In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

28 Jun

[Doug Cassel is Emeritus Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School.] The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this month in Nestle USA Inc. v. Doe that “general corporate activity” in the U.S. is not a sufficient domestic basis to warrant Alien Tort Statute (ATS) jurisdiction over claims against a U.S. corporation for alleged human rights violations overseas. The media response generally echoed that of the...

|
28 Jun

In my previous posts on the crime of ecocide -- Post 1, Post 2 -- I argued the theoretical/normative case against the IEP's decision to subject lawful acts to anthropocentric cost-benefit analysis via the "wantonness" requirement. In this post, I want to bracket the issue of whether the definition of ecocide should distinguish between lawful and unlawful acts and question...

|
27 Jun

Announcements Academic conference on "International Justice: Looking to the Future": On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the International Justice Journal (Mezhdunarodnoe Pravosudie) on 23-24 September 2021, the School of International Law of the Higher School of Economics (Moscow) will host an international conference. The event is thought of as a platform for exchanging different views on the structured vision of the future of international courts and...

|
26 Jun

In my previous post, I criticised the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide (IEP) for endorsing a definition that is unjustifiably anthropocentric. In particular, I criticised the idea that "knowingly" causing a substantial likelihood of either widespread or long-term severe environmental damage is not criminal unless it is "wanton," defined as "reckless disregard for damage which would...

|
25 Jun

As a teenager, I read Angela Davis, CLR James, Edward Said, Kwame Nkrumah, and Malcolm X. From a young age, I was perplexed by the contingency of global living standards, failing to comprehend why much of my national community (in Egypt) was mired in squalor while my adopted ones were swaddled in comfort. Each thinker linked contemporary privilege to historic...

|
25 Jun

[Dr. Dalia Palombo  is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Business Ethics, University of St. Gallen.] Imperialism and Transnational Human Rights Litigation How to hold multinationals to account for human rights abuses? This is a question that has tormented scholars, litigators and advocates. It is difficult to answer because the term “multinational” does not exist in law. From the legal perspective, a multinational is a conglomerate of...

|
24 Jun

[Gabrielle Holly is a Senior Adviser in the Human Rights and Business Department at the Danish Institute for Human Rights and an experienced commercial disputes practitioner. You can find her on twitter at @Gabriellellell.]  In recent years we have seen tremendous momentum behind moves to introduce mandatory human rights due diligence obligations in law, both at the national level and at the international...

|
24 Jun

[Zachary D. Kaufman is Associate Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Houston Law Center. His full biography is available here.] On June 15 and 16, the Belgian Parliament held a hearing about the Islamic State’s genocide against the Yezidis in Iraq and Syria. I testified, as did, among others, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad, a survivor of the genocide....

|
24 Jun

[Dr. Mishana Hosseinioun is a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Oxford and a visiting fellow at the Centre for International Studies at the LSE. She is the president of the international justice consultancy MH Group, which submitted to the ICC an Article 15 Communication integral in opening the formal investigation into the situation in Palestine.] This May, the ongoing conflict in the Occupied Palestinian Territory...

|
24 Jun

[Penelope A. Bergkamp is a graduate from the National University of Singapore and KU Leuven, and law practitioner in Brussels.] Corporate liability and supply chain liability (SCL) in particular are experiencing a rapid and dramatic revolution. Supply chain liability (“SCL”) is the liability of a multinational corporation for damages caused by its business partners, often in developing countries. The term business partners refers to any business partner,...

|
24 Jun

[Ori Pomson is a member of the Israel Bar and currently an LLM candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Previously, he served for six years as an officer (rank of captain) in the Israel Defence Forces Military Advocate General’s Corps International Law Department, where he served as Assistant Legal Adviser for Cyber Affairs and Assistant Head of the Legal Development Section.] I. Introduction One of the...

|
23 Jun

[Shashikala Gurpur is the Director of Symbiosis Law School and Dean of the Faculty of Law at Symbiosis International University. Sayantan Bhattacharyya is a 4th-year B.B.A LL.B  ( Hons) student at Symbiosis Law School and Sujata Arya is an Assistant Professor of Law at Symbiosis Law School.] On 6 May, 2021, Dominic Ongwen, an erstwhile Commander of the Lord’s Resistance Army (“LRA”) in Uganda, was sentenced...

|