In association with the International Commission of Jurists

September 2015

30 Sep

[Matt Brown is a current LLM student at Leiden University, studying Public International Law, with a specific interest in international criminal law, transitional justice and cultural heritage law. He tweets about these and other topics @_mattbrown.] The International Criminal Court concerns itself with the ‘most serious crimes of concern to the international community.’ Often we understand this term to reflect examples...

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28 Sep

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa At least 21 people were killed in the capital of Central African Republic on Saturday and around 100 others were wounded as Muslims attacked a mainly Christian neighborhood, senior hospital officials and a government spokesman said.. A Norwegian-flagged ship that was held in Kenya for more than a...

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27 Sep

Announcements Queen's University Belfast has announced a position for a Lecturer in Human Rights Law. The closing date on applications is 5 October 2015. See the vacancy here. Calls for Papers/Abstracts: The American Society of International Law's Lieber Society Announces a call for papers for the 2016 Richard R. Baxter Military Writing Prize. Persons submitting papers need not be ASIL members and can be...

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26 Sep

States whose nationals died in the attack on MH17 were understandably upset when Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution that would have created an ad hoc tribunal to prosecute those responsible for the attack. Their idea to create a treaty-based court, however, is simply not helpful: Australia’s foreign minister, Julie Bishop, will meet with her counterparts from Belgium, Malaysia, the Netherlands and Ukraine on...

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25 Sep

Yes, the "unwilling or unable" test marches on. The latest step forward is a Just Security blog post by Kate Martin, the Director of the Center for National Security Studies, that cites absolutely nothing in defense of the test other than another scholar who cites almost nothing in defense of the test. Here is what Martin says in the context of the UK's recent drone strikes...

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24 Sep

[Dr. Başak Çalı is Director for the Center of Global Public Law and Associate Professor of International Law at Koç University, Turkey. She the secretary general of the European Society of International Law. The following is written in her personal capacity.] It is a rare event for international lawyers to overwhelmingly agree on the content, scope and interpretation of international law....

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23 Sep

Thanks to Kevin Govern and Duncan Hollis for providing the two previous posts (here and here) in this book symposium on Cyber War: Law and Ethics for Virtual Conflicts. In my post, I want to explore the difficulties arising from causal investigations in cyber attacks. Everyone knows that the increasing threat of cyber attacks will place immense pressure on the operational capacities for...

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22 Sep

The ICC has always had a legitimacy problem in Uganda. In particular, as Mark Kersten ably explained earlier this year, the Court is widely viewed by Ugandans as partial to Museveni, despite the fact that the OTP is supposedly investigating both the government and the LRA: From the outset, the ICC showcased a bias towards the Government of Yoweri Museveni. In 2004 and following months...

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