In association with the International Commission of Jurists

General

25 May

Justice Alfred Mavedzenge is a constitutional law academic and a legal adviser at the International Commission of Jurists, Africa Regional Programme. Introduction Judicial review is one of the mechanisms through which the public can hold government accountable on its legal obligations. In a democracy, governments have a responsibility to ensure that regular, free and fair elections to choose the people’s...

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23 May

[Federico J. Wynter is a J.D. Candidate and Charles Evan Hughes Scholar at Cornell Law School.]  Venezuela is a reliable source of news. From the late March DOJ’s indictment of President Nicolás Maduro, to the early May bizarre coup attempt against Maduro, in 2020 Venezuela has been a major point of interest for international law and politics. One significant event that...

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22 May

[Andreas Schueller directs the International Crimes and Accountability program at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR).] The current German coalition agreement says that the German government “categorically rejects extrajudicial killings, also by drones”. Nevertheless, the German armed forces leased drones that can be armed – yet without the respective weapons. The German government declared that it will employ these drones only in accordance to...

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21 May

[Dapo Akande, Duncan B. Hollis, Harold Hongju Koh, and James C. O’Brien.] Many have recently written about the application of international law in cyberspace and to the global COVID-19 pandemic, but relatively few have examined the intersection between these two areas. Notwithstanding that oversight, recent weeks have seen cyberattacks on organizations at the frontline of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including malicious cyber operations against...

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21 May

[Nathaniel Berman is the Rahel Varnhagen Professor of International Affairs, Law, and Modern Culture at Brown University. This is the second part of a two-part post.] [In Part One of this essay, I argued for the importance of the reaffirmation of the illegality of annexation of occupied territory. I outlined, and partly responded to, the criticism of this position “from the...

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21 May

[Nathaniel Berman is the Rahel Varnhagen Professor of International Affairs, Law, and Modern Culture at Brown University. This is the first part of a two-part post.] Israel may be on the brink of formally annexing large swaths of the West Bank. Ever since Trump’s victory in 2016, the pro-settler Israeli right has sensed a historic opportunity to secure its cherished goal:...

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20 May

[Danilo Ruggero Di Bella is a lawyer at Bottega Di Bella.] Tracing back the origins of Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) may have a bearing on contemporary arbitral practice. Contrary to common belief, BITs may not originate directly from Friendship, Commerce and Navigation Treaties (FCN treaties). Arguably, the so-called bilateral Conventions of Establishments (BCEs) – at times referred to as Treaties of Establishment – might instead...

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20 May

[Nicola Palmer is a Senior Lecturer in criminal law at King’s and the author of Courts in Conflict: Interpreting the Layers of Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda.] On Saturday, 16 May 2020 Félicien Kabuga, a former businessman accused of being a major financial backer of Hutu extremism in the build-up to, and during, the Rwandan genocide was arrested in a flat in Asnieres-sur-Seine...

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20 May

[Martin Jarrett is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law.] In a recently published arbitral award coming from an investor-state arbitration, the arbitral tribunal made a rare confession: it was uncomfortable with its decision finding that the state was not internationally responsible for its conduct. The case was Krederi v. Ukraine. Although the statement...

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19 May

[Nicole De Silva is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Concordia University and Misha Plagis is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the T.M.C. Asser Instituut.] The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights—the African Union’s continental human rights court—received severe blows in late April, as two states, Benin and Côte d'Ivoire, withdrew their declarations allowing individuals and NGOs to submit cases...

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18 May

[Jennifer Trahan is Clinical Professor, NYU Center for Global Affairs and Megan Fairlie is Professor of Law, Florida International University College of Law.] This past week, certain members of the US House and Senate released two letters (here and (here) that demonstrate, at best, a woeful lack of comprehension of the International Criminal Court.  The letters suggest that the ICC’s preliminary...

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15 May

Last week, The Huffington Post published an article with the provocative title, Epidemiologist Slams U.S. Coronavirus Response: ‘Close To Genocide By Default’. The epidemiologist in question was Prof. Dr. Gregg Gonsalves, PhD (Public Health, Yale University), who, according to his online curriculum vitae, is an Assistant Professor in Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at the Yale School of Public Health, as well as an Associate...

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