As Jeffrey Bader of Brookings notes, the U.S. government has, for the first time, publicly rejected the legality of China's "Nine Dash Line" claim in the South China Sea (for a little background on the unusual Nine Dash Line, see an earlier post here). This is a semi-big deal as it shows how the US is going to use international...
The New York Times reports that Ilham Tohti, a Uighur economics professor, has been arrested by Chinese authorities for separatism and inciting ethnic hatred. A number of his students are also seemingly being detained. Tohti is just one person and, perhaps unfortunately for him, his case is emblematic of larger regional tensions in China and Central Asia. The Uighurs are a Turkic-speaking ethnic group, about...
A subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Committee held a much-needed hearing to educate themselves on China's recent activity in the East and South China Seas. Professor Peter Dutton of the Naval War College, along with two other experts on Asian affairs, gave interesting and useful testimony on the nature of China's maritime disputes with Japan, the...
It looks like the U.S. and India have worked out a sort-of deal to end the battle over visa-fraud charges brought against India's deputy consul-general in New York Devyani Khobragade. Yesterday, a U.S. grand jury indicted Khobragade on the visa-fraud charges, and shortly thereafter, Khobragade was allowed to leave the U.S. for India. India is now retaliating by demanding the U.S. withdraw...
There’s never a boring year in international law and 2013 turned out to be particularly eventful: Syria, major cases in front of national and international courts, a possible nuclear deal with Iran, and turmoil in Eastern Europe, Egypt, and South Sudan, to name but a few reasons. This post is not an attempt to log all that we have written about...
Simon Lester of the IELP Blog raises an interesting and possibly important point about the new WTO Agreement just reached in Bali. In order for the U.S. to enter into the agreement, will the U.S. Congress have to approve it? On first glance, the answer would seem to be: "yes" since the U.S. Congress invariably is required to approve all U.S....
China's East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) has spawned tons of media commentary, so much so that I have had little to add and can barely keep up with all the coverage. Still, there is one small legal point that bears some further discussion. While I think the U.S. is correct as a matter of policy to push...
The WTO's new Director-General Roberto Azevedo is celebrating a rare event: The WTO's entire 159-country membership has finally reached a new multilateral agreement. This is the first time that the WTO's membership as a whole (as opposed to smaller groups of its member states) has reached an agreement since it was formed in 1994 and the first set of agreements under...
I don't have any insights to offer on the big news this weekend, that legally-non binding-UNSC-resolution-violating agreement in Geneva. But I did want to note one other big sort-of-law news item from the other side of the world: China's announcement that it is drawing an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea, including over the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku...
[This Post has been updated]. One of the main benefits of attending a conference (rather than just reading descriptions of its proceedings), is the chance to have face-to-face exchanges with individuals you normally never get a chance to meet. One of the unusual aspects of the Asian Society of International Law is that it draws lawyers from many different Asian...
I've made the trek this week to New Delhi to attend the 4th Biennial Meeting of the Asian Society of International Law. I'll be presenting a paper on my favorite subject these days: The China-Philippines (Non) Arbitration. I've tweeted a few not very profounds thoughts on Day One here. AsianSil is quite a different type of meeting than the American...
China's U.N. Ambassador made a typically anodyne statement recently to the U.N. General Assembly on the Rule of Law at National and International Levels. But there are a few interesting nuggets worth noting that reflect China's skeptical attitude toward international adjudication. Anyone who follows the Chinese government's diplomatic statements will know that it repeatedly stresses the U.N. Charter's obligation on states to seek...
