Jennifer Trahan has a new post at Just Security entitled "Why a 'Hybrid' Ukrainian Tribunal on the Crime of Aggression Is Not the Answer." There are many problems with Trahan's post, but in this response I want to focus specifically on the most glaring one: namely, her claim that a hybrid tribunal would need to apply Ukraine's domestic crime of...
Support has been growing in recent weeks for creating a hybrid tribunal to address Russia's criminal act of aggression against Ukraine instead of an ad hoc Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression (STCoA). The German Minister of Foreign Affairs has endorsed a hybrid tribunal over an STCoA, as has the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary. Even the US War Crimes...
Astrid Coracini and Jennifer Trahan have a new post at Just Security that argues a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression created either by treaty or by a General Assembly-endorsed agreement between Ukraine and the UN would not have to recognise the personal immunity of Russian officials. I disagree, for reasons I have explained in a recent article in...
Via its Minister for the Environment, the Belgian government has announced that it intends to incorporate the crime of ecocide into its Penal Code: A concept now recognized in the national penal codes of 10 countries (Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Vietnam and France), the crime of ecocide refers to all illegal actions that lead to the...
On Tuesday, the Office of the President of Ukraine issued a press release concerning plans for creating a Special Tribunal for Russian Aggression. Most of the information in the press release was boilerplate, reaffirming the need for such a tribunal and expressing hope that the international community will get behind one. One comment, however, set off my lawdar: As noted at...
As part of my position at the University of Copenhagen's Centre for Military Studies, I have started a podcast entitled "Lex Ferenda: Conversations about Law and War." Here is the general description: This podcast involves monthly hour-long video interviews with experts whose work and practice focuses on how international law affects the conduct of military operations. Guests will normally be drawn...
John Heieck has been putting together our weekly Events & Announcements post since we relaunched Opinio Juris -- more than 160 posts. But all good things must come to an end, so it's time to say goodbye to John. All of us at OJ want to express our profound gratitude for his efforts, and we wish him nothing but the...
I don't often write about animal-rights issues here at Opinio Juris, because I'm sure many readers view the systematic murder of tens of billions of animals each year for food as less important than the many atrocities involving humans that take place all over the world. I don't agree with that perspective, but I certainly understand it. So I save...
Please think about submitting an abstract for a conference on the legacy of the much loved, much missed, and much lamented Robert Cryer. The conference announcement is below: Robert Cryer: A Life in Law and a Law unto Himself We greatly miss Professor Rob Cryer, who passed away in 2021 at the age of forty-six. We aim to channel this loss, those...
A little-known aspect of the war in Ukraine is that both Russia and Ukraine have deployed weapons that are capable of being used fully autonomously: for Russia, Lancet drones; for Ukraine, Punisher drones. Both weapons are capable of being operated semi-autonomously, and it is not clear whether Russia or Ukraine has used them in their fully autonomous mode. But the...
In an excellent recent blog post at Just Security, Tom Dannenbaum identified four options for prosecuting Russia's unprovoked aggression against Ukraine: [T]he International Criminal Court, an ad hoc international tribunal (whether along the lines proposed at Chatham House or pursuant to a General Assembly resolution), a domestic court exercising territorial jurisdiction (in Russia, Belarus, or Ukraine), or a domestic court exercising...
Nearly 40 legal and political luminaries, including many people for whom I have the utmost respect -- such as Dapo Akande, my Doughty Street colleague Helena Kennedy QC, and Ben Ferencz -- have signed a Combined Statement and Declaration calling on the international community to create a Special Tribunal for the Punishment of the Crime of Aggression Against Ukraine. The...