Themes

[Pedro A. Villarreal is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law.] The WHO's Oversight of the IHR's Obligations – Still No Health Police As explained in the previous post, the WHO cannot invoke legal responsibility when states breach the IHR. Reports of non-compliance have been presented at the World Health Assembly – without further action....

[Pedro A. Villarreal is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law.] In what is now an omnipresent claim, the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic currently rages throughout the globe. The epidemiological situation changes on a daily basis, often in dramatic fashion. Such fast-paced dynamism also encompasses the measures adopted by domestic authorities – for which there is a very...

[Leslie-Anne Duvic-Paoli is Lecturer in Law and Deputy Director of the Climate Law and Governance Centre at The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London.] What can a global health crisis tell us about international environmental law? To answer this question, this short piece maps the interconnections between the COVID-19 pandemic and international environmental law at three stages of the crisis: its origins, policy responses, and...

[Frédéric Mégret is a Professor and William Dawson Scholar at the Faculty of Law, McGill University] One of the most characteristic symptoms of globalization was the fairly significant expatriation of large numbers of nationals for life, work and adventure. This was frequently coupled with a discourse emphasizing the fraying of national identification and the relativity of state affiliation. That discourse was deeply schizophrenic and remains so: it...

[Philippe Sands is a Professor of Law at University College London and a barrister at Matrix Chambers.] The birth and transmission of the Sars-Cov-2 virus, and the COVID-19 illness it generates, and the response to it - are matters for international law. The full consequences will emerge over time, but certain observations may be proposed. It is plain that the health...

[Barrie Sander is a Fellow at Fundação Getúlio Vargas, Brazil and Jason Rudall is Assistant Professor of Public International Law at Leiden University.] The entire symposium is accessible in PDF format here. As we write this introduction we are each sitting in different houses, in different countries, on different continents, and in different hemispheres. We could not be much farther apart. And...

Recent weeks have witnessed the rapid global spread of a novel coronavirus known as COVID-19. At the time of posting (23 March 2020) the World Health Organisation has reported 294,110 confirmed cases and 12,944 deaths across 187 countries, areas or territories.  In response to the pandemic, Opinio Juris will host a symposium on COVID-19 and international law, kicking off next week on Monday, 30 March...

[ Luigi Daniele is Lecturer in Law at Nottingham Trent University, where he leads the undergraduate and postgraduate modules in International Humanitarian Law.] For more than a decade international lawyers have been debating Israel’s claim against the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the situation in Palestine, notoriously based on the argument that no Palestine State exists since ‘the Palestinian Authority lacks effective control over the...

[Katherine Gallagher is a Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, where she focuses on holding individuals and corporations accountable for egregious human rights and international law violations. @katherga1. The views expressed in this post are made in my personal capacity and do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization I am currently or formerly associated with, nor the views...

[Jeff Handmaker teaches law, human rights and development and conducts research on legal mobilisation at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University in the Netherlands and is a senior research fellow in the School of Law, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. Alaa Tartir is a Research Associate at Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID) in Geneva, Switzerland and is a Program Advisor to Al-Shabaka:...

[John Quigley is Professor Emeritus at the Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University.] In her Request to the Pre-Trial Chamber for a ruling on territorial jurisdiction, the Prosecutor raises the issue of Palestine’s statehood as a matter to be determined by the Pre-Trial Chamber. She writes, persuasively, that Palestine is a state. The matter was conclusively determined already by...

[Alice Panepinto is a lecturer in law at Queen’s University Belfast, where she researches and teaches human rights, international law and contemporary issues in property law.] In determining its territorial jurisdiction in Palestine, the ICC is presented with a golden opportunity to revive the global reach of international criminal justice. When Pre-Trial Chamber I will rule on the question of whether “the "territory" over which the...