International Criminal Law

Okay, I'm exaggerating.  But only slightly.  As Wells Bennett notes today at Lawfare, Judge Pohl has rejected al-Nashiri's contention that the US and al-Qaeda were not engaged in hostilities (an armed conflict in IHL terms) at the time of the acts alleged in his indictment -- primarily the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 -- thereby depriving the military commission...

As Peggy noted a couple of weeks ago, the international-law blogosphere lost one of its most important collective voices when IntLawGrrls closed up shop.  Fortunately, one of the most important individual voices within IntLawGrrls is back blogging -- Diane Marie Amann, who holds the Emily & Ernest Woodruff Chair in International Law at my former academic home, the University of...

I argued yesterday that the Security Council cannot refer a situation to the ICC under Art. 13(b) of the Rome Statute while exempting nationals of non-States Parties from the Court's jurisdiction.  Jennifer Trahan disagrees: I primarily disagree with Kevin’s first point.  While it may be objectionable to have an exemption of nationals of non-States Parties, I actually think that the UN...

[Jennifer Trahan is associate clinical professor at the Center for Global Affairs at the NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies (NYU-SCPS). She is also chair of the American Branch of the International Law Association International Criminal Court Committee and was a member of the American Bar Association’s 2010 International Criminal Court Task Force.] Today, January 14, 57 U.N. Member States from...

[Jennifer Trahan is associate clinical professor at the Center for Global Affairs at the NYU School of Continuing and Professional Studies (NYU-SCPS). She is also chair of the American Branch of the International Law Association International Criminal Court Committee and was a member of the American Bar Association’s 2010 International Criminal Court Task Force.] Congress recently approved a bill expanding the...

Eugene Kontorovich argues today at Volokh Conspiracy that Israel could minimize the likelihood of an ICC investigation into its transfer of Israeli civilians into the West Bank by emphasizing Turkey's similar transfer of Turkish civilians into Northern Cyprus, which it has been illegally occupying for more than four decades.  Here are the key paragraphs: Cyprus was a state with clear borders...

The (short and unassuming) essay is forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of International Adjudication, which is being edited by Cesare Romano, Karen Alter, and Yuval Shany and should be published by OUP this year.  Here is the abstract: The role of the international prosecutor is uniquely challenging. Unlike domestic prosecutors, who normally have the material resources to prosecute all of the serious crimes...

The most common reaction to my post on Newtown and the drone program has been to point out that there is a difference between killing in peacetime and killing during war -- that we are both legally and morally more willing to accept the loss of innocent life in the latter, even if the loss in both can be considered...

There's been an interesting debate in the blogosphere recently about why people find the murder of 20 young children at Newtown so much more horrible than the routine killing of children in Yemen and Pakistan by U.S. drones.  Glenn Greenwald and Falguni Sheth, a philosophy professor at Hampshire College, find the selective outrage indefensible.  Ben Wittes and the Telegraph's Brendan...

[Jelia Sane is studying for the English Bar at City University, London. She holds an LLM in Public International Law from University College London and has previously interned at the ICC, the Centre for Justice and International Law, and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.] The unanimous acquittal and subsequent release of Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui by Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal...