The irreplaceable Carmi Lecker called my attention yesterday to a proposal by Switzerland to deem the intentional starvation of civilians a war crime in non-international armed conflict (NIAC). At present, it is only a war crime in international armed conflict (IAC) -- Art. 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Rome Statute. Here is the text of the proposal: Add to article 8, paragraph 2...
[Mary Fitzgerald is an independent researcher specializing in Libya. She has worked on Libya since February 2011 and lived there in 2014. She is a contributing author to The Libyan Revolution and Its Aftermath published by Hurst/OUP.] When Libyans took to the streets in early 2011 demanding change, one of their key demands was justice. Four decades of Gaddafi’s experiment in...
On 4 September last week the UN Commission of Inquiry on Burundi released its latest report. The situation in Burundi continues to warrant deep concern as grave human rights violations persist. Experts estimate that it may only get worse as the 2020 elections draw closer. After all, it was a political crisis in 2015 election cycle that catapulted the small...
[Mark Kersten is a consultant for the Wayamo Foundation and a law student at McGill University. He is also author of the book, 'Justice in Conflict - The Effects of the International Criminal Court's Interventions on Ending Wars and Building Peace'.] It isn’t for a lack of attention. Violence in Libya is covered almost daily in major newspapers and media outlets....
Announcements I am delighted to announce that CUP has recently published Freya Baetens' new book, Legitimacy of Unseen Actors in International Adjudication. Here's the publisher's description: International courts and tribunals differ in their institutional composition and functions, but a shared characteristic is their reliance on the contribution of individuals other than the judicial decision-makers themselves. Such 'unseen actors' may take the form...
[Anna Spain Bradley is a Professor of Law at the University of Colorado School of Law.] International law has a racism problem. Since 1950, when UNESCO published its seminal report, The Race Question, the international community has been on record that race has no basis in biology or science and that racism “directly affects millions of human lives and causes countless conflicts.” Yet the international...
[Todd Carney is a student at Harvard Law School. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Political Science and Public Communications. He has also worked in digital media in New York City and Washington D.C.] In September 2018, the European Union (EU) Parliament voted to censure Hungary in response to Hungary’s laws that cracked down on institutions such as the media, independent government agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)....
Announcement: Francis Lieber Prize 2020 The American Society of International Law's Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict awards the Francis Lieber Prize to the authors of publications that the judges consider to be outstanding in the field of law and armed conflict. Both monographs and articles (including chapters in books of essays) are eligible for consideration — the prize is...
[Anthony J. Colangelo, Gerald J. Ford Research Fellow and Professor of Law, SMU Dedman School of Law.] The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Gamble v. United States explicitly raised the question of double jeopardy in international cases by positing scenarios in which the United States may wish to successively prosecute after a prior prosecution in a foreign country for crimes occurring abroad. These cases...
Vito Todeschini is an Associate Legal Adviser at the International Commission of Jurists’ MENA Programme. Said Benarbia is the International Commission of Jurists’ MENA Programme Director. In a UN Security Council Open Debate on the Middle East held on 23 July 2019, Jason D. Greenblatt, Assistant to the US President and Special Representative for International Negotiations, intervened to clarify the US Government’s position in...
[Peter H. Corne is the Managing Partner of Dorsey & Whitney’s Shanghai Office, NYU Global Adjunct Professor of Law, and Mediator of the Shanghai Commercial Mediation Center. Matthew S. Erie is an Associate Professor of Modern Chinese Studies and Associate of the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies of the University of Oxford, and Principal Investigator of the “China, Law and Development”...
A few months ago, I was invited by the Polish Ministry of Justice to participate in a one-day conference on the responsibility of lawyers for judicial crimes, part of Poland's Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Stalinism and Nazism. The Ministry asked me to discuss American prosecutions of Nazi lawyers at the Nuremberg Military Tribunals -- something I wrote...