Mohamed Helal kicked off the week with a two-part jus ad bellum analysis (here and here) of the United States' possible legal justifications for going to war with Iran, in light of the Trump administration's recent saber-rattling towards the regime. In particular, Mohamed addressed three possibilities: (1) preempting a nuclear Iran, (2) resisting Iranian regional policies and responding to "indirect"...
Call for Papers The Senior Legal Advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on Counter-terrorism and Human Rights is pleased to announce a call for inputs published by the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, Ms. Fionnuala Ní Aoláin. The Special Rapporteur is studying the impact of the proliferation of “soft law” instruments and related standard-setting initiatives and processes in...
As expected, the OTP has asked the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) to grant leave to appeal its refusal to authorise the Afghanistan investigation. I'm in Kiev and don't have as much time to write as I'd like, so I just want to offer a few quick thoughts on the OTP's motion, which seeks appeal on three interrelated issues. First, I think it's...
[Benjamin K. Nussberger is the Head Coach of the Philip C Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition at the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford and a research fellow at the Institute for International Peace and Security Law in Cologne. You can find him on Twitter @bknussberger] In times of growing tension between Iran, and the US and Saudi-Arabia, it is as...
[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 second part of a two-part post; the first can be found here.] Second: Resisting Iranian Regional Policies and Responding to Indirect Iranian Aggression The U.S. National Defense Strategy states that “Iran is competing with its...
[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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...