Tommorrow, Tuesday, Opinio Juris will be hosting a one-day discussion of the new book by Gregory Shaffer and Mark Pollack, When Cooperation Fails: The International Law and Politics of Genetically Modified Foods (Oxford, 2009). Sungjoon Cho and Rebecca Bratspies will join with guest commentary. Stop on by!
Archive | International Law
Yemen, Somalia and ….
By Kenneth Anderson on December 30, 2009 8:20 pm in Counter-Terrorism Policy, International Law, Targeted Killing, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
Following up on Eric’s post re President Obama’s legal authority to target in Yemen … I’m a bit of a broken record on the need for the United States government to articulate a more coherent legal basis for its targeted killing. But it is just more so since the Christmas terrorist attack … the range […]
Executive Order 12425 and the Legal Status of INTERPOL
I’ve received a lot of e-mails in the last week about an Executive Order that President Obama signed recently concerning the legal status of INTERPOL, an international law enforcement group. The order states the following: By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, […]
Do We Need Global Governance To Combat Global Warming?
By Ilya Somin on December 21, 2009 8:11 pm in Climate Change, Collective Action Problems, Global Governance/World Government, International Law
The recent Copenhagen Conference on global warming has led to renewed claims that we cannot effectively combat global warming without “global governance,” or perhaps even a full-fledged world government. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon recently claimed that “A [climate change] deal must include an equitable global governance structure” and many other political leaders and environmental […]
Copenhagen as UN Politics, Not Climate Change Substance
By Kenneth Anderson on December 19, 2009 2:42 pm in Climate Change, Collective Action Problems, International Law, Legal Scholarship
(Updated below … Give me global oligopoly or give me climate death!) I Post-Copenhagen. At bottom, the question is legitimacy. The global New Class met in Copenhagen, convinced, as ever, that it had legitimacy to act as it proposed to act, with the UN as its vehicle, because legitimacy was conferred by “expertise.” The UN […]
Washington Post-ABC Poll re Obama and Climate Change
This Washington Post article sums up pretty well, I think, the results of the ABC-WP opinion poll looking at American views of climate change, science and scientists involved in climatology, Copenhagen, President Obama’s role and that of the administration, and the idea of spending US tax money on the climate change fund. The President’s approval […]
The Climate Change Fund as the New Millennium Development Goals?
By Kenneth Anderson on December 16, 2009 10:13 pm in Climate Change, Collective Action Problems, International Law
Ever since the Copenhagen conference got going, and rapidly turned into an argument over wealth transfer from the rich world to the poor world, it has seemed to me that the exercise is best understood not as an argument about climate change, but instead about internaitonal economic development policy. That is, the basic problem with […]
Should CIA Drone Operators Worry?
By Kenneth Anderson on December 15, 2009 8:59 pm in International Human Rights Law, International Law, Robotics, Targeted Killing, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
If this short report in Newsweek is true, then I think I would worry about legal liability more than before, if I were a CIA officer involved in Predator drone strikes. I would have a much greater level of concern that the administration would not back me up in case of an indictment in a […]
Opinio Juris Copenhagen Postings
Over at Opinio Juris this week, a special lineup of international law experts blogging on Copenhagen – addressing topics ranging from proposals to pay for things to the questions of how whatever emerges is supposed to be enforced. It’s a highly expert group of guest bloggers, often in quite technical terms of either law or […]
“Guilty” Battlefield Robots
By Kenneth Anderson on December 13, 2009 1:25 pm in International Law, Robotics, Targeted Killing, War and Armed Conflict
One of my favorite issues of the New York Times Magazine is its “year in ideas” issue, which comes annually in December. It has a short item this year related to battlefield robotics and law and ethics, by Dara Kerr, “Guilty Robots.” (If you go over the Opinio Juris version of this post, you can pick […]
CFR Report on Responsibility to Protect and Humanitarian Intervention
By Kenneth Anderson on December 11, 2009 1:09 pm in International Human Rights Law, International Law, War and Armed Conflict
President Obama’s Nobel Prize speech yesterday made reference to the moral authority, under the ethics of the just war, for armed humanitarian intervention in some situations. It is a topic that has been debated and discussed as a matter of international law for, well, a long time, but which gained particular urgency following on Bosnia, […]
Targeted Killing, Safe Havens, and the President’s West Point Speech
By Kenneth Anderson on December 8, 2009 11:15 am in Afghanistan, Bush, Counter-Terrorism Policy, International Law, Targeted Killing, Terrorism, War and Armed Conflict, War on Terror
Several times in his West Point speech on Afghanistan and Pakistan, President Obama declared that the US would not permit Al Qaeda or “violent extremists” the use of safe havens. He specifically noted Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. The President unsurprisingly never overtly mentioned Predator or drone missile strikes, or the CIA as the operational agents […]
Israel’s legal rights to Judea and Samaria
Summary of thesis by Canadian lawyer Jacques Gauthier is here. Thoughtful pro/con comments are solicited. Comments should address legal arguments only. Trolls will be suppressed.
Noah Sachs Responds to Anderson re Copenhagen and Collective Action
By Kenneth Anderson on November 30, 2009 10:36 pm in Climate Change, Collective Action Problems, Economy, Environment, International Law, Politicizing Science
Noah Sachs, over at PrafsBlawg, is kind enough to respond to my post on the Copenhagen meetings and collective action problems. It is worth reading the whole thing, but here is a chunk of it. (If you comment, please remember that Professor Sachs is my guest here, so be courteous. And my thanks to him […]
How Are the Copenhagen Talks Supposed to Overcome Collective Action Problems?
By Kenneth Anderson on November 29, 2009 7:42 pm in Climate Change, Collective Action Problems, Environment, International Law
Let me leave aside for the moment all the leaked memos and stuff. I would describe myself as a non-expert on climate issues who has been gradually persuaded to the following positions: Agnostic on the question of warming and human impact on it; Getting less agnostic as I read the emails and leaked materials; Unpersuaded […]