The ABA Journal has a cover story about the threat posed to island states by climate change. This is a topic we have discussed on Opinio Juris at various times. Duncan wrote at length about the Maldives; I had a shorter piece here, and there are various references in the midst of other blog posts. The Journal article is long and...
Like many readers, I never miss FP's online "Morning Brief," which provides links to numerous interesting international developments. It's an incredibly useful and erudite feature -- which is why I was so surprised to see the following headline this morning: A U.S. court dismissed charges against the president of Sri Lanka for war crimes. Um, no. The case did not involve war...
That South China Sea dispute just won't go away. Not as long as there's still oil and gas down there...
"He looked up again at the portrait of Big Brother. The colossus that bestrode the world! The rock against which the hordes of Asia dashed themselves in vain! ...
Something I learned about while I was in China is that China claims, as a matter of international law, that it has "indisputable sovereignty" over most of the (oil-rich) South China Sea. This graphic illustrates the scope of China's sovereignty claims. China hasn't had a navy that could enforce this claim, until now. So Vietnam and the Philippines have been...
Next month, the University of Maryland School of Law will host a festshcrift honoring Professor Hungdah Chiu. Professor Chiu was a professor at U. Maryland and a well-known scholar of international law. He also was one of the first, and still one of the most important, scholars on the study of Chinese law (including both China and Taiwan) in the...
Apropos of Kevin's post below criticizing China's new criminal procedure law amendments, it is worth noting that some Chinese legal scholars are defending the consistency of such laws with international treaties. China's draft amendment to the Criminal Procedure Law will further help protect human rights, and conforms rather than contradicts international conventions, legal experts in Beijing have said. The experts made the...
It's not every day that a state enacts a law that blatantly authorizes crimes against humanity, so I feel obligated to give a special shout-out to China, who intend to make the crime against humanity of enforced disappearance official government policy: Chinese police will gain new legal powers to detain suspects for up to six months without telling their families...
A while back, I wrote an article on how states use the rhetoric of international law (specifically self-determination) as part of their broader foreign policy initiatives. Li Hong, the Secretary-General of China's Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, has an op-ed in today's China Daily that embeds law-talk (in this case the international law of outer space and multilateralism more generally) in...
David Hicks is back in the news here in Australia, because the DPP has announced that it intends to seize any royalties he receives from the sale of his book, Guantanamo: My Journey. The DPP's decision has received a great deal of criticism, for a variety of reasons: Hicks accepted a plea because the US government threatened to put him...
Having just returned from Asia, which is awash in disputes over territorial sea rights and exclusive economic zones, the U.S. domestic debate over ratification of the Law of the Sea Convention seems almost quaint. Unlike pretty much every country in East Asia, the U.S. does not have any serious boundary or other kind of dispute that is likely to be...
The International Court of Justice issued a "provisional measures" order today in a dispute between Thailand and Cambodia over a World Heritage temple located near or on the boundary between the two nations. The request for provisional measures was brought by Cambodia, which sought the withdrawal of Thai troops from around the temple. The ICJ granted this request, but went...
