In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

20 Sep

Announcements The Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law is happy to announce the 2016 Human Rights Essay Award topic: Extractive Industries and Human Rights. Participants have the flexibility to choose any subject related to the substantive law relevant to the field. International human rights law can be understood to include international humanitarian law and international criminal law. This annual competition...

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17 Sep

[David H. Moore is a Professor at the J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University.] Professors Ackerman and Golove, on one hand, and Professor Ku, on the other, disagree over whether the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act provides statutory authorization for the recent Iran Deal. The resolution of this question bears on whether a future President may unilaterally withdraw from the Deal. Both...

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17 Sep

I want to thank Alexandre Skander Galand for his interesting post last week on the continuing controversy over President al-Bashir's non-arrest during his recent visit to South Africa. The post reignited a long-standing debate in the comments section. My own views are too long for posting in the comments section. I write now to expand a bit on my previous arguments regarding the role...

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16 Sep

I thank Professors Ackerman and Golove for taking the time to respond to my earlier post on whether a future President could unilaterally withdraw from the Iran Nuclear Deal.  But I remain unconvinced by the claims they made in their original Atlantic essay that a future President's unilateral withdrawal from the Iran Deal would be "lawless". Here's why I still think they...

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16 Sep

[Bruce Ackerman, Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science at Yale, is the author of The Decline and Fall of the American Republic and David Golove, Hiller Family Foundation Professor of Law, New York University School of Law, is the co-author of Is NAFTA Constitutional?] Responding to our essay in the Atlantic, Professor Julian Ku believes that we are “deeply and badly mistaken” in criticizing Senator...

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15 Sep

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is hosting its Annual International Open Day on Sunday, 20 September, at the ICTY Main Building in The Hague as part of The Hague International Day. At the Open Day, there will be opportunities to interact with ICTY Judges and other key staff members, view documentaries produced by the ICTY Outreach...

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15 Sep

My colleagues at the Diplomacy School have just alerted me to an interesting new opportunity.  All who are interested should apply.  Here is the job ad: The School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professor position in international human rights law to commence in the 2016-2017 academic year. Applicants must possess a...

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15 Sep

A few months ago, I participated as a senior faculty member at the Fourth Annual Junior Faculty Forum for International Law in Florence, Italy. It was a fantastic workshop, and the papers presented by the junior faculty were uniformly excellent, including the one by Maria Varaki to which I responded. So I encourage all young scholars to submit abstracts for the Fifth...

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14 Sep

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa At least nine people were killed in two bomb attacks on Sunday in the northern Cameroon town of Kolofata, according to local officials, in what appeared to be the latest attack by the Boko Haram Islamist militant group from nearby Nigeria. Unidentified attackers ambushed a police post in...

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13 Sep

Announcements A special issue of the Nordic Journal of International Law, which Triestino Martinello has co-edited with Dr. Paolo Lobba, has just been released. The topic is 'The Cross-fertilisation Rhetoric in Question: Use and Abuse of the European Court’s Jurisprudence by International Criminal Tribunals' and it includes contributions from Sergey Vasiliev, Julia Geneuss, Ulf Linderfalk, Elena Maculan, Michelle Farrell, and Harmen van...

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11 Sep

[Alexandre Skander Galand is a Ph.D. Candidate at the European University Institute (EUI), Law Department.] In the aftermath of the last episode of the ‘Al-Bashir saga’, one might have wondered what the International Criminal Court (ICC) will do with the last report (filed on 17 June 2015) of the ICC registry concerning South Africa’s failure to arrest and surrender Sudan's President. The answer is now clear: there will be proceedings to determine whether South Africa failed to cooperate with the ICC. Indeed, last Friday 4 September, Pre-Trial Chamber II issued an “Order requesting submissions from the Republic of South Africa for the purposes of proceedings under article 87(7) of the Rome Statute”. As it is known, the Decision of Pretoria High Court Judge Hans Fabricius on 15 June directing the various executive authorities of South Africa to take all necessary steps to prevent President Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan from leaving South Africa was overlooked by the concerned authorities. On the next day, just after the High Court handed down its decision that Al-Bashir be arrested and detained, the counsel for the South African executive authorities informed the Court that Sudan's President had already left the country. The ‘Al-Bashir Saga’ raises the question of whether it is crystal clear that Al-Bashir is not immune from the ICC and its States parties’ exercise of jurisdiction. Is the immunity of Heads of States not parties to the Rome Statute completely irrelevant when a State enforces an ICC arrest warrant? Or, must the State be deemed to have waived its immunity? If so, is a Security Council (SC) referral sufficient to waive the immunity of a Head of State? Or, must the immunity to which the Head of State is entitled under international law be explicitly waived by the SC? The ICC says: In claris non fit interpretatio Three days before the Pretoria High Court ruling, the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) held:
“it is unnecessary to further clarify that the Republic of South Africa is under the duty under the Rome Statute to immediately arrest Omar Al-Bashir and surrender him to the Court, as the existence of this duty is already clear and needs not be further reiterated. The Republic of South Africa is already aware of this statutory duty and a further reminder is unwarranted.” (§ 10)
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10 Sep

Professors Bruce Ackerman and David Golove argue in this Atlantic essay that the next President cannot withdraw from the Iran agreement because it is a "congressionally authorized executive agreement." They argue that Senator Marco Rubio's pledge to terminate the Iran Deal on day one "would destroy the binding character of America’s commitments to the IMF, the World Bank, NAFTA, and the World...

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