Lately there have been a variety of proposals for cooperative solutions to the Sino-Japanese dispute over the Senkaku Islands, but these proposals seem to suffer from a common problem in that they misapply international law in ways that uniformly disfavor Japan. Today I published a short article with The National Interest to explain this point; it’s available here.
Application materials are now available for the 7th Annual Summer Session in International and Comparative Law, held each summer at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany. The program is a joint offering of the Marquette University Law School, the University of Wisconsin Law School, and the Faculty of Law at Justus Liebig University.
This summer’s program will run from July 18 until August 15. Participants choose two courses from among the following offerings, for a total of four credits : International Economic Law and Business Transactions, Comparative Law, The Law of Armed Conflict, and International Intellectual Property Law. All classes are offered in English.
Each summer, the program attracts participants from Marquette, UW, other American law schools and students from all over the world. This past summer, international students came from Turkey, Portugal, Togo, Ethiopia, Brazil, Vietnam, Italy, Great Britain, Colombia, Germany and Australia, among other countries. Courses are taught by an international faculty. Students learn from each other as much as from faculty, as classroom discussions provide different perspectives that cut across legal systems and cultures.
Additional information and an application form are available on the program’s webpage. Course descriptions are available here. Brief faculty biographies are available here.
Law students considering a study abroad experience should consider these ten reasons for participating in the Summer Session in Giessen, Germany.
Recently I went to Japan as part of a small group of American academics and researchers who are interested in Japanese foreign policy. During the trip, we met with officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Defense, Coast Guard, and Cabinet Secretariat to discuss recent developments in regional security and U.S.-Japan relations. Unsurprisingly, many of the meetings focused on the Senkaku Islands. In this post, I’ll share a few things I learned.
There’s Still “No Dispute”
During the meetings, it quickly became apparent that some media outlets in the West haven’t accurately characterized current Japanese policy. Tokyo’s longstanding position has been that there’s “no dispute” over the Senkakus—the territory belongs to Japan and there is nothing to negotiate or even talk about. This view is of course controversial in China, which also claims the Islands, and the two sides have been engaged in a fairly protracted and tense standoff as a result. To reduce tensions and improve bilateral relations, China and Japan jointly released a four-point statement on November 7th. Sources ranging from The Diplomat to The New York Times reported the statement as evidence of a significant shift in policy: Japan would now recognize the existence of a dispute. On this view, the recent statement was a major concession to China because recognizing a dispute might open the door to bilateral negotiations that could have only one effect—namely, an erosion of Japan’s effective control over the territory.