Weekend Roundup: July 17 – August 2, 2013

This week on Opinio Juris, Kevin continued his discussion of the al-Bahlul amicus brief started last week. He pointed out how the Prosecution had disclaimed JCE before the trial and the military commission was asked not to consider this mode of liability, making its invocation in the amicus brief unacceptable in his opinion. Kevin pointed out that JCE was also rejected in Khadr, and recommended a student note on material support for terrorism and JCE. He also responded to Peter Margulies’ reply and sur-reply over at Lawfare. In a guest post, David Frakt, who was detailed as al-Bahlul’s military defense counsel, pointed out a factual error in the amicus brief.

Our Emerging Voices symposium returned after last week’s break: Leslie Schildt posted about the UN’s Intervention Brigade in the DRC; Frances Nguyen argued that “forced marriage” should be taken out of the “other inhumane acts” box and be recognized as an international crime; and David Benger wrote on the limits of the ICC’s Regulation 55.

Kevin discussed how mainstream US media are focusing only on Wikileaks but ignoring how the NYTimes also published the documents leaked by Bradley Manning. Following Bradley Manning’s conviction for espionage, Kevin corrected a common misperception about the meaning of “bad faith” in the Espionage Act. He also updated us on Libya’s latest admission that it intends not to cooperate with the ICC, and added that Libya’s representative is arguably in violation of the ICC’s Code of Professional Conduct. Kevin will not be updating us anymore on Crossing Lines though.

As always, we listed events and announcements and provided weekday news wraps.

Thank you to our guest posters and have a nice weekend!