International Criminal Law

[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...

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...

[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...

[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...

[Jennifer Trahan is Clinical Professor and Director of the Concentration in International Law and Human Rights at the NYU Center for Global Affairs and author of Existing Legal Limits to Security Council Veto Power in the Face of Atrocity Crimes (CUP 2020), winner of the “2020 ABILA Book of the Year Award” by the American Branch of the International Law Association.] This is...

[Jennifer Trahan is Clinical Professor and Director of the Concentration in International Law and Human Rights at the NYU Center for Global Affairs and author of Existing Legal Limits to Security Council Veto Power in the Face of Atrocity Crimes (CUP 2020), winner of the “2020 ABILA Book of the Year Award” by the American Branch of the International Law Association.] I am...

[Carrie McDougall (@IntLawCarrie) is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne and former Legal Specialist at the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Legal Adviser at Australia’s Mission to the United Nations.] In her new book, Existing Legal Limits to Security Council Veto Power in the Face of Atrocity Crimes, Jennifer Trahan provides an excellent overview of the veto power enjoyed by the Permanent...

[Roger Clark is the Board of Governors Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School; he also represented Samoa in the negotiations on the International Criminal Court.] Jennifer Trahan’s new book, Existing Legal Limits to Security Council Veto Power in the Face of Atrocity Crimes (CUP 2020) is, I believe, destined to be one of the most influential of the many books that are hitting the...

[Milena Sterio is The Charles R. Emrick Jr. – Calfee Halter & Griswold Professor of Law at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and Co-Coordinator for Global Justice Partnerships at the Public International Law and Policy Group.] It is my pleasure to contribute this guest post to the Opinio Juris symposium about Professor Jennifer Trahans’s recent book, Existing Legal Limits to Security Council Veto Power...

[Dire Tladi is a Professor of International Law, at the University of Pretoria, a member of UN International Law Commission and its Special Rapporteur on Peremptory Norms of General International Law (Jus Cogens).] I am grateful to Jennifer for inviting me to contribute to this symposium on her book Existing Limits to Security Council Veto Power in the Face of Atrocity Crimes. When...