In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Courts & Tribunals

26 Apr

[Carlos Lopez is a Senior Legal Adviser at the International Commission of Jurists.] Claire Bright has nicely concluded the series of blogs in this online symposium on the legal and policy implications of the UK Supreme Court judgment on jurisdiction in Vedanta v Lungowe. It is time now to close the symposium and gratefully acknowledge the participants (Robert McCorquodale, Doug Cassel, Anil Yilmaz, Gabrielle Holly, Lucas Roorda and Claire Bright) and our...

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26 Apr

[Claire Bright is a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute and a Research Fellow in Business and Human Rights at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law.] In the Vedanta case, the claimants relied on Article 4.1 (combined with Article 63) of the Brussels I Recast Regulation to establish the jurisdiction of the English courts over the parent company since Vedanta...

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24 Apr

[Gabrielle Holly is a business and human rights specialist and an experienced commercial disputes practitioner with Omnia Strategy LLP, who acted for the International Commission of Jurists and the CORE Coalition in this case. You can find her on twitter at @Gabriellellell.] With the rise in power of multinational groups and the intricacies of global supply chains, the question of where a company should...

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23 Apr

[Anil Yilmaz Vastardis is a Lecturer in Law at the Essex School of Law and Human Rights Centre. You can find her on Twitter @anil_yv.] In this post, I will focus on the implications of one of the central questions that the UK Supreme Court (‘UKSC’) addressed in its much-awaited Vedanta Resources PLC and anor v Lungowe and orsjudgment: whether the claimants’ pleaded a...

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23 Apr

[Chiara Redaelli is Visiting Research Fellow at Harvard Law School and Research Fellow at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.] Over the past months, while international legal scholars have been engaging in passionate debates as to whether Nicolás Maduro is still the de jure president of Venezuela or whether Juan Guaidó should be considered the new interim representative of the country, Venezuelan lawyers...

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17 Apr

I have been thinking more about how the OTP can appeal the Pre-Trial Chamber's refusal to authorize the Afghanistan investigation. I was perhaps a bit too dour in my assessment of whether the Appeals Chamber is likely to get the chance to reverse a decision that I consider fundamentally flawed. The most obvious option would be to seek leave to appeal the...

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16 Apr

Many thought this day would never come, and I consider myself one of them. Last week President Omar al Bashir became former President Omar al Bashir after months of citizen led protests and a definitive intervention by the Sudanese Army. The remarkable power of citizen protests and the dogged determination to topple a corrupt regime has been inspirational to observe...

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15 Apr

[Gabor Rona is a Visiting Professor of Law at Cardozo Law School, where he directs the Law and Armed Conflict Project.] The Decision of the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to decline to proceed with cases involving Afghanistan “in the interests of justice” is not only likely ultra vires, it is appalling. That’s not to say that...

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13 Apr

In my previous post, I defended the right of the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) to review  the OTP's assessment of whether there were, to quote Art. 53(1)(c) of the Rome Statute, "substantial reasons to believe that an investigation would not serve the interests of justice." In this post, I want to explain why I think the PTC got that review completely,...

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12 Apr

Dov Jacobs has a typically excellent post at Spreading the Jam on the PTC's decision to reject the Afghanistan investigation. I agree with nearly all of it, but I do take issue with this comment: First of all, and perhaps most importantly, the exercise that the Pre-Trial Chamber did is most likely ultra vires. Indeed, Article 53(1)(c) is very clear that...

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12 Apr

I will write a longer post tonight criticising the PTC's understanding of the "interests of justice," but I thought I'd start by cutting to the legal chase: can the OTP appeal the PTC's decision to reject its request to investigate the situation in Afghanistan? As I read the Rome Statute, I don't think so. Here is the text of the relevant...

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11 Apr

[Kingsley Abbott is the International Commission of Jurists' Senior Legal Adviser for Global Redress and Accountability & Saman Zia-Zarifi is the Secretary General of the International Commission of Jurists. This is the second part of a two-part post. Part I can be found here.]   Some important questions In the previous installment we raised some of the arguments in favor of creating...

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