Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all our readers! We haven’t written much on this blog over the holiday season but much has happened in the world over the last few weeks with some significance for international law. There has been the release of the US cables by Wikileaks, the governmental crisis in Ivory Coast and (can you believe it!) a third case added to the docket of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (see previous post on ITLOS). We will try to catch up on some of these developments over the coming weeks.

We start the year with a couple of posts by Jean d’Aspremont, Associate Professor of International Law at the Amsterdam Centre for International Law. His first post analyses developments in the current crisis in Ivory Coast regarding who is the government of the country. He considers the significance of these developments for the claims by States that they do not recognise governments and also for the criteria by which international law and international organizations determine who is the government of a State. His second piece, to be posted on Thursday will examine the merits and dangers of legal blogging. EJIL:Talk! has just turned two years old and this is an opportune time to reflect on the value (if any) added by this relatively new form of legal commentary and scholarship. Many thanks to Prof. d’Aspremont. We welcome your thoughts on these issues!