In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

07 Jan

In case you missed it Monday, departing U.S. State Department special envoy for closing Guantanamo had a sharp op-ed in the N.Y. Times, marking the administration’s recent successes at moving detainees out of the prison and urging that further progress be made. Among other things, Sloan highlights several “fundamental misconceptions” he believes are behind continuing opposition in Congress and elsewhere...

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05 Jan

[Larry Catá Backer is W. Richard and Mary Eshelman Faculty Scholar Professor of Law and International Affairs at Penn State Law.] On December 17, 2014, the Presidents of the United States of America and of the Republic of Cuba announced an intention to move toward the normalization of relations between their countries. The two statements reflected the quite distinct conceptual frameworks from...

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05 Jan

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa Boko Haram fighters have overrun an army base in the remote northeast Nigerian town of Baga, killing scores of soldiers in the attack, security sources have said. At least 100 people have been killed after a cross-border attack against the central African nation of Burundi from the Democratic Republic of...

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03 Jan

H-Diplo, part of H-Net, recently hosted a virtual roundtable on David Bosco's excellent book Rough Justice:The International Criminal Court in a World of Power Politics, published by Oxford last year. Erik Vroeten introduced the roundtable, and Sam Moyn, David Kaye, and I submitted reviews. David then wrote a response. Here is a snippet from Erik's introduction: It is my pleasure to...

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23 Dec

Courtesy of Chris Moody, here is an actual letter written by John F. Kennedy in 1961 to a little girl in Michigan: Santa Claus has always seemed a bit communist to me. More of the Vietnamese or Chinese nationalist variety, I guess. Happy holidays, everyone!...

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23 Dec

[Catherine Harwood is a PhD candidate at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies at Leiden University] After over a decade of reports alerting the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) to serious human rights violations in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), in March 2013 the Council decided to establish an international commission of inquiry to investigate those allegations and to ensure “full accountability, in particular where these violations may amount to crimes against humanity”. Denied access to North Korea, the Commission travelled to several countries to hear from victims and witnesses. In a strong commitment to transparency, the Commission held public hearings and made many testimonies and exhibits available online. A year later, its report recorded a litany of serious human right abuses. The Commission found reasonable grounds to believe that North Korea had committed serious human rights violations and that many senior officials had committed crimes against humanity [para. 1225]. It issued a host of recommendations, including that the Security Council refer North Korea, a non-state party to the Rome Statute, to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Although the Commission dissolved upon the delivery of its report, its accountability recommendations reverberated beyond the HRC and have remained on the intergovernmental diplomatic agenda. This contribution discusses some interesting features of the Commission’s findings and tracks the consequences of its report – some of which have been curious and unexpected – before offering some thoughts as to the impact of the inquiry in relation to the goal of ensuring accountability.
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22 Dec

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa The death toll from Ebola in the three worst-affected countries in West Africa has risen to 7,373 among 19,031 cases known to date there, the World Health Organization said on Saturday. South Sudan rebels killed, raped and kidnapped civilians during an attack in October, leaving at least 11...

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21 Dec

Events For many years, the Frankfurt Investment Law Workshop - jointly organized by Rainer Hofmann (University of Frankfurt), Stephan Schill (Max Planck Institute Heidelberg), and Christian J. Tams (University of Glasgow) - has been a forum for the discussion of conceptual issues of international investment law. The next workshop, to be held March 13-14, 2015, will explore the role of history...

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20 Dec

This week on Opinio Juris, our regular bloggers touched on a variety of topics again with Kevin rejecting Ashley Deeks' evidence that the international response to ISIS supports the "unwilling or unable" test under article 51 UN Charter and Kristen expanding the UN's list of 13 things to know about UN sanctions to 16. Prompted by Christopher Kutz' essay, Julian asked...

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18 Dec

[Dr Rick Lines and Damon Barrett are the Chair and Director of the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy, University of Essex] These are interesting times for drug law reform, which, as it gathers pace, is asking important questions of international law. A UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs is set for 2016 just as national reforms are challenging international treaties that form the bedrock of a global prohibition regime that has dominated since the turn of the twentieth century. States parties to the three UN drug control conventions must now confront the legal and political dilemmas this creates. This is the situation in which the US now finds itself following cannabis reforms in various states that are at odds with these treaties. The State Department has issued its official position in this regard, one that stretches and boundaries of interpretation and raises other serious questions for international law. In an October statement Ambassador William Brownfield set out that position in the form of the ‘four pillar’ approach the United States will now follow in matters of international drug control. While the four pillars, set out below, have prompted much discussion and debate among those working on drug policy issues, attention among international lawyers has been rare. This is something of an important gap given the implications of what the US suggests:
  1. Respect the integrity of the existing UN drug control conventions.
  2. Accept flexible interpretation of those conventions.
  3. Tolerate different national drug policies…[and] accept the fact that some countries will have very strict drug approaches; other countries will legalise entire categories of drugs.
  4. Combat and resist criminal organisations, rather than punishing individual drug users
Internationally, the four pillars have emerged in the context of efforts, led primarily by Latin American States, to open discussions on the future of the international drug control regime, and look at alternatives to the current and destructive prohibitionist paradigm.  Domestically, it comes in the context of successful referenda to legally regulate cannabis in several US states. Both of these are welcome developments. The international drug regime is long overdue for reform, and the cannabis referenda will produce many positive criminal justice, health and social outcomes in those US states adopting them. However, domestic cannabis law reform places the United States in a compromised position within the coming debates on the future shape of the international drug control regime.
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16 Dec

The UN's Department of Political Affairs recently published this list of "13 things to know about UN sanctions."  If you scroll down on the link above, you'll also see some great sanctions graphics. United Nations Sanctions Primer 1. Since the creation of the United Nations, the Security Council has established 25 sanctions regimes. They have been used to support conflict resolution efforts,...

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16 Dec

Christopher Kutz, Professor of Law in the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Program at Berkeley Law School, has a fascinating new essay examining the possibility that "norms" against torture and assassination have died in the United States in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.  Kutz is not writing to support the CIA interrogation program or the US government's use of assassination, but he...

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