I have admired Mark Tushnet's work since I was a law student, so I was very disappointed to read his critique of the now-notorious letter the University of Chicago sent to first-year students about "safe spaces" and "trigger warnings." Here is the bit that got Tushnet so riled up: Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called...
[Amina Adanan is a PhD candidate at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, School of Law, NUI Galway.] In common law and civil law legal systems it is the responsibility of the public prosecutor to determine whether the prosecution of an international crime is pursued. The level of this discretionary power and the considerations to be taken into account in making the...
Here’s your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Nigeria would let Boko Haram choose a non-profit organization as an intermediary in any talks on the release of about 200 schoolgirls kidnapped from the northeastern village of Chibok in 2014, President Muhammadu Buhari said on Sunday. A landmine planted by Islamist group Boko Haram...
Buzzfeed's Chris Hamby is out today with the first installment of a promised four-part investigative report into the system of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). Like all such reports, it needs a spectacular headline and summary to draw clicks, and this one's a doozy: The Court That Rules the World A parallel legal universe, open only to corporations and largely invisible to everyone...
Defense One points to a news story in the Baghdad Post that the Iraqi Security Forces may be preparing to deploy a ground-combat robot: Loosely dubbed Alrobot — Arabic for robot — it has four cameras, an automatic machine gun, and a launcher for Russian-made Katyusha rockets, and can be operated by laptop and radio link from a kilometer away, the...
As regular readers know, although I'm opposed to academic BDS, I fully support its economic incarnation. Which is why I find stories like this both depressing and infuriating: “I have no problem with Jewish people or any other religion or different beliefs. But for personal reasons, you can’t ask me to shake the hand of anyone from this state, especially in front...
Here’s your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa A military court in the Democratic Republic of Congo has begun the trial of 215 members of an armed group accused of killing hundreds of civilians in and around Beni town in the country’s northeast. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and counterparts from eight...
[Dr Myriam Feinberg is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions, University of Haifa. The topic addressed in this blog post is based on her monograph Sovereignty in the Age of Global Terrorism – The Role of International Organisations published by Brill/Martinus Nijhoff in May 2016.] The attacks of 9/11 brought terrorism to the international stage. They...
[Jenny Poon is a Doctoral Candidate at the Faculty of Law of Western University, Canada and a Barrister & Solicitor in Ontario, Canada. The topic addressed in this post is based on a paper entitled State Discretion on Asylum Claims Procedures: Violation or Adherence to Non-Refoulement? All websites were accessed on 22 July 2016. The author would like to thank...
Here’s your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa At least 64 people have been killed in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in an attack carried out by suspected rebels. Nigerian militant group Boko Haram has published a video apparently showing recent footage of dozens of school girls kidnapped two years ago, and...
[John Coyle is an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law.] On June 14, 2016, the Islamic Republic of Iran initiated proceedings against the United States before the International Court of Justice (“ICJ”), alleging that the United States had violated the 1955 Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations, and Consular Rights (“Treaty”) between the two nations. Iran claimed,...
[Andrea Bowdren (LLM (LSE), BCL International (NUI)) is a trainee solicitor at Arthur Cox in Dublin, Ireland. All views are the author's own.] The trial of Ahmed Al Faqi Al Mahdi before the International Criminal Court represents a series of firsts for international law and justice. Al Mahdi is the first individual from Mali brought before the International Criminal Court, the first...
