In association with the International Commission of Jurists

General

23 Apr

[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...

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23 Apr

[Anil Yilmaz Vastardis is a Lecturer in Law at the Essex School of Law and Human Rights Centre. You can find her on Twitter @anil_yv.] In this post, I will focus on the implications of one of the central questions that the UK Supreme Court (‘UKSC’) addressed in its much-awaited Vedanta Resources PLC and anor v Lungowe and orsjudgment: whether the claimants’ pleaded a...

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23 Apr

[Chiara Redaelli is Visiting Research Fellow at Harvard Law School and Research Fellow at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.] Over the past months, while international legal scholars have been engaging in passionate debates as to whether Nicolás Maduro is still the de jure president of Venezuela or whether Juan Guaidó should be considered the new interim representative of the country, Venezuelan lawyers...

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19 Apr

[Doug Cassel is an Emeritus Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School.] The unanimous jurisdictional ruling of the United Kingdom Supreme Court in Vedanta Resources PLC and another v Lungowe and others, issued April 10, is the most important judicial decision in the field of business and human rights since the jurisdictional ruling of the United States Supreme Court in Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum in 2013. ...

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18 Apr

[Robert McCorquodale is a Professor of International Law and Human Rights at the University of Nottingham UK, a barrister at Brick Court Chambers in London, and is the founder and principal of Inclusive Law, a consultancy which aims to bring together business, law and human rights. He was part of the legal team which represented the International Commission of Jurists...

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17 Apr

Yesterday I participated in the launch of a new report at the International Peace Institute, entitled 'A Necessary Voice: Small States, International Law and the UN Security Council.'   A link to the report and the webcast is available here.   The conversation emphasized how the history of international law is replete with instances of how small states (defined as countries with...

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15 Apr

It was another busy week on Opinio Juris. Victor Kattan kicked things off with a systematic analysis of the false premises undergirding Israel’s claims to the West Bank in two parts (here and here). Alonso provided a detailed post on the interplay between human rights and investor state dispute settlement (ISDS), with a particular focus on indigenous “social license” in investment...

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09 Apr

I am very happy to welcome Opinio Juris 2.0's first guest blogger: Angela Mudukuti, a Zimbabwean international lawyer who currently works for the Wayamo Foundation. Angela focuses on enhancing the domestic capacity of African prosecutors and investigators to investigate and prosecute core international crimes. She previously worked for the superb Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC) in South Africa, where she was involved with precedent-setting...

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07 Apr

Kevin kicked off the week of March 25th with a carefully reasoned post on the legal difficulties associated with the potential ICC investigation into the deportation of civilians from Syria to Jordan, with a particular emphasis on how they related to the divergent mentes reae of forcible transfer and deportation as crimes against humanity. In this way, Kevin distinguished the Syrian...

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24 Mar

Jennifer Trahan and Megan Fairlie kicked off the week with an analysis of the US’s latest attack on the International Criminal Court, in which they highlighted the doctrinal and practical problems associated with US’s threat to implement, inter alia, a travel ban on ICC officials investigating mass atrocity crimes which allegedly occurred in Afghanistan. Kevin continued with an historical analysis of...

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18 Mar

Kevin kicked off the week with a post about Jean-Pierre Bemba’s claim against the ICC for €70 million following his final acquittal. While Kevin was skeptical about the merits of Bemba’s compensation claim for €22 million based on his decade of wrongful detention, Kevin was more optimistic about the success Bemba’s spoliation claim for €42.4 million resulting from the ICC’s...

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