In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Regions

06 May

Apropos of our guest post earlier this week, it looks like the EU will be stymied in its effort to seek authorization from the UN Security Council to use military force against ships used to traffic desperate migrants out of North Africa (h/t Walter Russell Mead). “Apprehending human traffickers and arresting these vessels is one thing,” said Vladimir Chizhov, Russia’s ambassador...

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04 May

The irreplaceable Breaking the Silence has released a new report on Operation Protective Edge -- and it's a doozy. Here are some particularly disturbing snippets from the Guardian's article on the report, which contains dozens of testimonials by past and present IDF soldiers: “[The commander] said: ‘We don’t take risks. We do not spare ammo. We unload, we use as much as...

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20 Apr

[Natia Kalandarishvili-Mueller is a Lecturer in Humanitarian Law at Tbilisi State University, Institute of International Law, Faculty of Law, and a PhD Candidate at the University of Essex, School of Law. The views expressed in the post are that of the author only.] Russia still occupies twenty percent of Georgian territory. On 24 November 2014, the Russian Federation and Abkhazia, one of...

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17 Apr

I am slammed with a couple of projects right now, but I can't help throwing this question out to the legal blogosphere.  Does the new "Bipartisan Trade Priorities and Accountability Act" recently introduced by leading U.S. Senators violate the U.S. Constitution's bicameralism and presentment requirements as stated by the U.S. Supreme Court in INS v. Chadha? The BTPAA seems crucial as...

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06 Apr

Nearly everyone treats Palestine's membership in the ICC as a done deal; after all, the UN Secretary-General (UNSG) has accepted Palestine's accession to the Rome Statute and the OTP has publicly stated that "since Palestine was granted observer State status in the UN by the UNGA, it must be considered a 'State' for the purposes of accession." But neither the...

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02 Apr

The op-ed, which appears in today's New York Times, argues that the ICC is the most appropriate venue for prosecuting ISIS's many international crimes. I have great respect for John, who is unique among former high-ranking US government officials in his willingness to defend the ICC, but the op-ed makes a number of arguments that deserve comment. It certainly makes more...

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02 Apr

My contribution to the symposium is now available. Here is the introduction: I want to start with a prediction, one I’ve made before and still subscribe to: the ICC will never open a formal investigation into the situation in Palestine. People of all political persuasions seem to think that the ICC is somehow eager to leap into the most politicised conflict...

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31 Mar

From April 17-19, the University of Southampton is scheduled to host a conference entitled "International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism." As the title indicates, the conference was always going to be controversial. (Full disclosure: I was originally scheduled to present at the conference, but pulled out a couple of weeks ago because I simply didn't...

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31 Mar

Just in time for the activation of Palestine's membership in the ICC, over the next few days Mark Kersten's blog, Justice in Conflict, will be featuring posts by all of the people who participated in last week's roundtable at the LSE -- Mark, me, Kirsten Ainley, Dov Jacobs, Chantal Meloni, Leslie Vinjamuri, and Michael Kearney. Mark's introductory post can be found here. I...

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24 Mar

My friend Rogier Bartels published two excellent posts at Just Security over the past few days (here and here) in which he argues that it is inherently perfidious to launch an attack from a military object disguised as a civilian object. Just Security has just posted my lengthy response. Here is how I conclude the post: At the risk of sounding like an...

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22 Mar

I just learned -- much belatedly -- that Chinua Achebe, the great Nigerian novelist, died two years ago today at 82. Here is a snippet from his 2013 obituary in the New York Times: Nadine Gordimer, the South African novelist and Nobel laureate, hailed Mr. Achebe in a review in The New York Times in 1988, calling him “a novelist who...

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17 Mar

[Sonya Sceats is Associate Fellow in the International Law Programme at Chatham House where she leads a project on the implications of China’s rise for the international human rights system. Follow @SonyaSceats and @CHIntLaw] China punches below its weight in the development of international law, despite its growing international power and the participation of Chinese representatives and experts in various international...

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