In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Author: Kevin Jon Heller

14 Sep

On July 16, a coalition of 10 civil-society groups released a joint statement concerning the process the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) created to shortlist candidates for the next ICC Prosecutor. The statement praised "the rigorous process undertaken by the Committee and Panel and the criteria considered to evaluate candidates," applauded "the Committee’s initiative" in setting up an (admittedly incomplete)...

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04 Sep

Thirteen years ago, when I was teaching at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, I helped recruit a brilliant young Osgoode Hall PhD student to the law school for a lectureship. He moved halfway around the world, as I had the year before, and we quickly became fast friends based on our similar intellectual interests, mutual enjoyment of running,...

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12 Aug

Our friends at West Point have just launched an ambitious new blog, Articles of War.  The "Authors" page lists seven contributors, all of whom are well-known in IHL, military law, and cognate-discipline circles: Col. Joshua F. Berry, Prof. Geoff Corn, Prof. Ashley Deeks, Lt. Gen. Charles N. Pede, Col. Shane Reeves, Prof. Michael N. Schmitt, and Prof. Sean Watts. The...

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23 Jul

My friend Craig Martin has started a new international-law podcast entitled "JIB/JAB: The Law of War Podcast." Here is his description: This is a podcast about the various legal regimes that govern the use of force and armed conflict – primarily the jus ad bellum regime, which governs when states may lawfully resort to force, and the jus in bello regime (also known as international...

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19 Jul

In response to rumblings that states are less than overwhelmed by the four candidates the Committee on the Election of the Prosecutor has selected, civil society organizations are mounting a concerted effort to dissuade states from considering new candidates. The best example is a recent "Joint Civil Society Statement" signed by nine leading human-rights organizations, including Open Society Justice Institute,...

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17 Jul

And so it begins. According to a leading Kenyan paper, Kenya has rejected the four candidates identified by the ICC's Committee on the Election of the Prosecutor: "Kenya anticipated that the Committee would present a shortlist of qualified candidates with an equal chance of being elected. The current shortlist does not meet this expectation and appears skewed in favour of a...

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07 Jul

Introduction Monica Hakimi’s new article, “Making Sense of Customary International Law,” is my favourite kind of scholarship: bold, critical, revisionist, tendentious. Too few scholars are brave enough to confront the sacred cows of public international law this forthrightly, and for that reason alone Hakimi deserves our thanks and praise. That said, I disagree with nearly every word in Hakimi’s article. An adequate response would require an article of its...

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02 Jul

I am honoured and delighted to announce that I have been appointed Professor of International Law and Security at the University of Copenhagen. The position is based in the Centre for Military Studies (CMS), which is part of the Department of Political Science, and will involve working closely with the Ministry of Defence and the various Danish political parties on...

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02 Jul

A couple of days ago, Iran issued an arrest warrant for Donald Trump, alleging that he is responsible for murder and terrorism in connection with the drone strike that killed General Qassem Soleimani last January. Practical problems aside -- Interpol has already refused to issue a Red Notice for Trump's arrest -- there is an important legal barrier to prosecuting Trump:...

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30 Jun

Along with 187 other American lawyers and legal scholars, I have signed a statement condemning the Trump administration's Executive Order permitting the US to sanction individuals involved with the ICC's investigation into the situation in Afghanistan. It's quite a list of signatories, including three former US war-crimes ambassadors and a number of former judges and prosecutors at various international criminal...

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19 Jun

I want to call readers' attention to an upcoming Opinio Juris symposium that is being organized by two fantastic young critical international law scholars, Mohsen al Attar (Warwick) and Rohini Sen (O.P. Jindal). They are looking for a few more contributions, per the Call for Papers -- really a Call for Posts -- below. Note that they would like to...

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