In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Teaching Karl Marx about Third World Approaches to International Law

07 Feb

What is the difference between a Marxist and a TWAILer (except for the class element)?Julia Emtseva, Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute* Posed on twitter, this question about Third World Approaches to International Law triggered a flurry of responses. 'Many TWAILers are grounded in historical materialism'; 'it’s about the ‘ultimate’ power relations…to TWAIL, it’s empire-colony, or race'; and 'most TWAIL draws heavily...

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21 Jan

Recently, US President Joe Biden gave a press conference where he was asked about the US’ approach to Latin America. In an I-can’t-believe-he-actually-said-this moment, Biden responded as follows: “We used to talk about, when I was a kid, in college, about ‘America’s Backyard’. It’s not America’s backyard. Everything south of the Mexican border is ‘America’s Front Yard’. And we’re equal...

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21 Jan

On 19 January 2022, the legendary investigator and justice warrior Frank Kennan Dutton passed away at the age of 72. I was introduced to Frank  by Howard Varney while we were all working on seeking justice for anti-apartheid activist Nokuthula Simelane who was tortured and murdered by apartheid era police. Naturally, Frank’s reputation preceded him and I had heard awe-inspiring things about him but I...

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19 Jan

Every nine-years a new prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is selected. The 2021/2020 ICC prosecutorial elections saw the appointment of the ICC’s third prosecutor and an unprecedented discussion about the high moral character requirement. Common sense and article 42(3) of the Rome Statute require the prosecutor and deputies to be persons of high moral character, yet this election cycle...

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18 Jan

Call for Papers Call for abstracts - International Law Association British Branch Spring Conference: On Friday, 29 April 2022, the University of Surrey will host the annual Spring Conference in hybrid mode on the theme of ‘International Law and Climate Change’. The Conference will feature a mixture of invited and selected speakers on the following panels: impact of rising sea levels...

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17 Jan

[David J. Scheffer is a former US diplomat, an international law professor, and a Senior Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations.  He is author of The Sit Room: In the Theater of War and Peace.] Legal principles matter as two major democracies—Taiwan and Ukraine—are threatened by superpower neighbors. Whether one argues about Taiwan’s status as a country or a province...

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11 Jan

Every scholar, from the most junior to the most senior, has a horror story about the languorous pace of academic publishing. The journal that took six months to reject their article. The journal that took six months to ask them to revise and resubmit their article and then took another six months to reject the revisions. The journal that accepted...

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30 Dec

When Telford Taylor was planning the trial programme for the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMTs), he was faced with a dilemma concerning the Nazis' pre-war mistreatment -- legal and physical -- of Jews and members of other despised groups. Unlike the London Charter, Control Council Law No. 10, the NMTs' enabling statute, did not require crimes against humanity to be committed...

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02 Dec

[Santiago Vargas Niño is a Legal Officer at the Tribunal for Peace of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, Colombia. He is formerly an intern, legal assistant, and assistant legal officer of the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace.] On 16...

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30 Nov

Announcements Book launch on René Provost, Rebel Courts – The Administration of Justice by Armed Insurgents (Oxford UP 2021) organised by the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights on 1 December 2021 at 11h30-13h00 EST on Zoom: The new book Rebel Courts by Professor René Provost (McGill University) discusses the administration of justice by armed groups. Based on extensive fieldwork, it offers a...

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29 Nov

[Chris Carpenter is a lawyer and researcher in international law. She holds a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a master’s in International Relations and Politics from the University of Cambridge.] The fundamental goal of a fair trial—at least in theory—is the discovery of truth, and the finding of a verdict on the basis of that truth. But...

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26 Nov

[Nada Kiswanson has represented Afghan victims in proceedings before the International Criminal Court in the Situation in Afghanistan since 2019.] On 27 September 2021, Prosecutor Karim A. Khan decided to focus “investigations in Afghanistan on crimes allegedly committed by the Taliban and the Islamic State – Khorasan Province ("IS-K") and to deprioritise other aspects of this investigation” (“Deprioritisation Decision”). Extraordinarily, he did not identify the “other...

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