Foreign Relations Law

On October 22, Jay Sekulow -- best known as one of Trump's lawyers -- filed a request to submit observations concerning the Afghanistan appeal on behalf of the European Centre for Law & Justice (ECLJ), the European branch of the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ), an ultra-right NGO. The Appeals Chamber granted the request on October 24, despite...

I have seen a number of suggestions recently in the media that Turkey's invasion of Syria could lead to NATO being dragged into the conflict as a result of Art. 5 of the NATO treaty. Art. 5 provides, in relevant part, as follows: The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America...

In the late hours of 6 October 2019, the White House announced the withdrawal of US forces from northeastern Syria after a telephone call between US President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The announcement shocked defense and intelligence officials and drew rare criticism from Republican lawmakers, who were not consulted before Trump’s decision and who viewed the withdrawal of US...

[Przemysław Roguski is a Lecturer in Law at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków (Poland), an expert on cybersecurity and international law at the Kościuszko Institute and a Visiting Fellow at The Hague Program for Cyber Norms at Leiden University’s Institute of Security and Global Affairs.] In the previous post I have described France’s assertion that the legal qualification of a cyberattack, i.e. the determination of the...

[Przemysław Roguski is a Lecturer in Law at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków (Poland) and an expert on cybersecurity and international law at the Kościuszko Institute and a Visiting Fellow at The Hague Program for Cyber Norms at Leiden University’s Institute of Security and Global Affairs.]  On 9 September 2019 the French ministry of defense published a document setting out its views on how...

International accountability as a tool to empower and protect [Jeremie Smith is the Director of the Geneva Office at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies and Karim Salem is a Legal Advisor at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies. This is the final post in our symposium with Justice in Conflict on Libya and International Justice. Mark Kersten’s contribution to the symposium has...

[Mark Chadwick is a Lecturer in Law at Nottingham Law School, Nottingham Trent University.] Universal jurisdiction remains a contested area of international law.  By permitting domestic legislatures and courts to exercise jurisdiction over heinous international crimes, regardless of “where the crime was committed, the nationality of the alleged or convicted perpetrator, the nationality of the victim, or any other connection to...

[Victor Kattan is a Senior Research Fellow of the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore where he heads the Transsystemic Law Cluster. He is also an Associate Fellow of NUS Law. This is the second part of a two-part post.] Recognition of Palestine’s Statehood Since 1988, 138 states (72 per cent of UN members) have recognised a Palestinian state in the territories occupied by Israel on 4 June 1967. The...

[Caleb H Wheeler is a lecturer in law at Middlesex University London and his first book, The Right To Be Present At Trial In International Criminal Law was published by Brill in 2018.] French filmmaker Sophie Toscan du Plantier was discovered beaten to death outside her holiday let in the village of Schull, Ireland on 23 December 1996. Suspicion soon fell on Ian Bailey, a man living nearby. Following...

[Raphael Schäfer & Kanad Bagchi are research fellows at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg Germany. This is part two of a two-part post. Part I can be found here.]   On the Question of Remedies Arguably, it is here that the case assumed critical importance not just for jurisprudence of international law as such but also for the parties...