With the MCA’s enactment, there seems to be a general sense of despair (or elation, depending on where you sit) that we are now in a world in which anything goes. As Jack Balkin writes, whether or not the MCA actually continues to constrain the President from engaging in certain conduct he characterizes as “torture lite” is an academic...
The U.N. General Assembly next week will likely vote to approve a resolution proposing an Arms Trade Treaty designed to regulate and limit the international trade in small arms. David Kopel of the Volokh Conspiracy has some very tough words for Control Arms, the leading NGO lobbying for the Arms Trade Treaty. But whether or not Control Arms is a...
There is a fascinating article in the Guardian (UK) today discussing a number of UK criminal cases in which defendants charged with destroying or vandalizing military property were able to use the illegality of the Iraq war to argue the defense of necessity. An Irish case is particularly striking: Last year, five peace campaigners were acquitted after using an...
There is always a topic du jour in international law, a subject that defines a season of international law. Between the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, it was the law of the sea. Between the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, it was international environmental law. Between the mid-1990s to present, it has been international criminal law. Every season is brought about by a major international...
My colleague Brian Tamanaha has the story over at Balkinization. Check it out… ...
The Office of Science and Technology Policy released last week the new "National Space Policy of the United States." According to the Washington Post, the new space policy, which supersedes a 1996 Clinton-era space policy, envisions a greater role for the military in outer space. Here are some of the new policy's fundamental principles, a number of which...
See this report here; pretty sketchy, without any elaboration from the Mexican government. It’s not easy to come up with an international law argument against a border fence, although one would assume a human rights basis (especially as combined with empirical evidence of resulting deaths from border smuggling moved into more inhospitable terrain). It wouldn’t seem that there’s...
I was at a recent event that involved a discussion with a federal appeals court judge regarding the interpretation of treaties in federal courts. One of the cases under discussion involved interpretation of a particular phrase in a well-known treaty. This particular judge is an extremely thoughtful, erudite, and scholarly judge. When someone in the room raised...
These days the UN General Assembly is discussing the adoption of a declaration calling for an immediate moratorium on deep-sea bottom trawl fishing on the high seas, at least until legally-binding regimes for the effective conservation and management of fisheries and the protection of biodiversity on the high seas can be developed, implemented and enforced. The measure has been proposed...
Over at National Security Advisors, my friend Tung Yin has a post about the sentencing of Lynne Stewart to 28 months in prison for allegedly conspiring with Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman to help him transmit messages from prison to his followers. Though Tung praises the judge's refusal to impose the absurd 20-year sentence the government requested, he seems...
OK, I guess election battles for Security Council seats don’t amount to no-holds-bar extreme fighting but this one is pretty heated as far UN politicking goes. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has set his sights on this seat. Even though it is a rotating seat on the fifteen-member Council, and thus without a veto, it can still provide added political...
Opinio Juris warmly welcomes Betsy Andersen as the new Executive Director for the American Society of International Law. We are delighted that Betsy has agreed to be interviewed to introduce her to our readers. Having spent several hours this weekend at a colloquium discussing the future of the ASIL with Betsy Andersen and ASIL President Jose Alvarez, I left...
