Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

This week Opinio Juris is hosting a discussion on Laura Dickinson’s book Outsourcing War and Peace: Preserving Public Values in a World of Privatized Foreign Affairs. Professor Dickinson is the Oswald Symister Colclough Research Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School in Washington DC. Her book addresses issues related to the increasing privatization of foreign policy functions of government. Here is the abstract: Over the past decade, states and international organizations have shifted a surprising range of foreign policy functions to private contractors. But who is accountable...

[Michael Birnhack is a Professor of Law at Tel Aviv University] Anupam Chander’s new book, The Electronic Silk Road is an admirable scholarly achievement. Chander draws our—the global community of cyberspace users—attention to the increasing globalization of information-based services. He discusses the pros and cons of what he calls cybertrade or Trade 2.0, or more specifically, net-work, with much clarity, drawing on a wide array of examples, ranging from North to South. The book provides a rich description and timely observations, as well as a sound and coherent set of...

The Council on Foreign Relations and Opinio Juris are pleased to announce a book discussion with Derek Chollet and James Goldgeier on their recent book, America Between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11. Here is a brief description of the book: America Between the Wars shows that America did not change in one day. The tragedy of 9/11 and its aftermath had its origins twelve years earlier, when the world really did shift in ways that were incomprehensible at the time. Strangely, the date mirrors a much happier moment: it...

[Eric Posner is Kirkland & Ellis Professor of Law and Aaron Director Research Scholar at the University of Chicago] I’m going to focus on a narrow issue, one that Katerina takes up in the last chapter of her impressive book, and that is the relationship between policy diffusion (the topic of her book) and international law (which is something of an afterthought), and specifically the debate as to why states comply with international law. I can see a few possibilities. First, there is no relationship between the argument in her...

Constitution, federal statutes, and treaties (p. 292 n. 49), but that position is not defended. I pick out the Take Care issue because it has implications for other questions discussed in the book. The precise mix of international law rules and comity in the areas of foreign state immunity and foreign official immunity is uncertain. But as Curt correctly notes, “it is generally understood that customary international law provides governments and officials with some immunity from suit” (p. 227). The International Court of Justice has held that sitting heads of...

[Alejandro Chehtman is a Professor of Law at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (Argentina) and Fellow at the Argentine National Research Council (CONICET).] In Lawmaking under pressure Giovanni Mantilla has written an indispensable book for anyone interested in, or working on the laws of armed conflict, international legal history, and the theory of international relations (IR). The book uncovers and critically examines the process through which the international community came to regulate internal (non-international) armed conflicts. It is not common to find a book so relevant so these many different audiences,...

...a point the book explores in considerable depth. But many of these deficits arise not only in informal organizations, but also in treaty-based forums like the European Union. Moreover, as I have observed in my own work, where we do see obvious democratic deficits, informal organizations are much more likely and capable of undertaking change than their hard law counterparts—from the G-20s usurpation of the G-7’s leadership role, to the formal inclusion of regional consultative bodies in the FSB’s new and revised 2012 Charter. Thus one of the book’s lessons,...

I want to thank Tom for participating in this discussion; I have re-read the book as we have had this discussion, and it has provided great illumination on what the text is about. I have learned a great deal from the discussion and from the book. I apologize for coming late with this entry; it was hard to get to this until the weekend, and I wanted to be certain I had fully re-read the book – Tom, just when you thought the discussion was over … a late and...

This week, we have the pleasure of hosting an exciting discussion on Jennifer Trahan’s award-winning book, Existing Legal Limits to Security Council Veto Power in the Face of Atrocity Crimes, published by Cambridge University Press. From the Publisher: In this book, the author outlines three independent bases for the existence of legal limits to the veto by UN Security Council permanent members while atrocity crimes are occurring. The provisions of the UN Charter creating the veto cannot override the UN’s ‘Purposes and Principles’, nor jus cogens (peremptory norms of international...

discussion and reception for the book tomorrow, December 1, and I take it that through some email list glitches, numbers of people (including me) did not get alerted. Although, alas, I have to teach last week of classes during the event tomorrow, I don’t think Vicki would mind my announcing the event – there’s a rsvp email at the bottom: Tuesday, December 1, starting at 3:30, on the 12th floor of the Gewirz center on the Georgetown Law campus, 600 New Jersey Ave., N.W., Washington D.C. The book party will...

should have had article 5 tribunals to establish their non-POW status), but only as a static quantity that has to be navigated. In other words, the book looks at international law as an obstacle rather than as a tool. For Wittes, IL is something that can’t be ignored (this book, like others from the center and center right, has David Addington in its cross hairs). But there’s not even a suggestion that an appropriate parallel vehicle for addressing the challenge is found in international law. A likely response: well, we...

We are very pleased to introduce Walter Russell Mead to Opinio Juris readers to discuss his most recent book, God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World. Walter Russell Mead is the Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations and one of the country’s leading students of American foreign policy. His book, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), was widely hailed by reviewers, historians, and diplomats as an important...