Matters in Syria are going from bad to worse. I am sure this won't do any harm, but it is not going to help either. It will simply give the illusion that the international community is dong something about Syria. Syrian officials suspected of committing or ordering crimes against humanity should face prosecution in the International Criminal Court (ICC), the United...
I found this interview in Der Spiegel of Fritz Vahrenholt, a German renewable energy executive and a former Social Democratic Party figure fascinating since he doesn't fit the profile of most climate change skeptics. Varenholt has a new book coming out, "Die Kalte Sonne" (The Cold Sun), rejecting the IPCC's global warming models and climate change predictions. I don't know what to make...
Should human rights folks still defend him? Spain’s Supreme Court on Thursday convicted the crusading human rights judge Baltasar Garzón of illegally ordering wiretapping in a corruption case and suspended him from the courts for 11 years. I don't know much about the background of this case. It appears to be a very serious conviction, unrelated to his more celebrated investigation of Franco-era...
If you happen to be around Charlottesville tomorrow, Friday, February 10, you might want to come over to a symposium on how to resolve conflicting legal norms in US and foreign courts: The conference – organized by the student-run Virginia Journal of International Law and the John Bassett Moore Society of International Law – will explore how to resolve conflicting legal norms...
My brilliant St. John's colleague Adam Zimmerman recently posted his thoughts on global trends in the area of mass settlements at Prawfsblawg. He argues that American-style "bottom up" approaches to class actions has been converging with the "top down" approach prevalent in Europe and other jurisdictions. Questions about how to compensate large groups of claimants (e.g., victims of the BP...
Although I've blogged with Opinio Juris for more than six years now, I would never describe myself as a frequent blogger; at my best, I'll give you 2 posts a week, more often just one. Of late, however, my blogging has been even more sporadic. Here's the reason: After more than two years of work, of which the last 3 months were...
Just a note to point you to OJ's Twitter feed, which you can find here. We link to posts on the blog, but there's also added content in the form of pointers to other items that might be of interest to OJ readers. For those of you that haven't taken up the habit, some serious material is floating around the Twitterverse...
I am delighted to announce that Jens Ohlin, Associate Professor of Law at Cornell -- and one of my very favorite international criminal law scholars -- will be guest-blogging with us for the next two weeks. Here is his bio: Professor Ohlin specializes in international law and all aspects of criminal law, including domestic, comparative, and international criminal law....
The cool place for international law this weekend will be Santa Clara Law School, out in Silicon Valley, whose Santa Clara Journal of International Law is hosting a conference on "Emerging Issues in International Humanitarian Law." The eminent IHL scholar Louise Doswald-Beck will be the keynote speaker, and the panels hit on key issues looking into the future - my...
Be careful what you wish for: The leaders at the African Union (AU) summit in Addis Ababa asked the chairperson of the pan-African body to consider moving the case of Sudanese president Omer Hassan al-Bashir before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for an opinion ...
I don't know how credible this report is: WikiLeaks may soon take a page from 1960s-era British pirate radio broadcasters and move operations offshore. Financial backers of embattled WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange are reportedly in the market for a boat that would maintain the watchdog site's servers in international waters to avoid U.S. legal authorities, according to FoxNews.com. I also don't know...
This op-ed from today's NYT reinforces a new orientation towards Mass Atrocity Response Operations (the name of a project founded by Sarah Sewall out of the Kennedy School that is enjoying some traction with the Obama Administration). Drones can be deployed in reconnaissance efforts to detect and document human rights violations. The twist here: it doesn't have to be governments doing the reconnoitering. Drones...
