I want to thank Julian Ku and his colleagues at Opinio Juris for the invitation to blog. This is my initial effort in cyberspace. I begin with some interesting information that I recently learned on a trip to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry at an exhibition of a captured German submarine: the United States once decided, consciously and at...
Thank you for the opportunity to guest blog on Opinio Juris these past two weeks. One final message for those who are following the issue of interrogation: Seton Hall School of Law is partnering with Second Life on September 17 to provide an afternoon Constitution Day program on “Interrogation and Intelligence Gathering.” Speakers will address FBI methods of...
Opinio Juris is very pleased to welcome Professor John McGinnis of Northwestern University School of Law as a guest-blogger for the next few days. Professor McGinnis is a well-known scholar of constitutional and international law. Among his recent publications is this Stanford Law Review (with Ilya Somin) article examining the democratic legitimacy of international lawmaking. In...
The Institute for War and Peace Reporting notes that there is an emerging political consensus against supporting ICC efforts in Darfur.Escalating violence in Darfur and efforts by the international community to restore peace has dominated the news headlines this month. Particularly prominent has been coverage of the first visit by the new UN secretary-general to the region and his thoughts on...
A federal judge yesterday lifted a stay he had placed earlier in the week on Noriega's extradition to France. In his brief written opinion, Judge Hoeveler held that France's agreement to give Noriega the same treatment as a POW that was provided by the U.S. is enough to satisfy any Geneva Convention concerns. In other words, France does...
I recently came across this wonderful website called the Online Library of Liberty. It includes, among many other writers, the works of some of international law's founding fathers, such as Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf, and Emer de Vattel. There also is a library on the Hague Peace Conferences, and topical sections on law generally, and subtopics like...
Last week I linked to a report from Human Rights Watch on Hezbollah's targeting of civilians. Yesterday Human Rights Watch released another report on the conflict, this one focusing on Israeli attacks on civilians in Lebanon. The press release is here and the full report is here. Here is a taste: Israel’s indiscriminate airstrikes, not Hezbollah’s shielding as...
Guess what this is. It's modern day international democracy at work, in this case Microsoft's winning effort to have the US vote "yes" to extending ISO approval to its OOXML file format as open-source software. Sounds arcane, but apparently tens of millions of dollars in government contracts are at stake with the question. Alas, Microsoft failed to...
ICJ president and sometime lawprof Rosalyn Higgins has been awarded one of four 2007 Balzan Prizes. The citation is here. The prize comes with a million Swiss francs (that's more than $800,000). Under a condition imposed in 2001, "prize winners must now destine half of their awards for research projects carried out preferably by young humanists and...
Seton Hall Law & The Whitehead School of Diplomacy in Newark, NJ are holding a major symposium on post-conflict reconstruction on November 2 entitled: When the Fighting Stops: Roles and Responsibilities in Post Conflict Reconstruction The event will compare and contrast American & multilateral approaches to post-conflict reconstruction. Speakers include: Clint Williamson, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, ...
The creation of the Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) was one of the few tangible outcomes of the 2005 World Summit UN Reform process. The PBC was formed to "advise and propose integrated strategies for post-conflict recovery, focusing attention on reconstruction, institution-building and sustainable development, in countries emerging from conflict." To date, the Peacebuilding Commission has taken on two cases:...
BBC reports: A US judge has temporarily blocked the extradition to France of ex-Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega to allow his defence to present a new appeal. The judge told the lawyers to present on Thursday evidence to support their claim that France would not abide by a key part of the Geneva Conventions. I think the dispute here is over whether...
