In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

02 Aug

As Julian noted Monday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger have announced an agreement on collaboration in the fight against global warming. The text of what was agreed can be found here. It’s titled, “United Kingdom and California Announcement on Climate Change and Clean Energy Cooperation,” followed by a mission statement in which California (CA) and...

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01 Aug

My vote for the most important international law case for the month of July is Azurix v. Argentina. The decision is available here and nice summaries of the decision can be found here, here, and here. This ICSID arbitration is, at its essence, a case about water politics. Or as the locals might say, una problema de agua mala en...

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31 Jul

So suggests an Irish parliamentarian in the Irish Times (text available here). I don't think so, for two reasons. First, law in any form is going to be uneven in its coverage. Gerald Neuman had a wonderful 1996 piece in the Stanford Law Review entitled "Anomalous Zones," about the geographically and temporally discontinuous application of the law. ...

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31 Jul

Today will be Peter Spiro's final day guest-blogging. On behalf of all of us, I want to thank him for his stint -- which was, by any account, a smashing success. We wish him well in his new position at Temple! ...

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31 Jul

For years, researching U.S. treaty-making was a daunting task. Publication of U.S. treaties and other international agreements in the United States Treaties (UST) and Treaties and Other International Agreements (TIAS) series lagged years (if not decades) behind. Other materials (e.g., reservations, instruments of ratification, the travaux preparatoire) were often unavailable, incomplete, or required checking multiple sources. And...

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31 Jul

After leaving the White House this week during his consultations with President Bush, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair met with California's Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to announce an agreement to start a global-warming-reducing emissions-trading market. Wait a minute, even though California often seems like a foreign country to many of us in the States, can California actually sign an agreement with a...

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31 Jul

For those who are interested, Steve Clemons of The Washington Note is actively covering John Bolton's confirmation hearings. If Clemons' first few posts are any indication, things aren't going very well for the nominee, whose disastrous interim stint at the UN seems to be rightfully coming back to haunt him:1. Senator Hagel is now undecided on whether to support...

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31 Jul

This article in the New York Times by Thom Shanker raises a critically important question for the current conflict in the Middle East. Shanker writes, Hezbollah, with the sophistication of a national army (it almost sank an Israeli warship with a cruise missile) and the lethal invisibility of a guerrilla army, is a hybrid. Old labels, and old planning,...

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30 Jul

According to this report by Xinhua (China's news agency), the ICC has agreed not to interfere with peace talks between Uganda and its rebel opposition the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Peace talks had previously broken down because of the ICC's arrest warrants against the LRA leaders. We'll see exactly what this means, because the ICC itself has not released...

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30 Jul

This interesting Washington Post article on U.S. bioweapons research goes a bit too far trying to drum up a legal controversy. According to the Post, the Department of Homeland Security has a super-secret bioweapons research facility which some fear may violate the 1972 Convention Against Biological and Toxin Weapons. According to the Post article, the U.S. believes it is in...

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29 Jul

The separatist conflict in Moldova about which I have been blogging received a brief mention by President Bush on Thursday. Reuters reports the following regarding the meeting of President Bush and Romanian President Basescu:The leaders also agreed that separatists in neighboring Moldova should not be allowed to secede from the country. "We support the territorial integrity of Moldova," Bush said.Actually...

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