Amidst all the faux outrage over a Muslim Congresswoman's (admittedly problematic) tweet -- much of it coming from evangelicals who think all Jews will burn in Hell after the rapture and right-wingers who say nothing about blatantly anti-Semitic attacks on George Soros or Israel's support for the deeply anti-Semitic Prime Minister of Hungary -- here is your daily reminder of the...
It's been a while since I've welcomed a new participant in the blogosphere -- a sign that that the "market" for new blogs in international law is slowing down. But here is a happy exception, courtesy of James Gathii, one of the editors (the other two are Olabisi D. Akinkugbe and Nthope Mapefane): I am pleased to announce the launch today of AfronomicsLaw, a...
[Sam Zarifi is the Secretary General of the International Commission of Jurists.] Prof Harold Hongju Koh in his new book, Trump vs. International Law, has issued an explicit call to arms to American lawyers and bureaucrats to resist Donald Trump’s egregious attempts at dismantling the ‘postwar system of global governance’ and replacing it with ‘a far nastier, more brutish world, less respectful...
[Mark Wu is the Henry L. Stimson Professor at Harvard Law School.] A trade war rages between the U.S. and China. Trade conflagrations upend once-dependable trade relationships between the U.S. and its allies. On the surface, it may appear that faith in the utility of transnational legal process has collapsed in the domain of international trade. But if one examines beyond...
A couple of days ago, the OTP finally announced what we all expected: that it would not reconsider its refusal to open a formal investigation into Israel's attack on the MV Mavi Marmara. Dov Jacobs has already offered some thoughts on the lengthy document the OTP has filed with the Court explaining its reasoning -- what the OTP nicely calls...
I have just posted on SSRN a draft of a (very) long article entitled "Specially-Affected States and the Formation of Custom." It represents my first real foray into both "classic" public international law and postcolonial critique. Here is the abstract: Although the US has consistently relied on the ICJ’s doctrine of specially-affected states to claim that it and other powerful states...
Over the next three days we will be featuring an online discussion of my SOAS colleague and TAU law professor Aeyal Gross's new book for Cambridge University Press, The Writing on the Wall: Rethinking the International Law of Occupation (CUP, 2017). The book develops ideas that Aeyal discussed on Opinio Juris -- in a symposium on the functional approach to occupation -- more...
I am delighted to release the call for papers for a workshop I am organising with Ingo Venzke, my fantastic colleague at the Amsterdam Center for International Law. The workshop is entitled "Contingency in the Course of International Law: How International Law Could Have Been" and will feature an opening address by Fleur Johns (UNSW) and a closing address by Sam Moyn...
Saudi-owned TV news network Al Arabiya aired a video simulation yesterday that shows a Saudi Arabian fighter shooting an air-to-air missile at a Qatari Airways plane. Here is the video: That's bad enough -- but what is truly horrifying is the accompany voiceover, which intones the following: International law permits states to shoot down any aircraft that violates a state’s airspace, classing...
When last we met William Bradford, he had just published an article in the National Security Law Journal (NSLJ) accusing centrist national-security-law professors of treason and advocating prosecuting them for providing material support to terrorists. After many scholars, including me, pointed out that the article was both absurd and deeply offensive, the NSLJ repudiated the article. (Alas, the journal has since scrubbed the...
[Daniel Bodansky is Foundation Professor of Law at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University.] As usual, in his announcement yesterday about the Paris Agreement, President Trump spoke loudly but carried a small stick. Duncan laid out the options for withdrawal in his post earlier this week. Rather than choosing the “nuclear option” of withdrawing from the UN Framework...
President Trump has indicated that he will announce a decision on future U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement later today at 3 pm. Reports suggest that he has already made up his mind to withdraw. That decision is likely to receive extensive attention (not to mention criticism) on the merits. And certainly that attention is warranted. But I believe an...