Professor Burns Weston passed away on October 28, 2015. His daughter, Rebecca Weston, wrote the following obituary, which she passed on to us to circulate among the international law community. I never had the privilege of meeting Professor Weston, but was a regular user of his textbooks (on both international law and international environmental law). I know I speak for...
In my post on biological and chemical weapons yesterday, I rejected the idea that Art. 8(2)(b)(xviii) "squarely appl[ies]" (Ralf Trapp) or "plainly applies" (Alex Whiting) to chemical and biological weapons by arguing that the drafters of the Rome Statute intended Art. 8(2)(b)(xviii), the war crime of “[e]mploying asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases,” to have precisely the kind of "special meaning" that Art. 31(4) of...
Simon Lester of Worldtradelaw.net and the Cato Institute offered a very interesting pro-free trade argument against the inclusion of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) in trade agreements like the TransPacific Partnership or the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. I disagree and we discussed and debated the issue today in a lively conversation hosted by Columbia University's Center for Sustainable Investment. ...
Over the past week, two posts at Just Security have argued that the ICC can prosecute the use of chemical and biological weapons as a war crime, even though they -- unlike other types of weapons -- are not mentioned in Article 8 of the Rome Statute. The first post was written by Ralf Trapp, who argued as follows: Furthermore, there are the...
U.S. commentary has largely celebrated the UNCLOS Arbitral Tribunal’s award finding it has jurisdiction to consider the merits on many of the Philippines’ South China Sea related claims against China. Perhaps the most positive note is found in Jill Goldenziel’s essay at the Diplomat entitled, “International Law Is the Real Threat to China in the South China Sea.” But just by...
I'm in the middle of a week-long trip to Georgia, where I'm giving nine lectures in five days to the military and university students. (Thanks, Anna Dolidze, Deputy Minister of Defence and friend-of-OJ!) I'm talking about perfidy a couple of times, but most of the lectures -- not surprisingly -- are about the OTP's request to open a formal investigation...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Rebel fighters in South Sudan have released 13 United Nations workers who were held hostage for a week, the UN has said. Al-Shabab fighters in Somalia have struck again - managing to evade security measures to stage an attack in downtown Mogadishu. At least two soldiers and 11 militants...
I've received a few emails over the past couple of days wondering why I have not joined the now 500 scholars at UK universities who have pledged to boycott Israeli universities. The answer is that although I wholeheartedly support BDS in its economic and cultural forms, I am much more ambivalent about academic BDS. I agree with the boycotters that Israeli universities...
I have been curious to see how China would respond to yesterday's UNCLOS Annex VII Arbitral Tribunal's ruling finding it has jurisdiction to hear the Philippines South China Sea related claims. Well, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was ready with this blistering response: Q: The Arbitral Tribunal established at the request of the Republic of the Philippines rendered the award...
There is a lot of interesting material revealed in the Charlie Savage NYTimes article on the legal justification for the Bin Laden raid (including how the Attorney General and Office of Legal Counsel were kept in the dark and out of the loop). But I want to focus on one paragraph in the article, which explained the lawyers' backup justification for...
It's been a rough week for China's South China Seas policy. In addition to facing a US Freedom of Navigation operation near one of its artificial islands, the arbitration tribunal formed under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea has decided that it has jurisdiction to proceed to the merits on the Philippines' legal challenge to certain...
Today the New York Times reported on the existence of four secret memos covering the various aspects of the U.S. Navy Seals raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. It would be great to see the memos, but I wouldn't hold your breath. They aren't likely to be released in the very near future, though I think each of them would,...
