[Gabor Rona is a Visiting Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School, where he directs the Law and Armed Conflict Project.] “I’m so glad we’ll never have to come back here again,” I stage whispered to my colleagues from Amnesty International, the ACLU and Human Rights Watch, as we watched the inauguration of Barack Obama on the CNN feed. We were...
[Kate Vigneswaran is a Senior Legal Adviser at the International Commission of Jurists, Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Programme, and Vito Todeschini is an Associate Legal Adviser, International Commission of Jurists, MENA Programme. This is the latest post in our symposium with Justice in Conflict on Libya and International Justice. Marieke Wierda’s contribution to the symposium has gone up at JiC and you can...
The irreplaceable Carmi Lecker called my attention yesterday to a proposal by Switzerland to deem the intentional starvation of civilians a war crime in non-international armed conflict (NIAC). At present, it is only a war crime in international armed conflict (IAC) -- Art. 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Rome Statute. Here is the text of the proposal: Add to article 8, paragraph 2...
[Mary Fitzgerald is an independent researcher specializing in Libya. She has worked on Libya since February 2011 and lived there in 2014. She is a contributing author to The Libyan Revolution and Its Aftermath published by Hurst/OUP.] When Libyans took to the streets in early 2011 demanding change, one of their key demands was justice. Four decades of Gaddafi’s experiment in...
[Mark Kersten is a consultant for the Wayamo Foundation and a law student at McGill University. He is also author of the book, 'Justice in Conflict - The Effects of the International Criminal Court's Interventions on Ending Wars and Building Peace'.] It isn’t for a lack of attention. Violence in Libya is covered almost daily in major newspapers and media outlets....
[Anthony J. Colangelo, Gerald J. Ford Research Fellow and Professor of Law, SMU Dedman School of Law.] The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Gamble v. United States explicitly raised the question of double jeopardy in international cases by positing scenarios in which the United States may wish to successively prosecute after a prior prosecution in a foreign country for crimes occurring abroad. These cases...
[Peter H. Corne is the Managing Partner of Dorsey & Whitney’s Shanghai Office, NYU Global Adjunct Professor of Law, and Mediator of the Shanghai Commercial Mediation Center. Matthew S. Erie is an Associate Professor of Modern Chinese Studies and Associate of the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies of the University of Oxford, and Principal Investigator of the “China, Law and Development”...
A few months ago, I was invited by the Polish Ministry of Justice to participate in a one-day conference on the responsibility of lawyers for judicial crimes, part of Poland's Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Stalinism and Nazism. The Ministry asked me to discuss American prosecutions of Nazi lawyers at the Nuremberg Military Tribunals -- something I wrote...
[This piece was translated and published by BBC India (Hindi) on 22 August. It is for a non-legal audience mainly, and is only focussed on the potential International Court of Justice case on Kashmir.] Pakistan has indicated publicly that it plans to approach the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in relation to Kashmir. The news of a potential ICJ case on Kashmir arises...
[Demetra Loizou is a Lecturer in International Law and Legal Skills at the University of Central Lancashire, Cyprus.] Article 8 of the Rome Statute, which sets out the war crimes within the ICC’s jurisdiction, is inextricably linked to the general IHL regime. Paragraph 2(a) refers to the grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions (international armed conflicts). Paragraph 2(c) is concerned with the serious violations of Common Article 3 (CA3)...
[Nina Mileva and Marina Fortuna are doctoral candidates at the University of Groningen, performing research within the TRICI-Law Project. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Grant Agreement No. 759728).] In international law interpretation is the process through which the interpreter attempts to determine the true...
[Caroline Omari Lichuma is a PhD Candidate at the Georg-August Universität Faculty of Law (at the Chair of Public and International Law) and a Lecturer from Riara Law School in Nairobi, Kenya.] Material inequality or (extreme) economic inequality has been touted as one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century. Wealth is hemorrhaging upwards rather than trickling down. In a world where the rich get richer,...