In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Criminal Law

19 Mar

[Mark Kersten is a PhD student in International Relations at the London School of Economics] International lawyers will undoubtedly pour over the landmark verdict handed down this week by the International Criminal Court, in which Thomas Lubanga Dyilo was found guilty of conscripting, enlisting and using child soldiers in the long-standing and brutal conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The...

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19 Mar

[Mark A. Drumbl is the Class of 1975 Alumni Professor at Washington and Lee University and author of Reimagining Child Soldiers (OUP, 2012).] A long time in coming, to be sure, and slightly anticlimactic, the Lubanga judgment nonetheless represents a watershed – a first, in any event, for the ICC.  What might the legacies of the Lubanga judgment be? I...

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18 Mar

[James G. Stewart is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of British Columbia] The first judgment of the International Criminal Court is cause for real celebration, but we must not let our justifiable elation overshadow all that work the judgment leaves undone. Let me begin by rejoicing, before I express concerns. This is the first determination of guilt by a...

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18 Mar

[Dov Jacobs is an Assistant Professor of International Law at Leiden University. He also blogs at Spreading the Jam where he has already commented on several aspects of the Lubanga Judgment.] The Lubanga trial was not only being scrutinized for the charges that were included (the use of child soldiers in armed conflict). The charges that were not included always loomed close by,...

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18 Mar

[Cecile Aptel is Associate Professor of International Law at the Fletcher School, Tufts University] Among the many legal and factual issues raised by the landmark Lubanga judgment rendered by the ICC this week, a central one concerns the definition of “the use [of children under 15] to participate actively in hostilities” qualified as war crimes under both article 8(2)(b)(xxvi) and 8(2)(e)(vii)...

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17 Mar

I don't have any particular insights to add on the very interesting and detailed roundtable discussion folks are having on the Lubanga judgment.  But I can't resist pointing out this op-ed by Ian Paisley (the son of a leading figure on the Northern Irish settlement) in the New York Times slamming the ICC as a obstruction to national reconciliation and...

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16 Mar

I'll have much to say about various legal aspects of the Lubanga judgment in the days to come, but I wanted to start by discussing the relatively narrow -- though critically important -- point that Jens addressed in his post: the dispute between the majority and Judge Fulford concerning the correct interpretation of co-perpetration in Article 25(3)(a) of the Rome...

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15 Mar

[Jens Ohlin is Associate Professor of Law at Cornell Law School] Cross-posted at LieberCode. So the ICC has released its first verdict and it only took 10 years.  Most media reports are concentrating on the substantive crime – the use of child soldiers – because that issue has suddenly gained popular currency with the Kony2012 viral video. But the Lubanga decision is also...

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14 Mar

From AllAfrica.com: Today, International Criminal Court (ICC) judges in The Hague delivered the Court's first verdict—a finding of guilt against former Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga. Prosecutors accused Lubanga of the war crimes of conscripting, enlisting, and using children under the age of 15 years for combat purposes while he served as political head of the Union of Congolese...

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08 Mar

Scott Peterson has a fantastic timeline at the Christian Science Monitor that catalogs all the times Western countries have predicted Iran's imminent entry into the nuclear club.  Some highlights: 1984: Soon after West German engineers visit the unfinished Bushehr nuclear reactor, Jane's Defence Weekly quotes West German intelligence sources saying that Iran's production of a bomb "is entering its...

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07 Mar

I am teaching IHL in Jericho this week, so I don't have as much time as I'd like to weigh in on the increasingly surreal debate over whether the right of self-defense in Article 51 of the UN Charter permits the U.S. or Israel to attack a country that does not have nuclear weapons, could not build a nuclear weapon...

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