In association with the International Commission of Jurists

September 2014

16 Sep

[Stephen Tierney is a Professor of Constitutional Theory, University of Edinburgh and Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law.] In the Edinburgh Agreement of 2012 the United Kingdom Government committed itself to respect the outcome of the Scottish independence referendum. This suggests that, in the event of a Yes vote, the transition to independence will be relatively straightforward, as will...

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16 Sep

[Yanying Li is a Ph.D researcher on a legal framework for State insolvency at Leiden University, the Netherlands.] Following Julian’s post of Argentina’s attempt to sue the United States in the International Court of Justice, I write to share with you the latest (exciting) development in the world of sovereign debt restructuring! On September 9, 2014, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution entitled “Towards the establishment of a multilateral legal framework for sovereign debt restructuring processes” (document A/68/L.57/Rev.1), with 124 votes in favour, 11 votes against (including the United States) and 41 abstentions. The draft resolution was prepared by Bolivia on behalf of the Group of 77 and China. The last two paragraphs of the resolution provide as follows:
5. Decides to elaborate and adopt through a process of intergovernmental negotiations, as a matter of priority during its sixty-ninth session, a multilateral legal framework for sovereign debt restructuring processes with a view, inter alia, to increasing the efficiency, stability and predictability of the international financial system and achieving sustained, inclusive and equitable economic growth and sustainable development, in accordance with national circumstances and priorities; 6. Also decides to define the modalities for the intergovernmental negotiations and the adoption of the text of the multilateral legal framework at the main part of its sixty-ninth session, before the end of 2014.
According to the General Assembly’s press release, the U.S. delegate stressed at the meeting “that she could not support a statutory mechanism for sovereign debt restructuring as such a mechanism was likely to create economic uncertainty.”  Moreover, she expressed the view that “[i]n the past, market-oriented approaches had been preferred and work was ongoing in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and elsewhere.” In response to that, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Argentina stated that “[s]overeign debt held development back and the establishment of a better system could improve global economic security.” The Minister continued that “[t]he clear majority agreed it was time to establish a legal framework for restructuring that respected creditors while allowing debtors to emerge from debt safely. The profits currently made by vulture funds were scandalous and were funnelled into campaigning and lobbying to prevent changes to the situation.” Needless to say, this is a big step forward in terms of the development of international law on sovereign debt restructuring.
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15 Sep

The concern over ISIL foreign fighters had ramped up even before President Obama announced that he will preside over a September 24th UN Security Council Meeting on the subject. No surprise that politicians are jumping on the bandwagon. Ted Cruz introduced legislation last week in the Senate that would purport to terminate the citizenship of those associated with terrorist organizations....

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15 Sep

[David Scheffer is the Mayer Brown/Robert A. Helman Professor of Law and Director of the Center for International Human Rights at Northwestern University School of Law.] If the Scottish people vote in the majority on September 18th to become an independent nation, then a host of legal issues will descend immediately upon Holyrood, where the Scottish Parliament sits in Edinburgh, and...

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15 Sep

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa A boat filled with up to 250 African migrants heading for Europe has sunk off the Libyan coast and many passengers have died, a spokesman for the Libyan navy has said.  Middle East and Northern Africa French President Francois Hollande has called for a global response to counter the Islamic State...

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14 Sep

[Leila Nadya Sadat is the Henry H. Oberschelp Professor of Law and Israel Treiman Faculty Fellow at Washington University School of Law and the Director of the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute. Douglas J. Pivnichny is the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute Fellow at Washington University School of Law and a masters candidate in International Law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.] Last month, the International Law Commission moved the topic of crimes against humanity from its long-term to its active agenda and appointed Professor Sean D. Murphy as Special Rapporteur. This was a crucial step in filling a normative gap that has persisted despite the development of international criminal law during the past decades:  the absence of a comprehensive global treaty on crimes against humanity. Although this post will not rehearse the reasons a treaty is needed, an eloquent case for a treaty can be found in an important 1994 article by Cherif Bassiouni. Professor Murphy’s charge is to prepare a First Report, which will begin the process of proposing Draft Articles for Commission’s approval. The Commission first included the topic of crimes against humanity on its Long-Term Programme of Work in 2013 on the basis of a report prepared by Professor Murphy.  This report identified four key elements a new convention should have: a definition adopting Article 7 of the Rome Statute; an obligation to criminalize crimes against humanity; robust inter-state cooperation procedures; and a clear obligation to prosecute or extradite offenders (para. 8). The report also emphasized how a new treaty would complement the Rome Statute (paras. 9-13). The Crimes Against Humanity Intiative
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14 Sep

Events The Raoul Wallenberg Legacy of Leadership event will take place in New York on September 18th at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law. The event will include a panel discussion about the responsibility to prevent genocide and mass atrocities as well as keynote addresses by Jan Eliasson, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Irwin Cotler, former Canadian Minister of Justice, and...

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14 Sep

[Eliav Lieblich is an Assistant Professor at the Radzyner Law School, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC)] Back in January, I wrote a guest post  about prize proceedings initiated by the Government of Israel against the Finnish vessel Estelle, intercepted by the Israeli navy while attempting to breach the Gaza blockade in late 2012. As I wrote back then, the proceedings were held before the District Court of Haifa, sitting in its capacity as the Admiralty Court of Israel. The State based its application to condemn the vessel on old pieces of British legislation, which granted prize jurisdiction to courts in Mandatory Palestine (the British Naval Prize Act of 1864 and the British Prize Act of 1939). As I noted back in January, prize powers have never been exercised by Israel before. Moreover, prize proceedings are extremely rare globally. Indeed, since customary prize law allows belligerents to capture and condemn private vessels – both “enemy” and, in some cases, “neutral” – prize law seems at odds with contemporary human rights norms protecting private property. In this context, my January post raised several questions for the Haifa Court. Among these, I’ve questioned the continuous relevance of prize law in the human rights era, and whether Israeli administrative law will affect the Court’s understanding of prize law. Well, the wait is over: on August 31, the Court (Judge Ron Sokol), has rendered a 33-page decision in The State of Israel v. The Vessel Estelle. I will spare the readers from detailing the Court’s finding of jurisdiction, although doubtless interesting to legal historians: the bottom line is that it has found itself to have inherited the jurisdiction from the former British prize courts in Palestine. But the Court had some interesting things to say in terms of substantive prize law.
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13 Sep

There's been much discussion in the blogosphere about the University of Illinois' decision to "un-hire" (read: fire) a Palestinian-American scholar who resigned a tenured position at Virginia Tech to join its faculty, a decision motivated by a series of anti-Zionist (but not anti-Semitic) tweets that made the University's wealthy donors uncomfortable. But the rightful revulsion at Illinois' decision (more than 5,000...

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13 Sep

This week on Opinio Juris, summer vacation is officially over. We hope that all of our readers in the Northern Hemisphere enjoyed a great break - hopefully not quite like the Russian soldiers in Ukraine that Jens commented on. For those of us in the Southern Hemisphere: it's almost summer! Kevin followed up on an earlier post arguing that despite the recent release of...

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