Duncan, unlike David, is not primarily an international law scholar. But Kennedy's work on critical legal studies has had a profound influence on most left-wing international law scholars -- including me. So I wanted to post a link to a fascinating and wonderfully substantive interview with him conducted by Tor Krever, Carl Lisberger, and Max Utzschneider. I had no idea Kennedy worked...
In my post on biological and chemical weapons yesterday, I rejected the idea that Art. 8(2)(b)(xviii) "squarely appl[ies]" (Ralf Trapp) or "plainly applies" (Alex Whiting) to chemical and biological weapons by arguing that the drafters of the Rome Statute intended Art. 8(2)(b)(xviii), the war crime of “[e]mploying asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases,” to have precisely the kind of "special meaning" that Art. 31(4) of...
Over the past week, two posts at Just Security have argued that the ICC can prosecute the use of chemical and biological weapons as a war crime, even though they -- unlike other types of weapons -- are not mentioned in Article 8 of the Rome Statute. The first post was written by Ralf Trapp, who argued as follows: Furthermore, there are the...
I'm in the middle of a week-long trip to Georgia, where I'm giving nine lectures in five days to the military and university students. (Thanks, Anna Dolidze, Deputy Minister of Defence and friend-of-OJ!) I'm talking about perfidy a couple of times, but most of the lectures -- not surprisingly -- are about the OTP's request to open a formal investigation...
I've received a few emails over the past couple of days wondering why I have not joined the now 500 scholars at UK universities who have pledged to boycott Israeli universities. The answer is that although I wholeheartedly support BDS in its economic and cultural forms, I am much more ambivalent about academic BDS. I agree with the boycotters that Israeli universities...
I'm delighted to announce that -- at long last -- Oxford Bibliographies Online has finally published an annotated bibliography on the Nuremberg Trials that I co-authored with Catherine Gascoigne, an utterly brilliant young PhD student in law at Cambridge. The bibliography covers both the IMT and my beloved NMTs; here is the introduction: The “Nuremberg trials” generally refers to a series of...
I have finally made my way through the OTP's 162-page request to open an investigation into the situation in Georgia. I hope to write a few posts in the coming days on various aspects of the request; in this post I simply want to note my surprise that the OTP has not alleged that Georgia is responsible for two interrelated war crimes:...
Last week, the inestimable Chase Madar gave a fascinating talk at SOAS entitled "The Weaponisation of Human Rights." More than 100 people showed up, and I was privileged -- along with Heidi Matthews, a British Academy postdoc at SOAS -- to respond to Chase's comments. Here is Chase's description of the talk: Human rights, once a rallying cry to free prisoners of...
Yesterday, my colleague Chris Borgen posted ASIL's call for submissions for the 2016 Francis Lieber Prize, which is awarded annually to one monograph and one article "that the judges consider to be outstanding in the field of law and armed conflict." I think it's safe to say that the Lieber Prize is the most prestigious award of its kind. But there's a catch: you are...
Fatou Bensouda has just formally asked the Pre-Trial Chamber to authorise an investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by South Ossetian and Georgian forces between 1 July 2008 and 10 October 2008. Here are the relevant paragraphs from the ICC's press release: The Situation in Georgia has been under preliminary examination by the Office of the Prosecutor since August 2008, when armed clashes...
Last month, Ashley Deeks claimed that France appeared "to be prepared to invoke the 'unwilling or unable' concept in the Syria context." France did indeed attacks ISIS targets in Syria. And it reported those strikes to the Secretary-General of the UN, claiming self-defence under Art. 51 of the UN Charter as a rationale for violating Syria's sovereignty. But then something funny...
I stopped watching Crossing Lines about five episodes into Season 2 – about the time the ICC started investigating a series of home invasions. (Yes, really.) I had no intention of watching again, but I decided to give the show one more try at the urging of my friend Mel O’Brien. So a couple of nights ago I watched the...
