General

This week on Opinio Juris, we teamed up with SHARES Blog for a symposium on the intersection between the law of the sea and the law of responsibility, introduced here by Kristen. A first series of posts dealt with whaling. Natalie Klein contrasted responsibility regimes on whales and sharks. In his comment, Tim Stephens expressed hope that the ICJ will apply...

After reportedly receiving a shipment of Russian missiles, Syrian President Bashar al Assad has said his country will respond to any Israeli attack on its soil. Hundreds of South Korean workers have called during a rally on political leaders in Seoul and Pyongyang to reopen the joint industrial complex in North Korea. Israel is preparing to build more than 1,000 new settler...

[Onur Güven is a researcher at the T.M.C. Asser Institute in The Hague in the areas of arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation law.] The Third Review Conference of States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention, taking place recently in The Hague from April 8-19, was a benchmark occasion to review the operation of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and evaluate related scientific and...

The US launched its first drone strike in Pakistan since May 11th elections in which drone strikes were a major issue of contention, with many expressing dissatisfaction and condemnation of the US program. Near a shipwreck in the South China Sea, tensions are mounting between Philippines, the owner of the ship run aground in 1999 to claim the territory, and China,...

The African Union has accused the ICC of targeting Africans on the basis of race and it called for an end to prosecution of Kenya's president and his deputy over crimes against humanity. Fighting rages on in Syria and more reports of the use of chemical weapons by Syria's President Al-Assad have surfaced as well. The EU has lifted its arms embargo...

The government of Colombia and representatives of the FARC say they have reached a deal on land reform, one of the most contentious items in their protracted peace negotiations. Syria's foreign minister has said that his government will take part in a peace conference in Geneva, terming it a "good opportunity for a political solution" to the civil war in Syria. Though it is still too...

Though I'm as much caught up in the drones debate du jour as anyone here at OJ, there are other pressing matters internationally, and one of them is olive oil.  I've blogged about EVOO adulteration in the past year, but the current contretemps is different.  EU regulators want to require that restaurants serve olive oil at the table in sealed individual servings (I guess a little bit like the little sealed catsup bottles one sometimes sees in restaurants in the USA) rather than the common practice of serving olive oil, for dipping bread or what-have-you, in little decanters.  The concern is partly health and food safety, but it also appears to be a press by agricultural interests to force the use of labeled olive oil, which will presumably have the effect of pushing up consumer awareness (yes, if - big if - what's on the label is true), price (definitely), and quality (maybe, maybe not). So, as reported in the New York Times a few days ago (it appears the rule has been shelved for now):

The measure, which would have required that restaurants serve olive oil in sealed, clearly labeled and nonreusable containers, was meant to guarantee hygiene, according to the European Commission, the union’s executive body, which originally drafted the rules. It said the labeling would ensure the quality and authenticity of olive oils and also offer suppliers an opportunity to promote brand awareness, backers said. And the measure stood to benefit European olive growers, mostly clustered around the Mediterranean, in some of the countries hardest hit by the crisis in the euro zone. Fifteen of the union’s 27 governments supported the rule, including the major producers, Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal. Portugal has had similar measures in place since 2005. But governments in the non-olive-producing north, including Germany, were opposed. Britain abstained.

The pushback was on classic EU terms, I guess we could say: Complaints that this sort of thing should never reach the level of the EU, and that individual states could deal with this kind of thing on their own:

The reaction was severe. Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands condemned the measure, calling it “too bizarre for words” and not at all green. Criticism was particularly harsh in Britain, often the first among critics of the European Union’s reach. The olive oil rule was “exactly the sort of area that the European Union needs to get right out of, in my view,” Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain said Wednesday after a meeting of the bloc’s leaders in Brussels. “It shouldn’t even be on the table,” he said, immediately begging forgiveness for the wordplay.

Food safety is only partly the issue; from the standpoint of Europe's olive oil producers, the much bigger issue is brand recognition and quality assurance - assuring quality and authenticity of olive oils served, which is also to say, raising the price.  But here the EU runs into a quite different problem; restaurants refilling olive oil bottles with oils of lesser quality is the least of the concerns about EVOO authenticity and quality.  I've blogged in the past about the surprising (at least to me as an international business transactions professor) fact of massive adulteration of "extra virgin olive oil" both inside the EU and in the global export market.  It's adulterated with either lower grade olive oil, or else the oil itself is mostly low grade olive oil heated to take out the bad flavors (heated oil is essentially flavorless), or else different plant oils altogether (such as cottonseed oil.  It overwhelmingly happens at the producer, wholesaler, or distributor level, before it leaves the EU; it's pretty clear that the supermarkets, even specialty store chains such as Whole Foods, whether in the US or Europe, have no idea that the product is not what it says.  

This week on Opinio Juris, drone strikes unsurprisingly took center stage. In anticipation of President Obama's speech, Jonathan Horowitz contributed a guest post on their human rights impact and Ken pointed to his new essay arguing the case for drone strikes. Deborah linked to the transcript of the speech here, and pointed to two things she liked about it. Deborah also discussed the White House Fact Sheet on Use...

There is now a set of important new documents regarding its targeted killing operations: (1) a letter from U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to members of Congress describing the decision to target U.S. citizen Anwar al-Aulaqi; (2) a “fact sheet” on procedures for the use of force outside areas of “active hostilities"; and (3) the transcript from the President’s speech to the National Defense University. What can we glean from them about the legality of U.S. drone operations, as opposed to what we learned from the leaked DOJ White Paper some months back? I’m still sorting it out, but for now, here’s one: Whether or not you believe the United States is in a legally recognizable transnational non-international armed conflict with Al Qaeda – a view the United States embraces but the ICRC and most U.S. allies reject – the standards announced in these documents appear intended to keep U.S. targeting operations in line with the international law of self defense.

There's lots of serious international and national security talk to be had today following yesterday's NDU address by President Obama.  But, as part of my continuing quest to track international law in popular culture, I offer readers a bit of Friday afternoon levity: 9 Photos of Jennifer Lawrence that will make you Reassess the Scope of the 1986 Vienna Convention on...

Far too much to say for one blog post, so I’ll start with two things I liked about the speech. First, bravo on the President for giving it. Would that he had done it years ago. Indeed, having heard it, it is even more of a puzzle why it took as long as it did. Still,...