Weekend Roundup: August 10-16, 2013

This week on Opinio Juris, Kevin welcomed the new international criminal law blog Beyond The Hague to the blogosphere and sparked much debate with his post based on Judge Harhoff’s recent comments about the ICTY Appeals Chamber’s Perisic adoption of the specific-direction requirement and followed-up with a second post on the topic clarifying what the specific-direction requirement entails. Kevin also questioned the latest in the Libya and Saif Gaddafi situation, with Libya’s statement that they aren’t able to surrender him, but they could, in fact, prosecute him.

Kristen pointed to the recently released fifth report from the UN Secretary General on R2P and highlighted several interesting topics that are strangely missing, including discussion about Libya, military intervention or the Security Council, extraterritorial obligations of states, the ICC and new technology. Duncan called our attention to a novel agreement between the US and Germany not to spy on one another and asked wondered how it would work in practice. 

In our Emerging Voices series, Žygimantas Juška spoke about the role of standby counsel based on his experience at the ICTY on the Karadzic Defense Team, Elizabeth Stubbins Bates’s post investigated whether the dissemination of IHL was sufficient in promoting the compliance thereof, a spirited exchange of commentary ensued with John Heieck’s piece controversially suggesting that Russia and China breached their duty to prevent war crimes in Syria, Bharat Malkani pondered whether international law may forbid complicity in the death penalty in light of a recent sentencing in Kenya, and Elizabeth Holland rounded out the week talking about the effect of counterterrorism measures balanced against humanitarianism needs, particularly about access to areas controlled by armed groups.

We also listed events and announcements and we provided you with your daily news wraps, as usual.

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