I'm not sure I approve of this trend: Legal claims can now be served via Facebook in Britain, after a landmark ruling in the English High Court. Mr Justice Teare gave the go-ahead for the social networking site to be used in a commercial case where there were difficulties locating one of the parties. Facebook is routinely used to serve claims in Australia...
My previous post mentioned battlefield robot analogs of dogs, cheetahs, pack animals, even humans. Now behold the synchronized nanobot swarm! Here's what national security analyst John Robb had to say about the tactical benefits of a battlefield drone swarm: •It cuts the enemy target off from supply and communications. •It adversely impacts the morale of the target. •It makes a coordinated defense extremely difficult (resource allocation is...
Just a quick note to flag an upcoming symposium at Georgetown Law on Corporate Responsibility under the Alien Tort Statute. It's scheduled for all day March 27, 2012. Here's a quick description of the event: Alien Tort Statute (ATS) litigation has emerged as a focal point in the field of corporate responsibility over the past decade, as foreign plaintiffs alleging violations...
Three quick updates from the "robots and warfare" side of things (largely culled from recent Danger Room posts that caught my eye and I wanted to point out to Opinio Juris readers). I have previously posted about Big Dog, the four-legged beast of burden being developed for use by the U.S. military. DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is now...
Wired's Danger Room has a new piece about law enforcement reform and efforts to stabilize Afghanistan. In particular, it focuses on the work of U.S. and Romanian Special Operations Forces in training Afghan law enforcement. Behind the scenes across the embattled country, a special breed of U.S. soldier is working closely with a new style of Afghan police to enforce law and order in...
Chevron strikes back, and the pro-Ecuador NGOs are not happy about it. WASHINGTON, Feb. 17, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- An "order" issued Thursday from a private investor arbitration panel purporting to freeze a nine-year environmental litigation against Chevron in Ecuador violates international law and will have little or no impact on any potential enforcement action against the oil giant in...
[Vince Vitowsky has asked me to post this announcement from Joe D. Whitley about an upcoming ABA two-day event that might interest readers.] Thursday, March 22, 2012-Friday, March 23, 2012 Capital Hilton 1001 16th Street NW Washington, District of Columbia, United States 20036 As Program Chair and Vice-Chair of the American Bar Association’s Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section, I would like to invite you to...
[The good folks at VJIL asked that I pass the following announcement along] Now in its fifty-second year, the Virginia Journal of International Law is the oldest continuously published, student-edited law journal in the United States. The Journal addresses issues such as international commercial transactions, trade law, international litigation and arbitration, international organizations, international human rights law, and comparative law. The...
Cross-posted at LieberCode. I have written before about the Government’s new position in the Hamdan case. As you will recall, Hamdan was convicted by a military commission for providing material support, sentenced to five and a half years, and released for time served. He is now appealing his conviction. The latest government brief before the D.C. Circuit represents a significant...
Cross-posted at LieberCode. David Rieff has an interesting – and somewhat polemical – article in the latest Foreign Policy. Rieff, you will recall, was an early supporter of intervention, a policy position no doubt influenced by his time spent in Bosnia which culminated in Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West. Although initially hawkish on intervention, and willing to support liberal...
For those of you no longer getting the New York Times in print, this was the lead story in today's paper. (Somewhat weirdly, it shows up on the webpage as a blog post.) Apple's signing on to Fair Labor Association standards and auditing is probably the biggest thing ever to happen in the world of private, rights-related codes of conduct....
