Courts & Tribunals

[Claire Tixeire is a Senior Legal Advisor at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin (ECCHR). Cannelle Lavite is a Legal Advisor and a Bertha Justice Fellow in Business and Human Rights at the ECCHR. Marie-Laure Guislain is Head of Litigation, Globalization and Human Rights program at Sherpa (France).] In the first part of this two-part post,...

[Claire Tixeire is a Senior Legal Advisor at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin (ECCHR). Cannelle Lavite is a Legal Advisor and a Bertha Justice Fellow in Business and Human Rights at the ECCHR. Marie-Laure Guislain is Head of Litigation, Globalization and Human Rights program at Sherpa (France).] Last November, the Paris Court of Appeals dropped...

[Evelyn Ankumah is the Executive Director of Africa Legal Aid (AFLA). James Goldston is the Executive Director of the Open Society Justice Initiative.] Next Thursday and Friday mark an important step in the process to elect a new ICC prosecutor. After six months of hard work by the Committee for the Election of the Prosecutor (CEP) and amidst growing curiosity, states and civil society...

In response to rumblings that states are less than overwhelmed by the four candidates the Committee on the Election of the Prosecutor has selected, civil society organizations are mounting a concerted effort to dissuade states from considering new candidates. The best example is a recent "Joint Civil Society Statement" signed by nine leading human-rights organizations, including Open Society Justice Institute,...

And so it begins. According to a leading Kenyan paper, Kenya has rejected the four candidates identified by the ICC's Committee on the Election of the Prosecutor: "Kenya anticipated that the Committee would present a shortlist of qualified candidates with an equal chance of being elected. The current shortlist does not meet this expectation and appears skewed in favour of a...

[Rosemary Grey is a University of Sydney (Australia) Postdoctoral Fellow, based in the Sydney Law School & Sydney Centre for International Law. Valerie Oosterveld is a Professor at Western Law (Canada) and a member of the Canadian Partnership for International Justice and Rebecca Orsini is a second-year law student at Western Law (Canada) and a graduate of the University of Toronto.] Part 1 of this post discussed...

[Rosemary Grey is a University of Sydney (Australia) Postdoctoral Fellow, based in the Sydney Law School & Sydney Centre for International Law. Valerie Oosterveld is a Professor at Western Law (Canada) and a member of the Canadian Partnership for International Justice and Rebecca Orsini is a second-year law student at Western Law (Canada) and a graduate of the University of Toronto.] Recent months have seen an important shift...

[Alejandra Muñoz is an International Legal Advisor with a Colombian lawyers' collective, ''Colectivo de Abogados José Alvear Restrepo (CAJAR)'] In February this year, the long awaited first voluntary statement rendered by Colombian army general Mario Montoya Uribe before the country’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (SJP) sparked a great deal of frustration and disappointment among victims. After refusing to speak entirely on the first day, his declarations on...

A couple of days ago, Iran issued an arrest warrant for Donald Trump, alleging that he is responsible for murder and terrorism in connection with the drone strike that killed General Qassem Soleimani last January. Practical problems aside -- Interpol has already refused to issue a Red Notice for Trump's arrest -- there is an important legal barrier to prosecuting Trump:...

[John B. Quigley is Emeritus Professor of Law at Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University.] The annexation, now under consideration by Israel, of land in occupied Palestine is aimed, in part, at bringing many of Israel’s settlements into the territory of Israel. Annexation, however, may bring the unintended consequence of the loss of those very settlements. Much of the land on which the...

Along with 187 other American lawyers and legal scholars, I have signed a statement condemning the Trump administration's Executive Order permitting the US to sanction individuals involved with the ICC's investigation into the situation in Afghanistan. It's quite a list of signatories, including three former US war-crimes ambassadors and a number of former judges and prosecutors at various international criminal...