On New Year's Eve, the Trial Chamber overseeing the Al Hassan case referred Hassan's lead defence counsel, Melinda Taylor, to the Registry for violating the Code of Professional Conduct for Counsel. That referral will trigger an investigation by a Disciplinary Commissioner into Taylor's actions. The Trial Chamber's referral stems from a tweet that Taylor posted the day before Christmas concerning her...
[Dov Jacobs, Joshua Kern and Daniel Reisner appear as amici curiae on behalf of the IJL in the ongoing proceedings before Pre-Trial Chamber I of the ICC in the Situation in Palestine. The IJL Brief before PTC I is available here. The Pre-Trial Chamber’s decision remains sub iudice.] On 19 November 2020, it was reported that the Palestinian Authority will resume civil and...
[Yuzuki Nagakoshi is a Visiting Professional at the International Criminal Court.] The most recent revision of court rules on third-party interventions at the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (“the Court” “ACtHPR”) may greatly impact the fate of African indigenous communities. Through this revision, not only interested State Parties but also interested non-State actors can request to intervene in ongoing proceedings based on Rule 61...
[Owiso Owiso is a Doctoral Researcher in Public International Law at the University of Luxembourg and a member of the PhD Academy of the Cross Cultural Human Rights Centre, VU Amsterdam.] Continuing the discussion in Part I, this final part examines the comparative basis upon which the Judicial Remuneration Panel made its conclusions and recommendations. The ICJ and European judges as comparators...
[Owiso Owiso is a Doctoral Researcher in Public International Law at the University of Luxembourg and a member of the PhD Academy of the Cross Cultural Human Rights Centre, VU Amsterdam.] The Judges’ claim On 07 December 2020, the Administrative Tribunal of the International Labour Organisation (ILOAT) dismissed a (consolidated) complaint that had been filed by some full-time judges at the International Criminal...
[Sheila Paylan is an international human rights lawyer and former legal advisor for the United Nations.] On 3 December 2020, the French National Assembly joined the French Senate in passing resolutions nearly unanimously calling on the French government to recognize the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and use such recognition as an instrument of negotiations for the establishment of a sustainable peace. The French Parliament thus became the first...
[Lucy Geddes is an Australian human rights lawyer and is currently the head of Legal Action Worldwide’s Sri Lanka office.] On 19 November 2020, the Australian Chief of Defence Force announced the findings of Brereton Report which allege the existence of credible evidence of war crimes perpetrated by the Australian Defence Force in Afghanistan. The release of the Report, following a four year inquiry commissioned by the...
[Audrey Wabwire is A Nairobi-based media manager at Human Rights Watch.] What’s the path to justice after years of conflict, during which widespread atrocities were committed? This is a question that South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, confronts. After nearly seven years of conflict ended with the signing of a peace deal in September 2018, South Sudan finally established a transitional national unity government earlier this...
[Clive Baldwin is a Senior Legal Advisor for the legal and policy office at Human Rights Watch.] UK nationals committed abuses in Iraq after 2003 on a significant scale. The International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) Final Report on the UK and Iraq on December 9 is the latest official report to find that members of UK armed forces subjected Iraqi detainees to abuse,...
[Marta Bo is a Researcher at the Graduate Institute (LAWS and War Crimes Project) and at the T.M.C. Asser Institute.] Meaningful Human Control is at the core of regulatory and ethical debates on autonomous weapon systems. In international discussions and writings, the problem of meaningful human control has been addressed from different angles: from philosophical, ethical and legal (here and here), to operational, cognitive and...
Justice as Message is 436-page is a detailed exploration of justice as a message, including the various forms, messaging can take. Of particular interest to me was chapter 6, “International criminal law as expressivist justice-meanings, implications and critiques.” Stahn opens this chapter by stating that “expressivist practices have a larger space in international criminal justice than traditionally assumed.” Whether we like it or not, in the business of...
[Priya Urs is a PhD Candidate at the Faculty of Laws, University College London, where her doctoral research addresses the application of the gravity criterion for admissibility at the International Criminal Court. (priya.urs.17@ucl.ac.uk)] Carsten Stahn’s Justice as Message introduces and examines the myriad manifestations of expression in the field of international criminal justice. The contribution of the book is its ambitious inquiry into the use of expressivism as a...