions is to dissipate accountability and thereby centralize, rather than dissipate power. This, for example, is the reason that politicians frequently empower "blue...
