Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa South Sudan peace talks were scheduled to start on Sunday in Addis Ababa, but were delayed once again. Congolese troops staved off armed attacks in Kinshasa by armed followers of a religious leader who is critical of President Kabila over his decision to make peace with Tutsi rebels in...
The Cambridge Journal of International and Comparative Law (CJICL) will hold its Third Annual Conference on May 10-11, 2014 at the St John’s College Divinity School, University of Cambridge. This conference will explore approaches that question the traditional state-centric view of international and comparative law. The idea of universality suggests that international law applies equally and indiscriminately across domestic legal systems,...
If you've been away for the holidays, here is a summary of what we got up to at Opinio Juris over the break. Kevin posted Banksy's Christmas postcard, linked to his new essay on the legal recharacterization of facts at the ICC, and held another round in the Amnesty-Goodman-Heller debate on universal jurisdiction, and hoped the Muslim Brotherhood's legal team would explain the...
So this is baffling: The international legal team representing the Muslim Brotherhood has filed a complaint to the International Criminal Court, reported state-owned media agency MENA. The team has previously said on 16 August and on 15 November that, following their investigations, they have gathered evidence showing that members of the “military, police and political members of the military regime have committed...
There’s never a boring year in international law and 2013 turned out to be particularly eventful: Syria, major cases in front of national and international courts, a possible nuclear deal with Iran, and turmoil in Eastern Europe, Egypt, and South Sudan, to name but a few reasons. This post is not an attempt to log all that we have written about...
A brief consideration of the history of replacement judges at the ICTY reveals an increasing disregard for the rights of the accused in favor of avoiding costly and time-consuming re-hearings. Initially, part-heard cases could not continue with a replacement judge without the accused’s consent. Then, as “consent was only a safeguard,” the rules were amended to permit the two remaining judges to independently decide when continuing a part-heard case “would serve the interests of justice.”
Now, the Tribunal’s mismanagement of its first ever judicial disqualification has taken the matter to a new low, with Vojislav Šešelj’s responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity set to be decided by three judges, one of whom joined the case nearly two years after closing arguments were heard.
Although apparently united in their aim to see that the case continues no matter what, neither the Tribunal’s Acting President nor Šešelj’s newly constituted Trial Chamber can plausibly explain why allowing a new judge to enter the picture part-way through deliberations is in any way tenable under the ICTY Rules or compatible with Šešelj’s statutory guarantee of a fair trial.
Back in September, the Acting President decided that when a new judge replaces a disqualified one pursuant to Rule 15, Rule 15 bis should govern the procedures to be followed post-replacement. The latter rule permits ongoing proceedings to continue with a replacement judge pursuant to the accused’s consent or by judicial fiat. Problematically, however, 15 bis is limited to part-heard cases, a description that hardly pertains to the “more advanced stage” of Šešelj’s proceedings. As a result, the September order concluded that the provision ought to be applied mutatis mutandis.
The Šešelj facts, however, illustrate why this proposal was deeply flawed.
I've been working hard this break teaching in Hofstra's winter program in Curacao. But I couldn't resist stepping away from the beach and posting on the India-US flap over the arrest of an Indian diplomat in New York. Dapo Akande at EJIL Talk! has two great posts on the consular and diplomatic immunity legal issues. I have nothing to add,...
Train wreck, fiasco, disaster, dumpster fire, bad joke, kangaroo court, show trial -- take your pick, the description applies. Eviatar's post at Just Security a while back is a must-read; here is but one particularly disturbing snippet: Recent pre-trial hearings have revealed, for example, that the Guantanamo courtroom was equipped with microphones able to eavesdrop on privileged attorney-client communications; that the CIA...
Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa More than 1000 people have died in fighting in South Sudan in the past month, where a political crisis is turning into a tribal conflict. Zimbabwe's ambassador to Australia has requested asylum there a few days before her term was due to end. Americas Edward Snowden has declared "mission accomplished" and also issued...
John Sexton, the controversial President of NYU, has spoken out against the American Studies Association's much-debated resolution in favour of boycotting Israeli universities. Here is his statement, issued jointly with NYU's provost: We write on behalf of New York University to express our disappointment, disagreement, and opposition to the boycott advocated by your organization of Israeli academics and academic institutions. This boycott...
At long last, Amnesty has weighed in on the debate between me and Ryan about its methodology for determining whether a state exercises universal jurisdiction over at least one international crime. As I expected, and contrary to Ryan's claim, Amnesty does not consider it sufficient for a state to have incorporated the Rome Statute into its domestic legislation. On the...
Citizenship practice and policy is mostly below the news radar; change is slow; and the field tends not to be reported in any sort of integrated way. So here are the key threads from 2013 and how they might spin out in 2014. 1. Citizenship is not priceless. A growing number of states are selling citizenship. Malta is the latest. EU...
