The World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland has to be one of the most fascinating events on the planet. Apart from the fact that it is in Davos, Switzerland (one of the most beautiful ski resorts in the world, and I speak from personal experience), it is filled to the brim with an amazing line-up of guests and speakers. A...
Today's big news in the narrow category of "celebrities and international law" is that Nicole Kidman has been named a UN goodwill ambassador. The UN Development Fund for Women, to whose work Kidman will be lending her celebrity, issued this press release:As UNIFEM Goodwill Ambassador, her efforts will be geared toward raising awareness on the infringement of women's human rights...
"They underestimate the power and appeal of freedom. We've heard it suggested that ...
Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times has an important essay in the New York Review of Books on what he describes as the "opportunistic" genocide of Darfur. Having just returned from Sudan, he paints an utterly depressing picture: "In my years as a journalist, I thought I had seen a full kaleidoscope of horrors, from babies dying of malaria...
A treaty demarcating undersea maritime boundaries between Australia and New Zealand came into effect today with pretty much no fanfare. The “Treaty between the Government of Australia and the Government of New Zealand establishing certain Exclusive Economic Zone and Continental Shelf Boundaries” was the product of five years of Australia-NZ negotiations. Such negotiations are required by the UN Convention on...
One of the issues rarely addressed in the debate on reliance on foreign authority to interpret constitutional guarantees is what attitude lower courts should take with respect to the question. As most scholars know, the Missouri Supreme Court in Roper v. Simmons relied on foreign authority in flagrantly departing from Supreme Court precedent in Stanford to hold that the juvenile...
This week's news of cost overruns and corruption in the UN Peacekeeping office have a familiar ring. Earlier this week, eight UN officials involved in procurement in the peacekeeping division were placed on administrative leave, and the draft of a forthcoming report on fraud and mismanagement estimates that over $298 million may be lost or unaccounted for as a result...
Ken Anderson has posted Jean-Marie Henckaerts' response to his earlier blog commentary on the International Committee of the Red Cross study on customary international humanitarian law. (See earlier Opinio Juris posts here and here.) Henckaerts, who serves as legal advisor to the ICRC, was one of the co-authors of the study. One of the interesting elements of the response is...
In case you missed it, President Bush offered a major foreign policy speech yesterday that, among other things, outlined his strategy for the war on terror. It is a long speech that discusses numerous foreign policy issues, but a key component was his summary of the strategy to defeat terrorism: (1) choke off the funding; (2) challenge states that harbor...
Our own Peggy McGuiness has just published an article in the Missouri Law Review on "The Internationalism of Justice Blackmun." When an international scholar thinks of Justice Blackmun a few cases quickly come to mind: Mitsubishi v. Soler, Aerospatiale, Sale, Goldwater, etc. But as McGuiness outlines, his impact on internationalism is far greater than a few odd cases. It also...
Just a day after the U.S. and other Western states expressed concern about the possibility of Sudan chairing the African Union, the AU elected Congo to the chair for a year. (See Julian's post.) The compromise allows Sudan to take the chair next year, which doesn't solve the problem, but at least kicks the can down the road for a...
Canadians voted today in a hotly contested election pitting a resurgent Canadian Conservative Party against a defensive but still dominant Liberal Party. Early results show the Conservatives winning a plurality of the seats. They still may not have enough seats, however, to form a government.I don't have a dog in this race, but I am struck that one of the...
