In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

04 Jun

[Mohamed S. Helal is an Assistant Professor of Law at the Mortiz College of Law and an Affiliated Faculty with the Mershon Center for International Security Studies. This is the first part of a two-part post.] Over the past weeks, tensions have escalated in the Persian Gulf. On May 5, 2019, U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton announced that “in response to a number of troubling and...

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02 Jun

At the end May, Opinio Juris hosted a weeklong symposium on Jonathan Hafetz's new book, Punishing Atrocities through a Fair Trial: International Criminal Law from Nuremberg to the Age of Global Terrorism (Cambridge University Press). In addition to Jonathan's own comments, we had the great privilege of posting reactions from such luminaries as Gabor Rona, Mark Kersten, Alexander Greenawalt, and...

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02 Jun

Call for Papers The Silk Road Institute for International and Comparative Law, Xi’an Jiaotong Unviersity, is pleased to announce a call for papers for the international conference on “Multilateral Reform of Investor-State Dispute Resolution: A Dialogue between Different Approaches”, taking place on 15-16 September 2019 in Xi’an, P. R. China. This conference aims to bring together leading scholars and practitioners in...

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31 May

Cases from across the globe have epitomised the crime of enforced disappearance, the most high-profile recently being the disappearance and killing of journalist Jamal Kashoggi. The abduction of the head of Interpol in China is another dramatic instance. Recently, families of individuals from Kuwait who were disappeared by the Iraqi army have been in the news, and there have been mass...

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28 May

You have heard the news and know what might happen. Your President may pardon a war criminal. You, certainly, disapprove. You believe in international justice and you are convinced war criminals need to be punished for their crimes. You want to do something about it, but you have read the blog posts and newspapers. Judging by recent experience, the ICC will likely not help. Yours...

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26 May

This summer we will host our fifth Emerging Voices symposium, where we invite doctoral students, early-career academics and practicing lawyers to tell Opinio Juris readers about a research project or other international law topic of interest. If you are a doctoral student or in the early stages of your career (e.g., post-docs, junior academics or early-career practitioners within the first five...

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24 May

A few days ago, the New York Times broke an explosive story on Colombia. The journal claimed Major General Nicacio Martínez, the head of the Colombian Army, had issued new and worrisome targeting orders for his troops. Soldiers were requested “not to demand perfection” and to “do anything to boost their results”. According to the article, the order asks commanders to “launch operations with 60...

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24 May

I had the pleasure on Wednesday of attending Keith Raynor's talk "International Criminal Justice: Where Does It Go from Here?" at Lincoln's Inn in London. I had never been to an Inn of Court before, and it was great fun. I still can't get over not being allowed to go the bathroom during dinner, and -- as someone who...

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24 May

[Margaret deGuzman is Professor of Law at Temple University's Beasley School of Law. This post is part of our Punishing Atrocities Symposium.] In Punishing Atrocities Through a Fair Trial, Jonathan Hafetz makes important contributions to debates about the legitimacy and effectiveness of international criminal law’s institutions.  In particular, the book highlights the tensions between the global values of fairness and accountability for international crimes.  While Hafetz generally...

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23 May

[Alexander Greenawalt is a Professor of Law at Pace University School of Law. This post is part of our Punishing Atrocities Symposium.] I am honored to provide this commentary on this terrific new book by Jonathan Hafetz.  Let me begin by highlighting some of the things that make this publication a valuable contribution to the literature about International Criminal Law (“ICL”). ...

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21 May

[Mark Kersten is a researcher based at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto, the deputy director of the Wayamo Foundation and creator of the blog Justice in Conflict. This post is part of our Punishing Atrocities Symposium.] Understanding selectivity is something of a holy grail among scholars of observers of international criminal justice....

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20 May

[Gabor Rona is Visiting Professor of Law and Director of the Law and Armed Conflict Project at Cardozo Law School. This post is part of our Punishing Atrocities Symposium.] If like me, you have always believed that the arc of the universe does, indeed, to paraphrase the 19th Century Unitarian minister and abolitionist Theodore Parker, bend toward international justice, this may be a good...

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