In association with the International Commission of Jurists

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27 Mar

[Massimo Frigo is a Senior Legal Adviser of the International Commission of Jurist's Europe Programme.] It is sometimes cases on obscure administrative processes that become landmark judgments in the ever constant building of our democratic legal systems. In the US Marbury v. Madison was a case that at the time attracted little attention as the subject matter related to respect of...

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19 Mar

The Trump Administration last week released its first “Report on the Legal and Policy Frameworks Guiding the United States’ Use of Military Force and Related National Security Operations.” The report continues a practice initiated at the end of the Obama Administration and subsequently codified into requirement by Congress by which the Administration makes clear (among other things) where and under...

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16 Mar

[James Thuo Gathii is the Wing-Tat Lee Chair in International Law and Professor of Law at Loyola University Chicago School of Law.] Transplanting International Courts is an important book. It invites us to expand and enrich our studies of international courts to those in the developing world. In doing so, Karen Alter and Laurence Helfer directly address what they call the...

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06 Mar

Dear readers, As part of some exciting changes coming to Opinio Juris in the next month or so, we are completely redesigning our website. To that end, we would greatly appreciate your taking some time -- about 10 minutes -- to fill out our Readers Survey. You can find the survey by clicking here. We will leave the survey open for two...

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02 Mar

[Róisín Pillay is Director of the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) Europe Programme.]  The European Court of Human Rights is once more facing a political challenge to its role, in proposals for a new political declaration put forward by the Danish Presidency of the Council of Europe.  That the Court’s extraordinary success in advancing human rights protection in Europe provokes the dissent...

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28 Feb

The Harvard International Law Journal has just posted a call for their 60th anniversary volume. Here is the relevant text: The Harvard International Law Journal is now accepting article submissions for Volume 60. We seek to publish innovative, original scholarship that makes a significant contribution to the field of international law. We welcome submissions from legal scholars, practitioners, and doctoral degree candidates on...

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27 Feb

[Tim Fish Hodgson is a Legal Adviser for the International Commission of Jurists in Johannesburg, South Africa.] A Kenyan Court of Appeal decision handed down last week has, once again, reaffirmed the Kenyan government’s international obligation to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir should he ever return to Kenya. The Court concluded “the Government of Kenya by inviting al Bashir to Kenya...

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12 Feb

Last month, the UN Secretary General António Guterres announced that he was referring the longstanding border dispute between Guyana and Venezuela to the International Court of Justice. This decision was made after a long period of mediation by various UN Secretaries-General dating back to 1990.  But as a ICJ jurisdiction nerd, I am curious what the basis of the Secretary-General's power...

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07 Feb

We are thrilled to announce that over the next few days we will be co-hosting with EJIL:Talk! a discussion of Anthea Roberts’ new prize-winning book Is International Law International? (Oxford University Press, 2017). The book has recently been awarded the American Society of International Law’s  2018 Certificate of Merit for “Preeminent Contribution to Creative Scholarship.” As the ASIL Book Awards Committee states: In...

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06 Feb

As Patryk Labuda noted earlier today on twitter, the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) has ordered the OTP to provide it with additional information concerning the investigation in Afghanistan. Here are the key paragraphs of the order: 3. The Chamber observes that the Prosecutor seeks authorisation to initiate an investigation for crimes committed on the territory of Afghanistan from 1 May 2003 onwards,...

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