In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

24 Aug

This week on Opinio Juris, Harold Koh, Bill Dodge and Hannah Buxbaum wrote an obituary for Professor Detlev Vagts, who passed away on August 20. As part of our ongoing Emerging Voices symposium, Peter Stockburger provocatively asked whether the R2P doctrine is the greatest marketing campaign international law has ever seen? Tamsin Paige shared some of the findings of her field work on piracy enforcement in the Seychelles. Laura Salvadego discussed the obligation to protect witnesses in the fight against transnational organized crime, whereas Sven Pfeiffer examined the feasibility of an international convention to ensure cooperation in the domestic prosecution of international crimes. HJ van der Merwe discussed the transformative influence of international criminal law on domestic law, and looked at the South African experience post-Apartheid.
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23 Aug

My friend Dapo Akande has a superb post at EJIL: Talk! discussing whether the ICC could prosecute the use of chemical weapons by the government in Syria. I agree almost entirely with Dapo's analysis, but I do want to offer a couple of thoughts about his discussion of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties: The argument that chemical weapons are...

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23 Aug

I am not sure if it is a trend, but recently several nations have raised dubious legal claims  over territory that was ceded away by treaty.  For instance, Spain has zero legal claim to Gibraltar, as far as I can tell, unless the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht ceding it to Britain "in perpetuity" can be wished away.  Bolivia has zero...

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23 Aug

[Michael W. Lewis is a Professor of Law at Ohio Northern University]

Mark Bowden’s cover story in this month’s The Atlantic magazine (available here) is one of the best things I’ve seen written on drones in the past several years. The Black Hawk Down author’s descriptions and takeaways on most aspects of the drone program are consistent with my own experience in military aviation and the information I have gathered from human rights organizations, drone operators, military lawyers, senior military, and CIA personnel who have run the drone programs, as well as from senior military policy advisors who were involved in changing the way drones are used.

Perhaps most importantly, his description of the drone operator’s reaction -- one of shock and uncertainty -- to performing a specific mission clearly undermines the widely circulated but exceptionally irresponsible criticism that drones have created a “Playstation mentality” among their operators. An additional fact that the article did not include, but that has been understood (although not widely reported) for several years now, is that drone operators suffer from PTSD-like symptoms at rates similar to -- and sometimes greater than -- those experienced by combat forces on the ground. It turns out that even from 8,000 miles away, taking human life and graphically observing your handiwork is nothing like playing a video game.

Another highlight is his treatment of the question of civilian casualties.

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22 Aug

[Margaret K. Lewis is Associate Professor of Law at Seton Hall Law School] The current trial of former high-ranking official Bo Xilai has shined the international spotlight on China’s criminal justice system. Headlines are simultaneously emphasizing the Chinese leadership’s concern that its rule is “vulnerable to an economic slowdown” after China’s meteoric rise to become the world’s second largest economy in terms of nominal GDP. What is lacking in both the media and academic literature is an in-depth discussion of the role criminal law has played in China’s stunning economic growth to date as well as the role it might play in the future. This inquiry is particularly timely on the heels of a once-a-decade leadership transition and as China’s ability to maintain a robust growth rate is facing rising skepticism. As explained in more detail in my article here, not only has the PRC leadership historically used criminal law in service of economic ends but also, going forward, criminal law will likely play a multifaceted role in the leadership’s strategy to sustain growth during what promise to be turbulent times. The debate about the role of law in China’s development has thus far largely focused on the Washington Consensus’s support for a market economy’s need for clear and enforceable contract and property rights, often referred to as the “rights hypothesis.” The law and development literature’s emphasis on empowering private actors by creating a neutral bureaucracy subject to objective judicial review has shifted the debate from the most basic function of law: creating order. And creating order starts with the coercive power of the state exercised through criminal law. Not only is criminal law a direct way for the government to deprive people of money, liberty, and life, it is cheaper and faster than building the civil and administrative law systems on which the rights hypothesis relies. If a these systems are not credible enough to deter activities that are detrimental to economic growth, the government can invoke the heavy hand of criminal law.
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22 Aug

The Second Circuit's decision in Balintulo v. Daimler* (already discussed at length by John Bellinger at Lawfare) is one of the first major U.S.court opinions to apply the Supreme Court's decision in Kiobel.  It is pretty much a complete smackdown of the ATS plaintiffs, and for any hopes they might have that the Kiobel decision's bar on extraterritoriality for ATS suits...

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22 Aug

[Dr. HJ van der Merwe is a Lecturer in Public Law Studies at the Law Faculty of the University of the Western Cape, South Africa] The degree to which states are able and willing to dynamically reflect international criminal norms within their domestic legal systems is crucial to the success of the project of international criminal justice. This is exemplified by...

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22 Aug

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces bombarded rebel-held suburbs of Damascus today, keeping up pressure on the besieged region a day after the opposition accused the army of gassing hundreds in a chemical weapons attack. In response, the U.N. Security Council said it was necessary to clarify the alleged chemical weapons attack in the suburbs of Damascus, but stopped short of explicitly...

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