In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Criminal Law

21 Jul

Bloomberg BusinessWeek offers what is slowly becoming conventional wisdom on the ICTY, at least, if not international criminal justice in general. Credit [] is due to the court, which focused on individual responsibility rather than collective guilt. This helped foster reconciliation among Serbs, Croats and Muslims in the former Yugoslavia. But beyond the Balkans, it would be a mistake to exaggerate the...

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17 Jul

As part of his ongoing war against the New York Times, Ben Wittes has a post today entitled "Seven Errors in Today's New York Times Editorial."  I occasionally agree with Wittes' criticism of the NYT; the paper sometimes misstates the law when it criticizes the Obama administration.  But there is nothing erroneous about today's editorial, and Wittes can only claim...

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11 Jul

I have just posted a new essay on SSRN, entitled "The Uncertain Legal Status of the Aggression Understandings."  The essay will be published by the Journal of International Criminal Justice as part of a symposium on the ICC's new crime of aggression.  Here is the abstract: Annex III of Resolution RC/Res.6, adopted by consensus at Kampala on 12 June 2010, contains...

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08 Jul

The following is a guest-post by Mark Kersten.  Mark is a PhD candidate in International Relations at the London School of Economics and author of the (excellent) blog Justice in Conflict. His research examines the nexus of conflict resolution and the pursuit of international criminal justice. Trying to Get to the Bottom of the “Peace versus Justice” Debate...

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06 Jul

I'm under the pump because of a deadline, but I wanted to call readers' attention to a short editorial at OpenDemocracy.net written by Victor Kattan about the PLO/PA's intention to ask the UN General Assembly to recognize Palestinian statehood in September.  Victor discusses a variety of interesting diplomatic and legal aspects of that intention, including the possibility that the PLO/PA...

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27 Jun

I am delighted to announce the publication of my book "The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law."  The book can be ordered from Oxford University Press here; Amazon should have it (at a whopping $8.78 discount) in the next few days.  Here for the last time is the cover: Once again, I want to thank...

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24 Jun

Earlier today, the U.S. Court of Military Commission Review (CMCR) held in U.S. v. Hamdan that material support for terrorism is a war crime and thus within the jurisdiction of the military commissions.  The decision represents the apotheosis of the US's utterly self-referential approach to international law, because the CMCR managed to reach that conclusion without citing a single non-American...

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21 Jun

Apologies for the light blogging the past couple of weeks -- although the upside is that I am now officially Dr. Heller, having successfully defended my dissertation at Leiden University in the Netherlands a few days ago.  It was an amazing (and amazingly formal) experience, and I'll blog about it once I get the official photos from the university. I've been...

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03 Jun

I have just posted a new essay -- my first since finishing the NMT book! -- on SSRN.  Here is the abstract: Scholars have long debated to what extent the Rome Statute’s principle of complementarity permits states to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide as ordinary crimes such as rape and murder instead...

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26 May

In Serbia, not surprisingly: Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general accused of overseeing the worst massacre in Europe since the end of World War II, has been arrested, Serbian authorities said Thursday. Mladic is Europe's most wanted war crimes suspect for his alleged role in the 1995 slaughter of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the enclave of Srebrenica,...

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24 May

This according to the New York Times: The charges — brought by prosecutors Mr. Mubarak had appointed — included hints that former subordinates might testify against him, as onetime allies and government insiders turn on one another. A Cairo criminal court is expected to set a trial date within days, and the Egyptian people could soon see the leader...

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