In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

18 Aug

Announcements A prize has been established by the Society of International Economic Law and Cambridge University Press for the best essay submitted on any topic in any field of international economic law. The competition is open to all current undergraduate and graduate students of any university or other tertiary education institution, and those who have graduated from a university or other tertiary education institution no earlier than...

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17 Aug

It's been quite a month for the mainstream media. First, at FP.com, Elias Groll completely misstated the mens rea of the Espionage Act and refused to correct his mistake. (He obviously reads my tweets, because he re-tweeted a criticism I offered of a different article.) Then, at the Guardian, Owen Bowcott misrepresented the specific-direction requirement, eliding the distinction between aiding...

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17 Aug

This week on Opinio Juris, Kevin welcomed the new international criminal law blog Beyond The Hague to the blogosphere and sparked much debate with his post based on Judge Harhoff's recent comments about the ICTY Appeals Chamber's Perisic adoption of the specific-direction requirement and followed-up with a second post on the topic clarifying what the specific-direction requirement entails. Kevin also questioned the latest in...

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16 Aug

[Elizabeth Holland is an attorney with the law firm Foley Hoag LLP, where she focuses on international law and corporate social responsibility. The views expressed here are her own.] There is clear need for effective counterterrorism measures.  Equally compelling is the humanitarian imperative to address civilian need in situations of armed conflict.  It has been questioned, however, whether the balance struck...

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15 Aug

I've spent a lot of time thinking about treaties. And I've read lots and lots of them over the years. From time to time, however, I encounter something I find truly novel on the treaty front. A case in point, was this story in IT World yesterday.  It refers to pending negotiations between the United States and Germany on an agreement...

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15 Aug

The United Nations Secretary General’s fifth Report on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) was released last week.  This Report is titled “State Responsibility and Prevention” and focuses generally on governance mechanisms and early warning.  It also mentions the situation in Syria, stating that “[r]ecent events, including in the Syrian Arab Republic, underline the vital importance of early action to prevent...

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15 Aug

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan called for the U.N. Security Council to convene quickly and act after what he described as a massacre in Egypt. The UN has said the departure of a team of chemical weapons inspectors to Syria was "imminent." UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has insisted that US drone strikes must operate within international law. International medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres has announced...

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14 Aug

North and South Korea are holding fresh talks on reopening the Kaesong joint industrial park, ahead of South Korea-US military exercises next week. United Nations inspectors are investigating a North Korean ship caught carrying arms from Cuba amid suspicion that the vessel is in breach of a wide-ranging arms embargo on North Korea. British energy giant BP is suing the US government...

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13 Aug

Another person who should know better has misrepresented the ICTY's specific-direction requirement: Owen Bowcott, a legal correspondent for the Guardian. Here is the sub-headline of his new article on the impact of the Perisic judgment: Legal experts say proof that accused 'specifically directed' atrocities now required after tribunal acquits Serbian commanders. And here is the first paragraph of the article: Generals and politicians...

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13 Aug

[Elizabeth Stubbins Bates is a PhD candidate in Law at SOAS, University of London.] States must disseminate international humanitarian law (IHL) as widely as possible, and integrate it into programmes of military instruction. These obligations exist in international and non-international armed conflict (with differences between treaty and customary international law for the latter) and are among the few IHL duties on...

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