In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

27 Apr

Truth commissions have been in the news of late. A truth commission in The Gambia has started its work recently. In Tunisia, the Truth and Dignity Commission has just issued a report, four years after its establishment. In countries such as Nepal and Colombia, truth commissions (or variations thereof) are mired in controversy and have severe challenges. What is clear is that truth...

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27 Apr

I thought I was done blogging about the Pre-Trial Chamber's authorization decision, but there is another aspect of it that keeps nagging at me: the limits PTC II would have imposed on the OTP's investigation if it had authorized it. Here are the key paragraphs (emphasis mine): 40. More specifically, the precise width and breadth of the Prosecutor's power to investigate...

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26 Apr

[Carlos Lopez is a Senior Legal Adviser at the International Commission of Jurists.] Claire Bright has nicely concluded the series of blogs in this online symposium on the legal and policy implications of the UK Supreme Court judgment on jurisdiction in Vedanta v Lungowe. It is time now to close the symposium and gratefully acknowledge the participants (Robert McCorquodale, Doug Cassel, Anil Yilmaz, Gabrielle Holly, Lucas Roorda and Claire Bright) and our...

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26 Apr

[Claire Bright is a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute and a Research Fellow in Business and Human Rights at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law.] In the Vedanta case, the claimants relied on Article 4.1 (combined with Article 63) of the Brussels I Recast Regulation to establish the jurisdiction of the English courts over the parent company since Vedanta...

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25 Apr

[Lucas Roorda is a PhD candidate at Utrecht University on jurisdiction in foreign direct liability cases in EU Member States, and a policy advisor at the Netherlands Human Rights Institute. He can be found on Twitter at @lroordalaw. This blog only represents his personal view, and not those of any institution.] This month’s seminal UK Supreme Court decision in Vedanta v. Lungowe, [2019] UKSC 20 has...

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24 Apr

[Gabrielle Holly is a business and human rights specialist and an experienced commercial disputes practitioner with Omnia Strategy LLP, who acted for the International Commission of Jurists and the CORE Coalition in this case. You can find her on twitter at @Gabriellellell.] With the rise in power of multinational groups and the intricacies of global supply chains, the question of where a company should...

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23 Apr

[Dov Jacobs is an Assistant Professor of International Law at Leiden University and a Legal Assistant at the ICC.] The following ideas come as a follow-up to Kevin Jon Heller’s recent post on possible appeal strategies that the OTP could consider following the decision by the PTC to not authorise the opening of a formal investigation in Afghanistan. I will therefore...

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23 Apr

[Anil Yilmaz Vastardis is a Lecturer in Law at the Essex School of Law and Human Rights Centre. You can find her on Twitter @anil_yv.] In this post, I will focus on the implications of one of the central questions that the UK Supreme Court (‘UKSC’) addressed in its much-awaited Vedanta Resources PLC and anor v Lungowe and orsjudgment: whether the claimants’ pleaded a...

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23 Apr

[Chiara Redaelli is Visiting Research Fellow at Harvard Law School and Research Fellow at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.] Over the past months, while international legal scholars have been engaging in passionate debates as to whether Nicolás Maduro is still the de jure president of Venezuela or whether Juan Guaidó should be considered the new interim representative of the country, Venezuelan lawyers...

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20 Apr

Call for Papers The Faculty of Legal Studies, South Asian University, New Delhi (India) is organizing a two-day international conference on South Asia in the Era of International Courts and Tribunals on 28-29 February 2020. The conference theme invites engagement with a range of issues broadly falling within the following three sub-themes: (1) The Composition and Competence of International Courts and...

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19 Apr

The Amazon is a 7,000,000 km2 ecosystem, containing the world’s largest rainforest, boasting some 390 billion trees, 2.5 million species of insects and over 2,000 species of birds and mammals, spanning the territories of eight states (Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela). It is also the name of a company worth 810 billion dollars. Back in 2012, Amazon – the company – applied to register...

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19 Apr

[Doug Cassel is an Emeritus Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School.] The unanimous jurisdictional ruling of the United Kingdom Supreme Court in Vedanta Resources PLC and another v Lungowe and others, issued April 10, is the most important judicial decision in the field of business and human rights since the jurisdictional ruling of the United States Supreme Court in Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum in 2013. ...

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