I read with great interest the letter from President Ahmadinejad to the American people. I was struck by two things in the letter: the beginning sentence which beckons Allah to bestow on humanity the "perfect human being"--an apparent reference to “Twelfth Imam" and the Islamic apocalyptic vision. This call echoes a similar call in September in his...
The USG has settled a claim brought against it by Brandon Mayfield relating to his wrongful detention as a suspected terrorist. It's paying out $2 million, but more interestingly the settlement also involved a formal apology, as described in today's NYT:“The United States of America apologizes to Mr. Brandon Mayfield and his family for the suffering caused” by his...
One of the most interesting issues in the oral argument yesterday in Massachusetts v. EPA is how the standing doctrine may force the Court to make a threshold assessment as to whether global warming is injurious. Justice Kennedy put it succinctly when he questioned the "reassuring statement that we need not decide about global warming in this case." ...
The transcript in the global warming case of Massachusetts v. EPA (available here) raises interesting issues regarding foreign relations and treaty negotiations. But at bottom the case is about core principles of administrative law relating to agency authority and obligation to act pursuant to congressional mandate. The key reason the EPA decided to continue scientific investigations and decline...
Looking for a holiday gift that is bound to be unforgettable? Maybe you should try individualized “carbon offsets,” purchasing pieces of “green projects” (such as forest reclamation in Ecuador or wind farms in Oregon) in an amount that corresponds to your own carbon emissions. While corporations have been purchasing carbon-offsets for years, social entrepreneurs (e.g., Carbonfund, Climate Care,...
The U.S. government announced a tough new set of economic sanctions on North Korea today, banning luxury goods believed to be favored by Kim Il Jung and his personal supporters. According to the AP, the banned goods include: "ipods, cognac, Rolex watches, cigarettes, artwork, expensive cars, Harley Davidson motorcycles or even personal watercraft, such as Jet Skis." These new...
I’m fascinated by the recent story that volcanic activity has produced an actual, new island in the South Pacific near Tonga. The sailors who claim to be the first to have “discovered” this new land mass have pretty amazing photos of the island and the “pumice raft” that accompanied its creation. Scientists are having a field day assessing...
Mary Dudziak has started up a new legal history blog. Mary has done terrific work of interest to those of us in foreign relations law, especially her book situating the civil rights movement in the international context of the Cold War. Welcome to the blogosphere! ...
This semester I took Peter Spiro's suggestion to heart and assigned my international law students to write a Wikipedia entry as a small part of their class requirements. The only limits I put on the students was to pick a topic that was relevant to international law and that was not currently included in Wikipedia (or at most was...
Some prominent coverage in the last couple of days of Nicaragua's recent enactment of a total prohibition on abortion - see front page stories here and here in the Boston Globe and Washington Post. The reports suggest plans to take the law to the Inter-American Commission and the UN Human Rights Council. The WaPo story also mentions protests...
Here’s one international law development that did not appear in the headlines (are you surprised?). On October 25, 2006, the International Chamber of Commerce’s (ICC) Commission on Banking Practice and Technique (Banking Commission) voted unanimously to approve the UCP (Uniform Customs and Practices) 600, punctuating a 3 ½ year effort to revise the universally followed “rules of the road”...
When I am reviewing developments regarding international law to report here on Opinio Juris, I regularly have to separate the wheat from the chaff. For every case I report about an interesting international law development there are a dozen others that I entertain. Those dog cases are surprisingly interesting and sometimes humorous. They provide a unique insight...
