In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Criminal Law

07 Dec

[Christian De Vos is a PhD researcher at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies. The author may be contacted at c.m.devos [at] cdh.leidenuniv.nl] Having recently embarked on a multi-year project that seeks to interrogate the possibilities for ‘local ownership’ in the context of the International Criminal Court (ICC), my article approaches the concept through the lens of locally-based informants and so-called...

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07 Dec

That's the question asked by my friends at Wronging Rights, in response to a recent article in Time: TIME claims to have obtained an internal ICC memo showing that the Court is "compiling evidence of possible recent war crimes in southern Sudan, allegedly directed by Sudanese Defense Minister Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein." Apparently, in addition to the Prosecutor's request...

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02 Dec

In Extraterritorial Application of Human Rights Treaties: Law, Principles, Policy, Marko Milanovic has written an illuminating and comprehensive analysis of the increasingly contested question of the geographic scope of human rights treaties. Of course, this is a dynamic area of law—as Marko notes, many of the cases he examines are of quite recent vintage—so undoubtedly  he will be at work...

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02 Dec

My general view is that critical book reviews are much more interesting than positive ones (unless it is of my own book, that is).  And so I read with great interest George Mason Law Professor Jeremy Rabkin's takedown of Kathryn Sikkink's new book "The Justice Cascade: How Human Rights Prosecutions are Changing World Politics."  The Sikkink book argues, through an...

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01 Dec

It's official -- or almost is, to be completely accurate.  Mark Kersten first reported the news at Justice in Conflict, and a Reuters story has now confirmed it.  On December 12, Fatou Bensouda will become the next ICC Prosecutor: An informal meeting of ICC members will be held in New York on Thursday to discuss the appointment, said Liechtenstein's U.N....

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29 Nov

The ICC has announced that the Assembly of States Parties has eliminated Andrew Cayley and Robert Petit from consideration as Moreno-Ocampo's replacement: The Assembly of States Parties of the International Criminal Court (“the Assembly”) will hold its tenth session at the United Nation Headquarters in New York from 12 to 21 December 2011. The tenth session will be marked...

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29 Nov

The High Court of Kenya has held that the government has an obligation to arrest Bashir if he sets foot on Kenyan territory: The Kenyan High Court ruling was the result of a case that the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) brought against Kenya's attorney general and internal security minster in 2010. "The courts have said that Kenya has an...

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29 Nov

The imminent collapse of the eurozone (and maybe the global financial markets as well) makes for terrifying reading. It also is one reminder of how the success of regional and international legal institutions has depended on the general health of the global economy  (and of wealthy states in Europe, North America, and East Asia).  Three stories from today, both big...

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26 Nov

Dapo Akande has a typically excellent discussion of the surrender issue today at EJIL: Talk!, in which he agrees with Jens Ohlin and disagrees with me.  In his view, Libya is entitled to challenge the admissibility of the case against Saif without having to first surrender him to the ICC. I find much of Dapo's argument convincing, but I am...

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25 Nov

My friend and PhD supervisor Carsten Stahn has posted a very interesting discussion of Libya and the ICC at the Hague Justice Portal.  Here is a taste: One possible option to reconcile domestic jurisdiction with accountability before the ICC may be a division of labor based on temporal jurisdiction. In line with the Council referral, the ICC enjoys ...

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24 Nov

I've made more than my share of mistakes in my six years of blogging.  It's painful and embarrassing, but it happens.  All you can do is admit your mistakes and move on. Unfortunately, that is not the approach taken by the author of the terrible Mother Jones article I discussed yesterday.  Suebsaeng doesn't believe that he made any mistakes.  On the...

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24 Nov

Lord knows I can't stand Mitt Romney.  And I have never bought the idea that Ahmadinejad has committed direct and public incitement of genocide through his inflammatory anti-Israel rhetoric.  But this Mother Jones article is still staggeringly awful: When asked about Iran and Israel at Tuesday's CNN national security debate, on-and-off Republican front-runner Mitt Romney replied in his typically tough, ...

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