Critical Approaches

Whether you are the most ardent football aficionado, or just an Arsenal fan, the controversies generated by the World Cup in Qatar will have reached your ears. Depending on political priorities, your interlocutor may have furnished a tapestry of accusations justifying the boycott of this tournament. Throughout the critique, three broad themes prevail: labour-related violations of human rights, gender-specific violations...

Open source investigation (OSINT) methods have become frequently used by international courts, human rights fact-finding bodies, and other non-governmental organisations. Though OSINT remains a vital tool for increasing accountability for human rights violations and international crimes, it still has its issues with regards to fairness, equality, and diversity (both in terms of those working in the field and in terms...

[Dr Vivek Bhatt is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Public International Law at the University of Aberdeen and a Fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM), Utrecht University.]   “The struggle is inner: Chicano, indio, American Indian, mojado, mexicano, immigrant Latino, Anglo in power, working class Anglo, Black, Asian--our psyches resemble the bordertowns and are populated by the same people. The struggle...

1- White Supremacy and the International Legal Order Writing in 1997, Charles Mills threw a grenade into political theory. With a touch of hyperbole, we might even say he collapsed the contours of the social sciences. Standard undergraduate philosophy courses, he tells us, cover two thousand years of political thought. Mainstream philosophers introduce students to liberalism and libertarianism, capitalism and communitarianism, socialism...

International lawyers do debate class, but not necessarily in their own professional milieu. There is significant literature on ‘bourgeois’ international law, while the discussion as to what a ‘proletarian’ international law might look like is still alive and well (see for example here, here, and here). Despite these long-standing ties between international legal scholarship and the question of class, there...

[Christine Bell is Director of PeaceRep (Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform), Assistant Principal (Global Justice) and Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Edinburgh. The opinions expressed herein are the author’s own. Thanks are due to the PeaceRep programme funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, for support to write the piece.] Introduction: Need for a Geopolitical Dimension to Settlement This contribution...

Please think about submitting an abstract for a conference on the legacy of the much loved, much missed, and much lamented Robert Cryer. The conference announcement is below: Robert Cryer: A Life in Law and a Law unto Himself We greatly miss Professor Rob Cryer, who passed away in 2021 at the age of forty-six. We aim to channel this loss, those...

[Danya Chaikel is currently consulting with FIDH's International Justice Desk and is the Co-Vice Chair of the IBA’s War Crimes Committee.] This amicus curiae brief was submitted by: Louise Arimatsu, Adejoké Babington-Ashaye, Danya Chaikel, Christine Chinkin, Carolyn Edgerton, Angela Mudukuti, and Cynthia T. Tai.* Following the Ongwen Appeals Chamber’s (AC) invitation to scholars and legal practitioners we submitted an amicus brief contending that duress and sexual violence...

[Matt Cannock is the Head of Amnesty International’s Centre for International Justice. Dr. Rosemary Grey is a Lecturer at Sydney Law School and a Sydney Southeast Asia Centre DECRA Fellow. Akila Radhakrishnan is the President of the Global Justice Center, where she directs GJC’s work to establish legal precedents protecting human rights and ensuring gender equality. Alix Vuillem is the Senior Advocacy Adviser / Program Manager...

[Valerie Oosterveld is Professor of International Law at Western University’s Faculty of Law (Canada) and Associate Director of the Centre for Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction. Kathleen M. Maloney is Visiting Law Professor at Lewis & Clark Law School and Founding Board Member of the international human rights organization, Just Planet. Melanie O’Brien is Associate Professor of International Law at the University of Western...

[Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum is Associate Professor of Clinical Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law where she directs the Benjamin B. Ferencz Human Rights and Atrocity Prevention Clinic and the Cardozo Law Institute in Holocaust and Human Rights (CLIHHR). Magali Maystre is an international criminal and human rights lawyer and adviser with a background of more than 15 years...

[Alexandra Lily Kather (she/they) is a lawyer, international justice practitioner & co-founder of the Emergent Justice Collective (EJC). Their work focuses, inter alia, on strategically addressing the intersectional dimensions of core international crimes. Angela Mudukuti is a member of Opinio Juris and a human rights lawyer specialised in international criminal law. She has worked with a variety of international organsisations including the International Criminal Court and Human Rights...