Note: although I serve as Special Adviser to the ICC Prosecutor on War Crimes, I was not involved in the Al Hassan case. The Trial Chamber released its 822-page (!) judgment in the Al Hassan case yesterday. Al Hassan was convicted of a number of serious crimes, including the crime against humanity of torture and the war crimes of torture and...
Note: I serve as Special Adviser to the ICC Prosecutor on War Crimes. Twitter is awash with commentary about tweets issued by the Registry that explain the difference between arrest warrants and summonses. Many people have speculated that perhaps the tweets are related to the Palestine situation. Any such speculation is unwarranted, as the tweets are part of a long-scheduled series...
[Full disclosure: I serve as the Prosecutor's Special Adviser on War Crimes.] In this post I want to provide an overview of the Rome Statute's principle of complementarity. The principle has been consistently misrepresented by politicians and journalists since word first got out that the Prosecutor, Karim Khan KC, intended to seek arrest warrants in the Palestine situation not only for...
In a recent article in International Law Studies, I examined two competing positions concerning how sovereignty functions in cyberspace. The first position, "pure" sovereignty, holds that any low-intensity cyber operation that involves non-consensually penetrating a computer system located on another State’s territory violates the targeted State’s sovereignty. By contrast, the second position, "relative" sovereignty, rejects the idea that the mere...
[I serve as Special Adviser to the ICC Prosecutor on War Crimes. This post is written solely in my academic capacity.] Introduction A few weeks ago, I wrote a long response to an Open Letter calling on the Assembly of States Parties to interfere in the Prosecutor's investigation into the situation in Palestine. Opinio Juris has now published a new attack on...
[As stated on the Contributors page and in my full profile, I serve as Special Adviser to the ICC Prosecutor on War Crimes. This post is written in my personal academic capacity.] Introduction A group of scholars and practitioners have published an open letter to the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) expressing their "grave concern over the integrity of the Office of...
The UN Team of Experts on the Rule of Law and Sexual Violence in Conflict is looking to hire four interns: In the context of an ongoing project, the UN Team of Experts is currently seeking assistance to prepare and publish seven research papers on international criminal law and sexual violence in conflict. The research topics include: Understanding CRSV casebuilding: examining prosecution...
Introduction Of all the questions I've been asked concerning the latest round of violence in the Israel/Palestine situation, the most common is whether Israel's actions in Gaza amount to the war crime of collective punishment. Because of my role as a Special Advisor to the ICC Prosecutor, it would be inappropriate for me to address that question; there is, of course,...
The ICC Prosecutor, Karim Khan, is in New York this week for the annual meeting of the General Assembly. He has met with a variety of leaders from states in the Global South, including the President of Timor Leste, the Prime Minister of Cook Islands, the Vice-President of Uganda, the Foreign Minister of Chile, and the President of Sierra Leone....
I had hoped not to write any more posts about the international vs. internationalized tribunal debate. I have written extensively on the topic already, and the prospects for an international tribunal grow dimmer with each passing day. Alas, Patryk Labuda's most recent entry on the topic at Just Security requires a response: although the arguments are the same unpersuasive ones...
Evropeyska Pravda is reporting that, although clearly not its first choice, Ukraine would be willing to accept an internationalized tribunal for the crime of aggression as long as it is based in another state's judicial system. Here are the relevant paragraphs, quoting the Deputy Head of the Office of the President: Ukraine decided on these concessions, Andriy Smirnov admitted for the...
I am delighted to announce that this week Opinio Juris will be hosting a symposium on Gerry Simpson's wonderful new book "The Sentimental Life of International Law." Here is Oxford University Press's description: The Sentimental Life of International Law is about our age-old longing for a decent international society and the ways of seeing, being, and speaking that might help us achieve...