A few weeks ago, a regular reader asked why we don't do more with private international law/conflicts of law matters here at Opinio Juris. I'm not sure I had a good answer. Certainly, those who follow these topics already have some resources to turn to, most notably the European-based Conflicts of Law.Net blog. But these are important topics, and those who follow international...
Here is the official call for papers for the 2010 ASIL Lieber Society Military Prize essay. To enter a paper, you do not have to be a member of ASIL, but you do have to be a member of your "nation's regular or reserve armed forces." This particular essay contest, in other words, is for military personnel. The prize is...
I spent last week on a beach in Florida (because everyone from Philly vacations in Florida in August). I had left all my work at home, and was settling into a crime novel, David Hewson's The Sacred Cut, about a serial killer loose in my favorite city--Rome. It was a light read, so I was willing to go along with...
The ever useful and interesting Crimes of War Project website has posted a useful background web article on the debate in the General Assembly over the scope and status of 'responsibility to protect' (R2P). I've blogged at OJ about this before, citing to an Economist article summarizing the debate and some other things. The COW report, by Katherine Iliopoulos, can...
I am blogger-lite this week, with apologies to all, but ...
Last week I wrote a post suggesting that the federal "cash for clunkers" program did not violate the WTO subsidies program because it did not have the de facto or de jure effect of discriminating against foreign imports. But what about the broader Obama stimulus program? Does that pass WTO muster? This article from Bloomberg published last week...
Although this is pretty far from my usual focus, I've been interested to see the August D.C. doldrums filled in part with an interesting emerging discussion of what happens next with the U.S. and the International Criminal Court (ICC). Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed her "great regret" in Kenya last week that the United States hadn't yet ratified the...
I have been meaning to post about Melbourne Law School, my new academic home. I imagine many of our readers will be familiar with our remarkable contingent of international law faculty: James Hathaway (our Dean), Gerry Simpson, Anne Orford, Diane Otto, Tim McCormack, and more than a dozen others. What readers might not know is that Melbourne is in the...
I just learned the sad news of the passing of Professor John Barton of my alma mater, Stanford Law School. The Stanford Law press release can be found here. John was a dedicated and learned scholar, a wonderful mentor and a delightful man to be around. He will be greatly missed. I was fortunate to get to know John during my first year...
Eugene Volokh has this post on the merits of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. He's against it. Volokh highlights several operative provisions that he finds objectionable on policy grounds, and argues that we shouldn't sign on to treaties that we don't intend to comply with. What's striking about the post is the exceptionalist premise that US isolation...
I want to thank the folks at OJ for having me over the past two weeks. You have all made me feel at home and I've enjoyed it very much. I've especially appreciated the opportunity to discuss legal issues stemming from upheaval in the African Great Lakes region. Some of these issues have been on my mind...
Until his arrest by the Rwandan military earlier this year, General Laurent Nkunda, a Congolese Tutsi and former chairman of the Congolese Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (CNDP), had been considered one of the key destabilizing figures in eastern Congo. Back in 2004, Nkunda and his rebel troops took control of the South Kivu town of Bukavu,...
