The Visible C of the Invisible College: Classism and the International Legal Profession – Symposium Introduction

[Chris Carpenter is a lawyer practicing international arbitration and cross-border litigation. Dimitrios A. Kourtis has a PhD from Aristotle University and is an Adjunct Lecturer at the Hellenic Police Academy]. In his famous Preface to the Critique of Political Economy, Karl Marx described the basic premises of historical materialism by reference to the social production of human existence. Throughout their lives,...

On December 7th, then-President of Peru, Pedro Castillo, announced the start of a “government of exception”, the “dissolution of Congress” and the drafting of a new constitution. Less than two hours later, Congress declared the Presidency vacant, the Attorney General’s Office indicted Castillo for violating the Constitution and Castillo was detained by his own personal guard. In Peru, most sources...

[Jorge Contesse is Professor of Law & Director of the Center for Transnational Law at Rutgers Law School, United States.] The passing of Judge Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade, on 29 May 2022, shocked the Latin American international law community—and even beyond the confines of Latin America.  Cançado Trindade is among the few Latin American jurists who have held some of the...

[Kudakwashe Mapako holds an LLB Degree in International Law (Cum Laude) from Zhejiang Gongshang University and Prospective Masters Candidate at University of Cape town specializing in international law. He is a Research Officer at African Center for Science and International Security (AFRICSIS) in the Arms Control and Nonproliferation program.] Introduction Humanity's wars have seen a slew of instances in which installations containing dangerous...

[Lior Weinstein is a fourth-year student of Law and Hebrew literature (LLB and BA) and an LLM student in international law from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem and part of its international law forum.] In this blog post, I will present a new development in Israeli case law – the recognition of transitional justice (TJ) in the property law context. This exciting development...

Via its Minister for the Environment, the Belgian government has announced that it intends to incorporate the crime of ecocide into its Penal Code: A concept now recognized in the national penal codes of 10 countries (Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Vietnam and France), the crime of ecocide refers to all illegal actions that lead to the...

[Stephen A. Lamony is an International Lawyer writing from Gulu City, northern Uganda.] Introduction On May 6, 2021, Trial Chamber IX of the International Criminal Court (ICC) sentenced Dominic Ongwen to 25 years of imprisonment for murder, rape, and sexual enslavement. On the same day, the Chamber issued an order for submissions on reparations stating that the "reparations phase of the proceedings should...

On Tuesday, the Office of the President of Ukraine issued a press release concerning plans for creating a Special Tribunal for Russian Aggression. Most of the information in the press release was boilerplate, reaffirming the need for such a tribunal and expressing hope that the international community will get behind one. One comment, however, set off my lawdar: As noted at...

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) was created by the Cambodian government in partnership with the United Nations. Its purpose was to prosecute crimes under international and Cambodian law committed between 1975 and 1979, when Cambodia was ruled by the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), better known as the ‘Khmer Rouge’. On 22 September 2022, the ECCC’s...

A little over two years ago, I met a new colleague at Utrecht University School of Law for coffee. What was meant to be a first quick meet-and-greet turned into an hour and a half spanning everything from talk about Guantánamo Bay and other counterterrorism discussions, the laws of war, human rights and university pedagogy as well as more practical...

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) was created by the Cambodian government in partnership with the United Nations. Its purpose was to prosecute crimes under international and Cambodian law committed between 1975 and 1979, when Cambodia was ruled by the Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK), better known as the ‘Khmer Rouge’. On 22 September 2022, the ECCC’s...

As part of my position at the University of Copenhagen's Centre for Military Studies, I have started a podcast entitled "Lex Ferenda: Conversations about Law and War." Here is the general description: This podcast involves monthly hour-long video interviews with experts whose work and practice focuses on how international law affects the conduct of military operations. Guests will normally be drawn...