[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.

(more…)

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 I had suggested, which included a U.S. China scholar like Jacques Delisle from Penn, but also Chinese international law scholars like Bingbing Jia of Tsinghua and then added a nice dose of on-the-ground policy analysis from Stephanie Kleine-Ahlbrandt of the International Crisis Group.  It ended up being a terrific mix of style, topics, and expertise.  We didn’t rate a “livestream”, but I wanted to share a few thoughts for our readers on what I think is an important topic. I am not going to attempt to summarize their comments, but simply offer some of my reactions to their key points.

The idea of the panel (at least to me) was to consider whether the “rise of China” in global affairs has changed much about how China interacts with international law. In my crude formulation, the question is now less about what “international law does to China” but more what “China will do to international law.”

Both of the lawyer-panelists (Jia and Delisle) focused on “sovereignty” as the most important principle guiding China’s understanding and engagement with international law.

[James G. Stewart is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia. He is also presently a Global Hauser Fellow at New York University School of Law.

In my earlier post, I voiced grave concerns with the ICTY’s recent decision on complicity in a case called Prosecutor v Momčilo Perišić (see here). In my earlier posting, I provided background to this seminal case and criticized the new notion of “specific direction” as an actus reus element of complicity. In this second posting, I discuss how the concerns that animated the Appeals Chamber are better considered within the confines of the mental element required for complicity. Some of the judges in Perišić share this intuition—in their Separate Opinion, Judges Agius and Meron indicate that they might be willing to consider “specific direction” as a component of mens rea if they were entitled to rewrite tribunal jurisprudence (Appeal Judgment, Meron and Agius Separate Opinion, para. 3). For myself, I doubt whether the rewrite required would be anywhere as far-reaching as that they have adopted, especially when the extant law governing the mental element of complicity already contemplates these issues.

International criminal courts and tribunals apply varying mental elements for complicity, including purpose, knowledge and recklessness (see here, pp. 36-47). In the Perišić case, the Appeals Chamber’s recourse to the “specifically directed” standard as an actus reus appears to be a reaction to the notion of reckless complicity i.e. awareness of a probability that assistance will lead to crimes. As such, its embrace of the “specific direction” standard as part of the actus reus could be read as a pragmatic attempt at restraining the scope of an over-inclusive mental element. Nonetheless, if elevating the mental element through the back door like this is the desired effect, it is arbitrary, unprincipled and unnecessary when more moderate interpretations of existing doctrine better account for the underlying concerns.

There are several better routes. (more…)

[James G. Stewart is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia. He is also presently a Global Hauser Fellow at New York University School of Law.]

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is undoubtedly one of the most important institutions in the history of international law, not only for its catalytic effect in generating trials for international crimes before both international and domestic courts but also for breathing new life into both international humanitarian and criminal law. Yet, the ICTY Appeals Chamber recently rendered a judgment on the law of complicity in Prosecutor v Momčilo Perišić (see here), that could undo much of its legacy. In this first of two posts, I will set out the background to this case and consider the problem of “specific direction” as an element of the actus reus, which the Appeals Chamber has newly adopted. In a second post, I will focus on the mental element of complicity, showing how a more traditional approach to mens rea can address the underlying concerns without so seriously disrupting the law of complicity.

Two weeks ago, I attended a roundtable dedicated to the law of complicity at the University of San Diego.  Over the course of two days, a dozen of the best criminal theorists in the English-speaking world came together to debate four competing accounts of complicity.  On the flight home, however, I was more than slightly surprised to learn that the ICTY had just announced a new understanding of the doctrine that is without equivalent in any national law, very different from the Tribunal’s earlier jurisprudence and at odds with the views of all experts congregated at the roundtable I had just attended. Indeed, the new understanding of complicity that the ICTY adopts in Perišić appears inconsistent with foundational principles of criminal law in ways that seriously compromise the doctrine.  Below, I explain why this new position is so troublesome, before I go on to suggest a safer path the Appeals Chamber could have followed.

Momčilo Perišić was the Chief of the General Staff of the Yugoslav Army (VJ), making him the highest ranking officer in that army. Between August 1993 and November 1995, he provided extensive military and logistical aid to the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS), lead by the infamous Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić. At trial, Perišić was convicted of aiding and abetting international crimes perpetrated by the VRS, most notably for crimes associated with the sniping campaign used to terrorize civilians within Sarajevo and for the terrible bloodletting at Srebrenica. Perišić unquestionably provided the VRS with large quantities of weapons, seconded officers involved in these crimes to the VRS (Mladić included), and supported the VRS in a host of other ways. Was all this support innocuous assistance of a general type or criminal complicity in the international crimes undertaken by the VRS?
(more…)

The U.N. General Assembly has voted in favor of the Arms Trade Treaty, which would do what exactly?  Its proponents say it will create an international mechanism to regulate the international sale of arms and other weapons.  Its critics say it will infringe on the individual rights of citizens and nations to buy and possess weapons by requiring member states to keep national registries of end users.

I am probably more sympathetic to gun rights and the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment than most of my fellow co-bloggers, but my general take is that the National Rifle Association should not bother fighting this treaty. Earlier versions of this treaty could have given extra legal and political power to Congress for creating a more aggressive national gun and ammunition registry, but the final text is pretty weak on this point. It requires records of exports, but it only “encourages” records of imports.  For instance,

Article 12 Record keeping
1. Each State Party shall maintain national records, pursuant to its national laws and regulations, of its issuance of export authorizations or its actual exports of the conventional arms covered under Article 2 (1).
2. Each State Party is encouraged to maintain records of conventional arms covered under Article 2 (1) that are transferred to its territory as the final destination or that are authorized to transit or trans-ship territory under its jurisdiction.
3. Each State Party is encouraged to include in those records: the quantity, value, model/type, authorized international transfers of conventional arms covered under Article 2 (1), conventional arms actually transferred, details of exporting State(s), importing State(s), transit and trans-shipment State(s), and end users, as appropriate.
4. Records shall be kept for a minimum of ten years.

(Emphasis added).  A similar approach is followed in Article 3 (exports of ammunition) and Article 4 (exports of gun parts).  There is also no mandatory dispute settlement system, and a weak Secretariat with no enforcement or oversight powers.  With all due respect to Ted Bromund over at Heritage, I am not as worried about the philosophical issues he raises in this critique.

The bottom line is that as a practical matter, I don’t think this treaty can be used to regulate domestic use of firearms, or even the domestic registry of firearms.  In fact, I have doubts that this treaty will do much of anything for anyone given how weak its provisions are.  I have never heard the NRA worry about regulation of gun exports, and in any event, I am sure their members care little about that.

I would hope that the NRA will hold its fire on this treaty, and save its political credibility for laws that really would constrain the right of self-defense and the right to bear arms.  We’ll see.

I was struck by this line from an editorial in an Australian paper about the latest clashes between Sea Shepherd (e.g. the Ninth Circuit’s “pirates”) and Japanese whalers:

A depressingly large number of U.S. media outlets are covering the Italian Supreme Court’s decision to order a new trial in the case against Amanda Knox, the American exchange student charged with murdering her British roommate in Italy. Knox was convicted in trial court, but that conviction was overturned on appeal.

I say depressing because this is hardly the most significant international criminal trial going on these days. It is also depressing because most of the U.S. media coverage, and even the “expert” legal commentary, can’t seem to understand that if Italy requests Knox’ extradition, Knox has no double jeopardy defense.

The biggest mistake made by most of the media commentary (I’m looking at you Alan Dershowitz and various law prof types here) is that almost no one seems to have read the U.S. Italy Extradition Treaty.  Article VI reads:

Extradition shall not be granted when the person sought has been convicted, acquitted, or pardoned, or has served the sentence imposed, by the Requested Party for the same acts for which extradition is requested

(Emphasis added.) The Requested Party in this scenario would be the United States (Italy would be the “Requesting Party”).  The U.S. has never charged Knox with anything, much less with the murder of her UK roommate.  So Article VI does not bar Knox’ extradition to Italy. Period.

What about the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment prohibition on Double Jeopardy? Well, the short answer is that the Fifth Amendment’s Double Jeopardy Protection doesn’t apply in an extradition proceeding since the U.S. is not the one trying Knox (they are just handing her over).  The long answer is that even if the Fifth Amendment did apply, under US law, an appeal that overturns a lower court conviction is not an acquittal for purposes of the Fifth Amendment.  That is basically what happened here.  Knox was convicted, then her conviction was overturned on appeal, and then the appellate court judgment was reversed, and a new trial ordered (albeit at the appellate level). This is not double jeopardy, either under Italian law or US law.

So Knox had better get ready to be extradited, or she better get ready to move to Brazil. She has no serious double jeopardy defense here that I can see.  Now, if only someone would tell Alan Dershowitz.

Just in case there was any doubt, the Philippines-China arbitration over the South China Sea will go forward.  International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea President Shunji Yanai has appointed a second arbitrator.

The [Philippines] Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) confirmed on Monday that the Itlos president, Judge Shunji Yanai, appointed Polish Itlos Judge Stanislaw Pawlak to the panel last week, leaving only three more slots to be filled in the tribunal.

Pawlak will join the panel with German Judge Rudiger Wolfrum, the arbiter appointed by the Philippines when it announced its arbitration bid in January.

The Polish judge’s appointment is the first for Yanai, who took on the task of composing the arbitral panel after China announced its rejection of the proceedings.

As I discussed here earlier, China’s refusal to appoint an arbitrator does not in any way divest the arbitral tribunal of jurisdiction under the Annex VII of UNCLOS.  President Yanai now will appoint the remaining three arbitrators, as he would do whether or not China had acted to appoint an arbitrator.

The interesting question is what China will do now.  It seems likely that they will continue to ignore the arbitration and question its propriety.  But China can no longer claim that the arbitration cannot proceed without China’s participation.  This article from the reliably hawkish state-owned Global Times offers a pretty clear-eyed analysis, correctly noting that UNCLOS itself grants the ITLOS arbitral tribunal the power to determine its own jurisdiction, and that UNCLOS also specifies the procedure for appointing arbitrators.  It also notes that China’s position is going to be somewhat more difficult, and that the Philippines is using this legal proceeding to level the playing field somewhat in this maritime dispute.

The nationality of President Shunji Yanai has not gone unnoticed.  As this news broadcast puts it, “Expert Says Nationality of ITLoS President Detrimental to China”.  The broadcast (full of ominous shots of the Japanese flags (interspersed with ominous shots of the U.S. flag since the US is often believed to be behind the Philippines litigation) also notes that Japanese nationals have also acquired other important positions within UNCLOS.  If things start to go south for China in UNCLOS institutions, expect this little factoid about Japan’s nefarious control of UNCLOS institutions to pop up more often in the Chinese media.

China still has the option to show up to contest jurisdiction once the tribunal is constituted. I think they could still do that, and that they would have a plausible case against jurisdiction here. But it is seems that China is committed to its path of rejecting the arbitration. Indeed, if the tribunal finds they have no jurisdiction, China wins.  But if the tribunal rules it can hear the case, expect the denunciations of the Japanese- appointed one-sided illegal tribunal to start flowing.

As this Voice of America report notes, the Philippine government is determined to forge ahead with its UNCLOS arbitration, even though China is refusing to participate in the arbitration. This seems to be a sensible strategy, at least from a legal point of view, because it is plainly within its legal rights to do so.

But would a one-party arbitration be futile?  The VOA quotes Prof. Myron Nordquist of UVA on this point:

But how would one-party arbitration work, exactly? Professor Myron Nordquist of the Center for Oceans Law and Policy at the University of Virginia calls the situation “quite bizarre.”

“For one thing, it is doomed to failure because if the party won’t consent to the arbitration there is then no enforcement,” said Nordquist. “How would they expect a country that didn’t want to have a dispute settled by third parties to feel in any sense bound by a decision where they didn’t even participate?”

I agree the situation is odd, but it is not unprecedented.  The Annex VII provisions clearly contemplate situations where one party refuses to appoint an arbitrator by giving the power to the President of ITLOS to appoint the rest of the tribunal.  Moreover, general international arbitral practice is to allow arbitrations to proceed even when one party (like China) boycotts the whole proceeding. (See Gary Born, International Commercial Arbitration, at 449-50). In such cases, the tribunal typically continues to give notice to the boycotting party, and will reach a reasoned award based on its own assessment of the law and facts. It does not typically simply accept the participating party’s submissions as true.

Moreover, I take issue with Professor Nordquist’s conclusion that the arbitration is “doomed to failure because if the party won’t consent to the arbitration there is then no enforcement.”  His statement embeds a variety of (understandable) misunderstandings about the nature of Annex VII arbitration.

First of all, let’s be clear.  China has already consented to Annex VII arbitration, at least with respect to allowing a tribunal to be constituted and to determine whether it has jurisdiction in a dispute. China consented when it acceded to UNCLOS. All China has done so far is refuse to appoint an arbitrator.

Second, as any private international commercial arbitrator could tell you, consent to an arbitration does not in any way guarantee enforcement.  Indeed, in private commercial arbitrations, judicial enforcement proceedings are common and necessary to force parties to comply with arbitral awards.

To put this another way, if China had participated in the arbitration by appointing an arbitrator, I don’t think it would have affected its likelihood of complying with any arbitral award.  UNCLOS does not have any sanctions regime akin to, say the Dispute Settlement Understanding of the WTO, so China would not face any formal sanctions if it failed to comply with an arbitral award.

All of this is a long way of saying, the decision by the Philippines to continue with the arbitration (sans China) is not really any more futile than if China had fully participated.  In both situations, China would likely not have complied  with any unfavorable award.  Any award is only going to be useful to rally other countries to the Philippines’ side as well as in marshaling global public opinion to its cause (as Prof. Nordquist does note).  Indeed, it seems that the Philippines’ American lawyer is banking on the negative reputational effects of this case eventually pushing China to come around to participate in the arbitration. (FWIW, I am skeptical that the Chinese government can be manipulated this way, especially since domestic public opinion in China leans in the opposite direction.)

For this to work, though, the Philippines has got to try to educate the global media more effectively. Headlines from USA Today, for instance, describing China as rejecting “UN Mediation” only make things murkier for them.  China is going to play the “we-just-want-to-negotiate-unlike-you-troublesome-Filipinos” card.  The Philippines needs to play the “we-are-just-asking-for-the-arbitration-that-you-consented-to” card.  So far, they are not doing all that well.

Breaking news:  China has rejected arbitration under Annex VII of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea with the Philippines, dealing a heavy blow to the future of dispute settlement under UNCLOS (h/t China Law Prof Blog).  According to this China Daily report,

“Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Ma Keqing had an appointment with officials from the Philippines’ Foreign Ministry on Tuesday and returned a note and related notice after expressing China’s rejection,” spokesman Hong Lei said at a daily press briefing.

“The note and related notice not only violate the consensus enshrined in the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), but are also factually flawed and contain false accusations,” Hong said.

As I have noted here (and as Prof. Clarke notes as well), the Philippines is now within its rights to ask the President of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea to appoint all four remaining arbitrators for the Annex VII tribunal.  Once the President of ITLOS has done so, the duly constituted arbitral tribunal may act even without China’s participation.

Upon reflection, I am not really surprised China has decided to walk away from the Annex VII tribunal.  As I noted earlier, such tribunals have tended to combine their considerations of jurisdiction with those of the merits.  They have not generally bifurcated their proceedings, nor do they seem to have any obligation to do so.

This is a problem for China because while their jurisdictional challenge is pretty strong, their argument on the merits is undeveloped and fuzzy.  They have never exactly spelled out what they mean by having “indisputable sovereignty” over the South China Sea.   Do they mean it is a territorial sea? Or that they have general economic rights similar to an Exclusive Economic Zone?

So I am not shocked that China is walking away here. The question for the Philipppines is: what next? Do they continue with the Annex VII arbitration without China? Well, their DFA seems ready to move forward without China.  But would any award issued by this tribunal be pretty meaningless?

I’m not sure. I think that any award there would have little impact on China, but it should be useful in helping rally allies in Southeast Asia, especially within ASEAN.  It is not going to stop China much, but an award that undermines the legality of China’s claims is certainly better to have than not to have. But it is not nearly as much as it would have been if China had played ball (and lost).

China’s statement contains a curious and hard to understand argument.  According to the Chinese foreign ministry, the Philippines arbitration claim “complicates” resolution of conflicts in the South China Sea in violation of the Declaration on Parties’ Conduct in the South China Sea.    Presumably, China is referring to Article 5 of the Declaration:

5. The Parties undertake to exercise self-restraint in the conduct of activities that would complicate or escalate disputes and affect peace and stability including, among others, refraining from action of inhabiting on the presently uninhabited islands, reefs, shoals, cays, and other features and to handle their differences in a constructive manner.

Does making an arbitration claim under Annex VII “complicate or escalate disputes”?  Given the whole context of Paragraph 5, I am highly doubtful of this argument. One must also note that the previous paragraph instructs all parties to

undertake to resolve their territorial and jurisdictional disputes by peaceful means, without resorting to the threat or use of force, through friendly consultations and negotiations by sovereign states directly concerned, in accordance with universally recognized principles of international law, including the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea;

The explicit reference to UNCLOS (albeit the 1982 version) doesn’t really add much weight to the claim that the the Declaration somehow prohibits parties from resorting to UNCLOS arbitration.  If anything, it goes the other way.  Given that the Declaration is not technically binding under international law anyway, let’s just say this is the weakest of a series of weak arguments trotted out by China in this dispute.

So let’s just call this what it is: China is thumbing its nose at UNCLOS and it has now dealt a  serious, near fatal blow, to the UNCLOS dispute settlement system, at least in its ability to resolve serious disputes involving major powers.  UNCLOS arbitration is not going to restrain China in any significant way. At least, China doesn’t think it will pay any serious costs to walking away, which is why it is willing to accept the equivalent of a default judgment.

From the perspective of the United States, the China-Philippines episode is a cautionary tale. On the one hand, it suggests that those critics of UNCLOS worried about the impact of Annex VII arbitration tribunals need not fear them all that much.  On the other hand, this episode should put an end to the always silly argument that the US needed to join UNCLOS in order to use UNCLOS against China.  That was never really going to work, and we now have ample evidence.

As far as I can tell, the Chinese government continues to pretend as if the Philippines’ Law of the Sea arbitration claim doesn’t exist.  Articles like this one suggest the Philippines government continues to wait for some official or unofficial Chinese response.  The February 22 deadline for China to appoint an arbitrator is fast approaching.

There are obviously bigger things going on in the world, and in East Asia (the North Korea nuclear tests come to mind).  But it is worth noting that I ran across, for the first time, an article in the Chinese press discussing the arbitration with sophistication and a very good understanding of the Annex VII process.  Published in the journal “瞭望新闻周刊“ or “Outlook Newsweekly”, the article describes the views of an unnamed expert advising the Chinese government not to take the Filipino arbitration claim lightly.

The expert offers a few considerations for the Chinese government.  Among other things, the expert notes that the Philippines is using this arbitration to gain support and sympathy from its neighbors (Vietnam is supporting) and its allies (US Secretary of State Kerry and the EU Parliament head support it). The claim also hypes suspicions of China at the United Nations and elsewhere.

More interestingly, the expert further notes that if China does nothing, the arbitration will still continue with the Japanese ITLOS president appointing the rest of the members.  (Maybe the expert was reading Opinio Juris!).  In any event, the expert advises the Chinese government to appoint an arbitrator and work hard to convince to arbitration tribunal to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction.  Moreover, China can at any time during the arbitration work out a settlement agreement with the Philippines.  (There is more to the article, but this is the key advice).

So is this is a sign of where the Chinese government is going? It seems unlikely that the musings of an unnamed expert will be very important, but who knows? At the very least, it seems as if there is some thinking on this issue going on in China.  The 30 day clock continues to tick. Only six days left!

I used to blog regularly about the Whale Wars, my name for the ongoing struggle between Japanese Whalers and those groups devoted to protecting whales.  But I stopped almost three years ago when Australia filed its case against Japan in the ICJ, since nothing important seems to have happened since then.  (Did we really need 22 months for written proceedings, when the reply and rejoinder weren’t even permitted? And then a decision to let New Zealand to intervene, and no doubt they need time to file papers.  Someone, wake me up when a decision or hearing is in sight!)

I used to watch TV regularly, but stopped a few years ago in an effort to set a good example for my daughter. But I regret that now because, I might have run across this program on Animal Planet, Whale Wars, about the “heroic” Sea Shepherd group that is engaged in a decade long effort to harass or even block Japanese whalers.  (Strangely enough, the “heroic” lawyers duking out these issues at the ICJ don’t rate their own show, or even make it into this show as cameos.  It’s because they need 22 months to file two measly memorials!).

As Jessica noted yesterday, the Whale Wars (as TV programming) came to an abrupt end yesterday when the US Supreme Court denied an emergency petition to overturn an injunction by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit enjoining the Sea Shepherd from coming within 500 feet of active Japanese whalers.

I don’t have access to the papers filed in the Supreme Court petition, but the jurisdictional argument described in the news seems pretty sketchy, certainly as to personal jurisdiction.  I don’t think the Japanese whalers’ merits claims are very persuasive either, but given that the star of the show is based in the Seattle, and that the organization is based in Seattle, the fact that it uses an australian affiliate can’t possibly be enough to avoid personal jurisdiction in Seattle courts.

In any event, I am pleased the Whale Wars has made it into US courts.  I look forward to re-opening my coverage of the various disputes, as the US courts will seem quite a “rocket docket” when compared to the glacial pace of the ICJ.