Ian Henderson may be mad at me. He asked for fewer posts on foreign relations. But he also asked for more posts on treaties. I have a new paper up that tackles both topics -- An Intersubjective Treaty Power. For those of you who are interested in such things, here's the abstract: Does the Constitution require that U.S. treaties address matters...
Just Security has published two long guest posts (here and here) on the ICC and Palestine by Nimrod Karin, a J.S.D. candidate at New York University School of Law who was previously Deputy Legal Adviser to Israel’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations. There is much to respect about the posts, which are careful, substantive, and avoid needless hyperbole. And I agree...
The fight between President Obama and Congress over Cuba policy is nothing compared the brewing struggle over a U.S.-Iran agreement over Iran's nuclear program. I noticed this little foreign affairs law nugget today from the WSJ's report of this ongoing struggle (emphasis added): In the Senate, Mr. Menendez, of New Jersey, is co-author of a bill that seeks to impose new,...
It looks like a big showdown is brewing between the President and Congress over Cuba policy (Here comes 2016 presidential candidate Rubio!). Some legal commentators have argued, however, that President Obama already has the legal authority to lift all or most of the Cuba embargo without any further action by Congress. Robert Muse, a lawyer whose practice is all about Cuba sanctions...
So this is a well-intentioned but problematic idea: The Palestinians want the International Criminal Court (ICC) to launch an investigation into the death of Yasser Arafat, a senior Fatah official announced on Sunday. Jamal Muheissen, member of the Fatah Central Committee, claimed that Israel was responsible for the death of Arafat, who died in November 2004. “This file will be presented to the...
According to this report in the Times of Israel, the Palestinian Authority would be willing to forego the ICC if Israel agreed to freeze its settlement activity: RAMALLAH — A senior Palestinian official said Sunday that the first subject to be brought before the International Criminal Court at The Hague in the Palestinian Authority’s legal campaign against Israel would be settlement construction. The...
I have posted a long new essay on SSRN, my contribution to a fantastic collection of essays that OJ's own Jens Ohlin is editing for Cambridge University Press, The Theoretical Boundaries of Armed Conflict & Human Rights. The essay is entitled "The Use and Abuse of Analogy in IHL," and here is the abstract: It is a truism to say that...
H-Diplo, part of H-Net, recently hosted a virtual roundtable on David Bosco's excellent book Rough Justice:The International Criminal Court in a World of Power Politics, published by Oxford last year. Erik Vroeten introduced the roundtable, and Sam Moyn, David Kaye, and I submitted reviews. David then wrote a response. Here is a snippet from Erik's introduction: It is my pleasure to...
Christopher Kutz, Professor of Law in the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program at Berkeley Law School, has a fascinating new essay examining the possibility that "norms" against torture and assassination have died in the United States in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Kutz is not writing to support the CIA interrogation program or the US government's use of assassination, but he...
The new blog, which will focus on "multilateralism, international organizations, and world order" -- no small task there! -- includes Friends-of-OJ David Bosco and David Kaye, as well as my SOAS colleague Leslie Vinjamuri. Here is the complete contributor list: David Bosco is an assistant professor at American University’s School of International Service and a contributing editor at Foreign Policy magazine. Martin Edwards is...
Almost three years ago to the day, I critiqued an article by Ashley Deeks that argued the right of self-defence under Art. 51 of the UN Charter extends to situations in which states are "unwilling or unable" to prevent non-state actors from using their territory to launch armed attacks. As I noted in my post, Deeks herself admitted that she had "found...
I don't have much useful to add to the already voluminous online debate on the legality or morality of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" or "torture" program. In this post, I want to focus on an interesting data point coming out of this debate. As best as I can tell, international law's position that torture...
