Author: Dimitrios A. Kourtis

[Dimitrios A. Kourtis (@DAKourtis) has a PhD from Aristotle University and is an Adjunct Lecturer at the Hellenic Police Academy] Introduction When Oscar Schachter wrote his iconic article on the ‘invisible college’ in 1977, the scholars and practitioners of international law were, more or less, a bunch of white male academics situated in what we now call the Global North, well-versed in both English and French and the diplomatic niceties...

[Chris Carpenter is a lawyer practicing international arbitration and cross-border litigation. Dimitrios A. Kourtis has a PhD from Aristotle University and is an Adjunct Lecturer at the Hellenic Police Academy]. In his famous Preface to the Critique of Political Economy, Karl Marx described the basic premises of historical materialism by reference to the social production of human existence. Throughout their lives,...

[Dimitrios A. Kourtis has a PhD from Aristotle University and is an Adjunct Lecturer at Hellenic Police Academy.] *TW: This piece contains mention of rape and sexual assault as is depicted in the Netflix Series, The Club (Kulüp). Identities and Narratives Narratives can articulate and perpetuate identities, both individual and collective. They tend to ‘index’ a set of practices, meanings, and symbols...

[Dimitrios A. Kourtis is an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Nicosia and a PhD researcher at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.] In Aesop’s fable The Boy Who Cried Wolf a young shepherd repeatedly tricks nearby villagers into thinking that a wolf is going to attack. When this happens, poetic justice intervenes and the liar who ‘cried wolf’ is not believed....

[Dimitrios Kourtis is a PhD candidate at the Aristotle University and a Research Associate and Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Nicosia. Part I can be found here.] A Collective Right to Existence Westphalian international law is not the best platform to address ‘dealing with the past’ issues (Koskenniemi). The Treaty of Westphalia itself contained a legal oblivion clause (Common Article II)...

[Dimitrios Kourtis is a PhD candidate at the Aristotle University and a Research Associate and Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Nicosia.] Genocide Disparities and Grotian Moments International law has been credited for normalizing, theorizing, and proliferating several systemic injustices, being the ‘culprit and the remedy’(Stahn) of/for an imperialistic order premised on centers and peripheries (Anghie). Although, such statements offer a recapitulation of the use and...

[Dimitrios A. Kourtis, is a PhD candidate Aristotle University, Research Associate, Adjunct Lecturer, University of Nicosia.] Photo credits: Flickr, z@doune, CC Attribution 2.0 Generic. The Armenian Remembrance Day (24 April) marks the commemoration of the tragic events that took place against the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire in 1915. The persecutions, massacres, forceful deportations, and attempts to terrorize the Ottoman Armenian communities have...

[Dimitrios A. Kourtis is a Research Associate and Adjunct at the School of Law of the University of Nicosia. He is completing his PhD at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki studying remedies for victims of genocide in international law.] In a possibly historical movement, The Gambia has launched an application instituting proceedings against Myanmar for acts and omissions targeting the Rohingya allegedly constituent...

[Dimitrios Kourtis is a PhD cand. (Intl Law) at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece and Fellow of the Hellenic Foundation for Research & Innovation.] The purpose of the present post is to briefly discuss certain arguments, based on the 1953 London Agreement and the 1990 Two-Plus-Four Treaty, asserted by Germany on different occasions aiming at the dismissal of the legal validity...

[Dimitrios Kourtis is a PhD cand. at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece and former national expert to the Hellenic Parliamentary Committee on WWII Reparations. This is the second part of a two-part posting. The first part can be found here.]  Having completed a preliminary debate on the FR’s arguments regarding ICCs [Part I], in this second part we examine the legal...

[Dimitrios Kourtis is a PhD cand. at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece and former national expert to the Hellenic Parliamentary Committee on WWII Reparations. This is the first part of a two-part posting.]  As already known, between the Hellenic Republic and Germany there is a long standing and unresolved dispute regarding WWII reparations arising –among others– from individual compensatory claims...