Once more into the breach, dear friends. Judge Ibañez Carranza has now responded to the Joint Declaration issued by Judge Eboe-Osuji as President of the Court and Judge Hofmański as the President of the Appeals Division. Short version: she's not happy about the Joint Declaration. Three specific points are worth mentioning. First (para. 2), Judge Ibañez Carranza argues that Judge Eboe-Osuji and Judge...
[Danielle Hites is the Staff Attorney at the Global Justice Center, an international human rights organization dedicated to advancing gender equality through the rule of law.] Despite the international community’s recognition that crimes against humanity are among the most serious crimes, there is no codified crimes against humanity treaty. The International Law Commission has undertaken the task of drafting one. Currently crimes against...
It's not yet available on the ICC website, but Judge Eboe-Osuji (the President of the Court) and Judge Hofmański (the President of the Appeals Division) have released a short Joint Declaration defending Judge Eboe-Osuji's appointment as the Presiding Judge in the Gbagbo No Case to Answer appeal. The Declaration does not explain his appointment, which seems to confirm Judge Ibañez Carranza's...
Another day, another slow-motion fiasco at the ICC. Today's episode: Judge Luz del Carmen Ibañez Carranza has dissented from a decision to assign a presiding judge to an appeal. The appeal in question involves the Gbagbo No Case to Answer decision, about which I blogged extensively yesterday. The President of the Appeals Division appointed Judge Eboe-Osuji, even though he is already the...
[Carlos Lopez is a Senior Legal Adviser at the International Commission of Jurists and Marilyn Croser is the Director of CORE Coalition UK.] The United Kingdom Supreme Court is presently considering an interlocutory appeal by the company Vedanta Resources and its Zambian subsidiary KCM challenging a Court of Appeal decision to uphold jurisdiction of UK courts in the case and allow...
I highly recommend Paul Bradfield's erudite post yesterday, in which he suggests that "the Gbagbo Trial Chamber appears to have departed from the standard enunciated in Ruto" concerning the standard of proof applicable to No Case to Answer (NCA) motions. I do not completely agree -- and I want to offer a couple of thoughts on Paul's post, with the caveat that we...
In a recent article published in AJIL, I tried to develop a coherent theory of the doctrine of specially-affected states, first articulated by the ICJ -- and largely ignored thereafter -- in North Sea Continental Shelf. I concluded the article with a call to the Global South to invoke the doctrine more liberally in international litigation: This article, then, is not...
[Constance Kaempfer is writing a PhD on the role of subnational parliaments in implementing international obligations. Sophie Thirion conducts PhD research on trade measures in multilateral environmental agreements. Evelyne Schmid is an associate professor of public international law (http://www.ius-gentium.ch). All three authors are based at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.] On 25 November 2018, the Swiss population and the cantons voted on...
The recent nominations for judicial posts at the UN International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) have caused outrage. However, the frustration expressed regarding the lack of adequate representation of women on the international stage is not new. The issue is not just one of gender representation but also crucially of access to justice. This is therefore an opportune time...
[Beatrice Walton is a graduate of Yale Law School, where she was a Kerry Fellow at the Jackson Institute and a Herbert J. Hansell Student Fellow at the Center for Global Legal Challenges.] On Tuesday, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) commenced an expedited hearing on the question of whether a member state can unilaterally revoke a notification of intent to withdraw...
[Alina Balta is a PhD Researcher at Tilburg Law School, INTERVICT. This blogpost is a product of the Intervict Reparations Initiative, commissioned by the NWO-VIDI Project, A Waste of Time or No Time to Waste, as well as a product of research carried out for the photobook ‘Portraits of Injustice: Forced marriage and related sexual violence during the Khmer Rouge’ due to be published in...
[Patryk I. Labuda is a Hauser Global Fellow at New York University School of Law.] News broke on Saturday, November 17, that the Central African Republic (CAR) had transferred Alfred Yekatom, alias ‘Rombot’ or ‘Rambo’, to the International Criminal Court (ICC). According to the arrest warrant, Yekatom has been charged with crimes against humanity and war crimes for acts allegedly committed...