In association with the International Commission of Jurists

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16 Dec

[Darryl Robinson is an Associate Professor at Queen’s University Faculty of Law (Canada), specializing in international criminal justice.]  Carsten Stahn’s Justice as Message is a singularly impressive work.  Carsten weaves together ideas from several bodies of literature, in a manner that is breathtaking in its depth, breadth and sensitivity.  Over the last 25 years, scholarship on international criminal law (ICL) has been greatly enriched.  In earlier, lonelier days...

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15 Dec

[Mark A. Drumbl is the Class of 1975 Alumni Professor of Law and Director, Transnational Law Institute, Washington and Lee University.] Carsten Stahn, in the very first line of his terrifically impressive book, invokes a jingle from The Police. When I was teenage boy, I loved the Police. I greatly fancied Sting, his confidence and his presence, and how in his songs he tapped into the churn and...

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14 Dec

[Diane Marie Amann is the Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law and Faculty Co-Director of the Dean Rusk International Law Center at the University of Georgia School of Law.] The eye cannot help but be drawn to the cover of Justice as Message, the new analysis by Carsten Stahn of, to quote the subtitle, Expressivist Foundations of International Criminal Justice. On the high-gloss paper jacket...

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14 Dec

[Carsten Stahn is a Professor of International Criminal Law and Global Justice at Leiden Law School, Programme Director of the Grotius Centre (The Hague) and author of Justice as Message: Expressivist Foundations of International Law.] Blogs play an essential role in discussing scholarship. With more books being published each year, it is difficult for a general readership to keep track of publications...

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14 Dec

This week, we are happy to host an insightful discussion on Carsten Stahn's latest book, Justice as Message: Expressivist Foundations of International Criminal Justice, published by Oxford University Press. From the publisher: International criminal justice relies on messages, speech acts, and performative practices in order to convey social meaning. Major criminal proceedings, such as Nuremberg, Tokyo, and other post-World War II...

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12 Dec

[Gunnar M. Ekeløve-Slydal is the Acting Secretary General of The Norwegian Helsinki Committee.] Ensuring individual integrity in international justice may at times have been perceived as a concern that can be accommodated by mere declarations and codes of conduct and compliance procedures. Not so anymore. I believe there has been a recognition that integrity is both a legally binding term within international courts, as well as a...

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12 Dec

In my previous post, which was quite critical of the OTP's decision not to seek authorization to investigate British war crimes in Iraq, I made two central points. The first was that, pursuant to the Afghanistan appeals judgment, the OTP would not have needed to present the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) with information concerning complementarity and the PTC would not have...

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11 Dec

[Andreas Schueller is the Director of the International Crimes and Accountability Program at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights.] On 9 December 2020, the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague announced its decision to close the preliminary examination into alleged war crimes by British troops in Iraq between 2003 and 2009. The OTP explained...

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11 Dec

[Beth S. Lyons has been a criminal defence attorney for more than 30 years, practicing almost exclusively in Legal Aid programs in New York City (trial and appellate levels) and in the international courts and tribunals; she currently is one of the counsel representing Mr. Dominic Ongwen.] As a criminal defence attorney at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and...

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11 Dec

[Danilo Ruggero Di Bella is a lawyer at Bottega Di Bella.] The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic or Western Sahara is one of the seventeen Non-Self-Governing Territories (NSGTs) that remain yet to be decolonized, according to Chapter XI of the UN Charter. Originally, a Spanish protectorate who proclaimed its independence in 1976, Western Sahara has been recognized as a State by several countries. However, two third of its territory...

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11 Dec

[Vinai Kumar Singh is the Deputy Director of the Indian Society of International Law.] Thirty-four years have elapsed since the United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development (UNDRD) was first adopted in 1986. The international law instrument to effectively operationalise the right to development is yet to come into existence. The draft Convention on the Right to Development (A/HRC/WG.2/21/2) (hereinafter “draft Convention”) along with commentaries (A/HRC/WG.2/21/2/Add.1, 20...

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