In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

09 Apr

[Andreas Føllesdal is Professor at Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, University of Oslo] This post is part of our symposium on the latest issue of the Leiden Journal of International Law. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. The expansive growth and influence of international courts, tribunals, and quasi-judicial bodies (ICTs) fuels well deserved interest across disciplines far beyond public international law, including political science and political philosophy. How are we to describe, explain, and assess this partial abdication of sovereignty by the main actors of a (formerly) state-centric world order?  Armin von Bogdandy and Ingo Venzke have again joined forces to illuminate these profound issues of the functions and legitimacy of ICTs, tying together and expanding on previous valuable insights (von Bogdandy and Venzke, 2011). Von Bogdandy and Venzke diagnose some previous scholarship of ICTs as suffering from a two-fold myopia. Scholars have tended to focus on only one social function of international courts, and on a single source of legitimation: dispute settlement and state consent. Von Bogdandy and Venzke start with the plausible and well-argued observation that ICTs now cause impact in ways far beyond that of instruments for settling disputes among their creators. These further functions stabilize normative expectations by several means: law making; judicial interpretation; and, the control and (hence) legitimation of other authorities (cf, Alter 2013). Von Bogdandy and Venzke furthermore identify intriguing and far-reaching challenges of ICTs to the state-centred world order paradigm. Three further supplemental and partially competing traditions are those that see ICTs as  agents (‘organs’) of a world community, ‘institutions’ of legal regimes, and as actors who exercise public authority. Implications range from the reduced salience of state consent as the main mode of legitimation of international law and courts, entailing ‘restrictive interpretation’ to the appropriate role of amici curiae briefs and the need to differentiate modes of legitimation amongst the ICTs. The following observations from a fellow traveller point to some topics for further elaboration and development. 
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09 Apr

[Dov Jacobs is the Senior Editor for Expert Blogging at the Leiden Journal of International Law and Assistant Professor of International Law at Leiden University] This symposium launches our second year of collaboration with Opinio Juris, which we hope to be as fruitful as the first in combining the in-depth discussions that arise in the Leiden Journal of International Law with the dynamic online community of the blogosphere. In order to start the new year with a bang, we bring you, from Volume 26-1 of LJIL, two discussions of fundamental issues of international law: the functions of international tribunals and the philosophy of international criminal law. The first discussion has as a starting point the article by Armin von Bogdandy and Ingo Venzke entitled On the Functions of International Courts: An Appraisal in Light of Their Burgeoning Public Authority. In this piece, the authors suggest to look beyond the traditional dispute settlement function of international courts in order to assess other functions, such as law making and control and legitimation of authority exercised by others. This is, for the authors, the only way to better understand the role and place of international courts in the international legal order as exercising public authority and requiring ‘democratic legitimation’. In their thoughtful reactions, Ruti Teitel, from New York Law School, and Andreas Follesdal, from the University of Oslo, both question the choices made by the authors of the article. They mostly question the choice of ‘functions’ (why these and not others?) and the basis for legitimacy of international tribunals (why ‘democratic’ legitimacy? In whose name?). I share the methodological concerns of the commentators in this respect, and would even go a little further on the question of functions and legitimacy.
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09 Apr

Global leaders have paid their respects to Margaret Thatcher, the UK's first female prime minister, after her death yesterday. Thousands of North Korean workers have failed to show up for work at a shared industrial complex with South Korea after the North Korean leadership said it would withdraw workers and suspend work.  With more on the North Korea situation, Foreign Policy asks...

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08 Apr

There are reports stating that North Korea is preparing to carry out a fourth nuclear test based on intelligence coming out of South Korea.  In the face of the rising tensions on the Korean peninsula, Foreign Policy offers advice about how to stop a nuclear war. Without directly naming North Korea, China has been critical of its recent actions to escalate tension on...

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08 Apr

As regular readers of this blog might have noticed, I have become more and more interested China and its engagement with international law issues.   Last year, I proposed to the ASIL Planning Committee that we put together a panel of leading U.S. China law scholars.  But the ASIL organizers pushed back and put together a much more diverse group than...

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07 Apr

Calls for papers In case you haven't seen it yet, we have just launched our own call for papers aimed at LL.M, Ph.D and S.J.D students to participate in our New Voices symposium starting in July. The deadline for submissions is May 1, 2013. The Forced Migration Review invites submissions for a special issue on Detention and Deportation. Submissions are due April 15, 2013. See the call here. The Asian Society...

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06 Apr

Are you an international law student or a recent graduate with an idea that you’d like you tell our readers about? Then we at Opinio Juris want to know about you! This July, we are planning to launch a new feature called New Voices: a two-month online symposium to run alongside our regular posts. Our goal is to give students...

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06 Apr

This week on Opinio Juris, we brought you the latest round in the Goodman-Heller debate on capture v kill, in which Ryan Goodman responded to Kevin's comments on this blog a few weeks ago. Kevin started his week by pointing to turmoil in Sweden's prosecution of Julian Assange, following the resignation of the prosecutor and the decision by one of his accusers to...

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05 Apr

As usual, the American Society of International Law conference in Washington, D.C. is filled with panels of interest and great off line conversations with friends and colleagues. Good to see many OJ’ers there. Among many other things, I wanted to highlight yesterday’s lively discussions on targeted killing, including a panel featuring Daniel Bethlehem, Marco Sassoli, Hina Shamsi and David Glazier – a wonderfully thoughtful group. I take it the panel was available via live stream so would expect it will be posted in recorded form at some point as well. For now, a few assorted notes (in no particular order).
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05 Apr

[Jenia Iontcheva Turner is a Professor at SMU Dedman School of Law.] This post is part of the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics Vol. 45, No. 1 symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. Many thanks to Opinio Juris and the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics for hosting the symposium and to Margaret deGuzman, Alex Whiting, Sonja Starr, James Stewart, and Kevin Heller for agreeing to read and comment on my article. I would like to use this opportunity to address briefly several key points raised by the commentators.   1) The balancing approach and the ICC’s competing purposes In the article, I argue that the ICC pursues multiple and sometimes competing goals—protecting defendants’ rights, promoting respect for the rule of law, holding perpetrators of international crimes responsible, and establishing a record of the atrocities. While the first two goals generally tend to favor stricter remedies for prosecutorial misconduct, the last two goals call for a more tempered approach. Meg deGuzman agrees that the balancing approach is necessary to accommodate the competing goals of the ICC, but she argues that the goal of promoting global norms takes precedence. To attain this goal, the court should err on the side of defendants’ rights when addressing prosecutorial misconduct. This would help spread respect for the highest standards of procedural fairness.
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05 Apr

[Kevin Jon Heller is currently Associate Professor & Reader at Melbourne Law School.]

This post is part of the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics Vol. 45, No. 1 symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below.

I appreciate the opportunity to respond to Jenia’s excellent article. I always learn from her scholarship, and this article is no exception. That said, I find myself in an unusual quandary. When asked to critique an article, I normally take issue with its substance. There is very little substance in Jenia’s article, however, with which I disagree. Indeed, if she and I were both ICC judges, I imagine that we would almost always agree on the appropriate remedy or sanction for a violation of a defendant’s rights. That said, I find the rhetoric of Jenia’s article very problematic. To begin with, I think her distinction between “absolutist” and “balancing” approaches to remedies misleads more than it enlightens. Like my friend Meg DeGuzman, I don’t believe that the ICC has ever engaged in the “absolutist” approach, selecting remedies for misconduct without reference to the consequences for victims, the penological rationales of international criminal law (ICL), etc. When the Court has selected a drastic remedy for a violation of the defendant’s rights, it has done so only when the violation seriously compromised the Court’s ability to accurately determine the defendant’s guilt or innocence. The Trial Chamber initially stayed the proceedings in Lubanga, for example, only when it lost faith in the OTP’s ability to identify (much less disclose) exculpatory evidence. In Jenia’s own words (p. 188), “[w]ithout examining the documents at issue, the Chamber would be unable to ensure that the verdict in the case was fair and accurate.” The Appeals Chamber, in turn, only lifted the stay once it became clear that the OTP would, in fact, disclose any and all exculpatory evidence to the defendant.
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