In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Regions

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...

|
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...

|
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...

|
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...

|
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...

|
11 Mar

Another complementarity fight is brewing, this time between the ICC and Cote d'Ivoire concerning the fate of Simone Gbagbo. In 2012, the ICC issued a warrant for her arrest, claiming that there are reasonable grounds to believe she is responsible as an indirect co-perpetrator for the crimes against humanity of murder, rape, other forms of sexual violence, and persecution. Just yesterday, however,...

|
09 Mar

Most of the US Senate's Republican membership has signed an open letter to Iran's leaders "informing" them about the nature of the U.S. constitutional system with respect to international agreements.   It is actually a very accurate statement of US foreign relations law, even if it is a little strange and potentially intrusive into the President's foreign affairs power. It...

|
06 Mar

Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times says that John Brennan has proposed a major reorganization of the CIA that will, to a large extent, break down the deep bureaucratic divide between agency analysts and clandestine operatives. Historically, analysts engage in research and, as their name suggests, intelligence analysis. Some of that was obscure and abstract--for example writing reports on the...

|
06 Mar

According to the WSJ,  the "Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act"  that I discussed earlier this week may already have 64 declared supporters in the Senate.  This means that supporters are only 3 votes shy of enough to override President Obama's veto of this bill. Since the bill might actually become law, it is worth reminding supporters of the bill that it...

|
05 Mar

Last September, Ghana commenced an arbitration under Annex VII of the UN Convention for the Law of Sea seeking judicial confirmation of its rights to explore for oil and other resources in maritime areas disputed by its neighbor Cote D'Ivoire.  This past January, the two countries agreed to submit a dispute over maritime boundaries to a special chamber of the International Tribunal for...

|
02 Mar

A bipartisan group of US lawmakers proposed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act last week.  The proposed law would "would enhance U.S. monitoring of Hong Kong’s autonomy and human rights and ensure that these issues remain a cornerstone of U.S. policy," according to the bill's chief sponsor, Rep. Chris Smith. Reactions in Hong Kong and China are already pretty negative. "We...

|