The BBC is reporting that dozens of people have died today in new fighting between police and protestors in Ukraine. For a background to what is underlying the protests, see these posts concerning the struggle over the norms that will define Ukraine, how Ukraine's domestic disputes interact with Russian and European regional strategies, and the significance of the eastward spread...
[Rogier Bartels is a Legal Officer (Chambers) at the International Criminal Court and a research-fellow at the Netherlands Defence Academy. The views below are the author’s alone.] The first part of this post discussed that a non-international armed conflict (NIAC) ends when the NIAC-criteria (a certain level of organisation of the parties groups, and a certain intensity of the armed violence)...
I rarely get excited about a new book before I've read it -- but I'm excited about this one, Mark Lewis's The Birth of the New Justice: The Internationalization of Crime and Punishment, 1919-1950. Here is OUP's description: The Birth of the New Justice is a history of the attempts to instate ad hoc and permanent international criminal courts and new international...
[Rogier Bartels is a Legal Officer (Chambers) at the International Criminal Court and a research-fellow at the Netherlands Defence Academy. The below post discusses an argument made at a conference organised by the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies in June 2012, that is expanded on in a chapter in the forthcoming book Jus Post Bellum (edited by Carsten Stahn et...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa At least 90 people have been killed in Nigeria's northeastern Borno state by suspected members of Boko Haram. The EU and West Africa have reached a compromise on an Economic Partnership Agreement, following over a decade of negotiations. Asia North and South Korea have agreed in a rare high-level meeting...
Calls for Papers The University of Cagliari (Italy), Department of Public Law and Social Studies has issued a call for papers with the theme of Conceptualising Accountability in International Economic Law. The University welcomes ”submissions that describe new (previously unpublished) cutting-edge research in the following focus areas : Accountability and Law of International Development Banks; Accountability and WTO Law; Accountability and International...
The heavy dumping of snow on the US East Coast made for a light dusting of posts this week. Kevin found the ICTR's recent acquittal of Augustin Ndindiliyimana after 11 years of pre-trial detention a stain on the tribunal's reputation. He also was not convinced by Eugene Kontorovich's use of Belgium's extension of the right to die to terminally ill minors as...
Eugene has graciously responded to my earlier post; you can find his new post here. It's well worth a read. I just want to offer a few thoughts on Eugene's response, because I think it fails to address the core of my critique: that it is incorrect to claim, as Eugene did in his first post, that Europe's opposition to the...
I'm currently in Belgium, teaching an intensive course on international criminal law at Katholieke University Leuven. So I was struck by Eugene Kontorovich's most recent post at the Volokh Conspiracy, in which he uses a new Belgian law permitting euthanasia for minors to criticize the Supreme Court's abolition of the juvenile death penalty in Roper v. Simmons. Here is the crux of...
Although the ICTY's recent high-profile acquittals have been getting all the attention, it's worth noting that the ICTR Appeals Chamber has just acquitted two high-ranking defendants, Augustin Ndindiliyimana, the former chief of staff of the Rwandan paramilitary police, and François-Xavier Nzuwonemeye, the former commander of a military reconnaissance battalion, on the ground that the Trial Chamber erred in concluding that they...
One of the most frustrating things about China's response to the Philippines arbitration has been the brevity of its legal discussion and analysis. In particular, I've long thought that China had a pretty good argument that the Annex VII UNCLOS arbitral tribunal does not have jurisdiction over the dispute since, in many ways, territorial disputes are at the heart of the...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa A Red Cross spokesman says a vehicle carrying five people has gone missing in northern Mali and an official from the group known as the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa said that an al-Qaeda-linked group in Mali has kidnapped them. The Office of the Prosecutor for...
