Anti-government protests (which forced the cancellation of last year's event) occurred at the start of the Bahrain F1 Grand Prix. The US Congress has communicated its intent to repatriate Canadian Guantanamo detainee, Omar Khadr, according to the NY Times. Abu Qatada has appealed the European Court of Human Rights' decision to allow his deportation to Yemen, but the UK Government claims that...
In case anyone finds it useful, over at Lawfare I have posted up links all in one place to the leading speeches by the US government’s senior national security lawyers on targeted killing, hypothetical drone programs, covert action, and related national security law issues - Harold Koh (DOS), Jeh Johnson (DOD), Eric Holder (DOJ), Stephen Preston (CIA) – and one by non-lawyer but...
UN is examining claims that China broke sanctions against North Korea. South Sudan has become the International Monetary Fund's 188th member. Sudan has threatened war against South Sudan. Spain wants the EU to file a World Trade Organization (WTO) complaint against Argentina for nationalizing 51% of Spain's Repsol's stake in oil company YPF. The US has condemned the nationalization. Colombia has sent a letter to...
I had the pleasure of attending a terrific conference at Duke this past weekend, hosted by the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security. My panel addressed perennial questions about whether the courts should defer to the executive on questions of national security (on which more than you want here), but there were terrific sessions on, among other things, lessons...
It’s always fun to find new ways to apply the Coase Theorem, particularly in situations of international relations and law. So, we’ve seen it raised as a way of talking about bribing Libyan generals not to fight, how to avoid war over conflicting economic claims in the South China Sea, and lots of other situations. There’s something useful about seeing...
If last week's post about ASIL's 2nd Annual Research Forum at the University of Georgia Law School on October 20-21 was too short notice, don't despair. We have been informed that the deadline has been extended until Monday, April 23. The Research Forum, a Society initiative introduced in 2011, aims to provide a setting for the presentation and focused discussion of...
An Italian kidnapped by al-Qaeda insurgents in Algeria and held for 14 months has been freed in northern Mali. Denmark has established a Commission of Inquiry into its role in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. EJIL has an in-depth post about it here. The Arab League has urged Syria to implement the ceasefire plan after being briefed by Kofi Annan. The definition of piracy...
The answers to my questions last week were no further away than the latest copy of the AJIL and an important article by Emilie Hafner-Burton, David Victor, and Yonatan Lupu on Political Science Research and International Law: The State of the Field. This is a must-read for anyone interested in IR/IL, past and future. As for the "war on paradigms", it has...
Michigan Law Review is out with its Annual Survey of Books in the law, and while the self-promotion is awkward at the least, it feels a bit more in the interest of full disclosure (given what I’ve blogged about here in the past) to note that the issue includes my review of Ben Wittes’ latest book, Detention and Denial. A...
The US-backed Korean-American Jim Yong Kim was named the next president of the World Bank, in a move that drew criticism about the purported dominance of the post by the United States. The Philippines will take its dispute with China in the South China Sea to the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS). Meanwhile, Tokyo's governor wants to use public fund to purchase...
Daniel Klaidman, the journalist whose June 2012 book "Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency" looks to be a must-read, has sent in a guest post to Lawfare discussing how the Stephen Preston speech came about and a bit of the inside maneuvering around the succession of speeches by Eric Holder, Harold Koh,...
Dean Paul Schiff Berman has a new book entitled Global Legal Pluralism (Cambridge University Press 2012) that I heartily recommend to our readers. Here's the abstract: We live in a world of legal pluralism, where a single act or actor is potentially regulated by multiple legal or quasi-legal regimes imposed by state, substate, transnational, supranational, and nonstate communities. Navigating these...
