International Criminal Law

[Dr. Cassandra Steer is a space security and space law consultant, with 14 years academic experience in international law. This post is part of our New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace Symposium.] Whereas some readers might find Boothby’s volume “New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace” a little light on answering specific legal questions in the application of new military technologies,...

[Markus Wagner is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Wollongong. This post is part of our New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace Symposium.] The question of how law relates to technological innovation is far from new. For the most part, law has played catchup to technological developments – both in the civilian and military realm. While digital technologies are not exactly...

[Alejandro Chehtman is Professor of Law at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. This post is part of our New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace Symposium.] In New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace (CUP, 2018), Bill Boothby and his colleagues have written an important collection of essays exploring the regulation of new weapons systems under both the ‘laws of wars and peace’....

[Rob McLaughlin is a Professor of Military Security Law and Director of the Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society at UNSW Canberra.This post is part of our New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace Symposium.] As Bill Boothby has observed in New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace, ‘It is…difficult to determine what the future seems...

[Kobi Leins is an Honorary Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne. This post is part of our New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace Symposium.] The machine itself makes no demands and holds out no promises: it is the human spirit that makes demands and keeps promises. In order to reconquer the machine and subdue it to human...

[William Boothby is an Adjunct Professor of Law at La Trobe University, Melbourne. This post is part of our New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace Symposium.] That the pace of technological advance has quickened markedly in recent years is well recognised.  That the law struggles to keep up is frequently pointed out.  Rather than wring one’s hands and...

This week, we are hosting another book symposium on Opinio Juris. This time, we feature a discussion of William Boothby’s new book, New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace, published by Cambridge University Press. In addition to comments from William himself, we have the honor to hear from a list of renowned scholars and practitioners: Kobi Leins, Robert...

On 17 May 2017, Judge Marc Perrin de Brichambaut gave a talk at Peking Law School about the role of victims at the ICC. The talk, which was recorded and then transcribed, included a number of shocking comments, such as describing "the Africans" as "a group of 54 countries who provide the suspects and the accused" to the Court. Judge...

I thought I was done blogging about the Pre-Trial Chamber's authorization decision, but there is another aspect of it that keeps nagging at me: the limits PTC II would have imposed on the OTP's investigation if it had authorized it. Here are the key paragraphs (emphasis mine): 40. More specifically, the precise width and breadth of the Prosecutor's power to investigate...

[Dov Jacobs is an Assistant Professor of International Law at Leiden University and a Legal Assistant at the ICC.] The following ideas come as a follow-up to Kevin Jon Heller’s recent post on possible appeal strategies that the OTP could consider following the decision by the PTC to not authorise the opening of a formal investigation in Afghanistan. I will therefore...