Gideon Boas makes a number of valuable points in his comments on my article, not least of which is the fact that the evidentiary challenges I highlighted with respect to the Lubanga trial are not new. I particularly appreciate the experiences he recounts from his time at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (‘ICTY’), which, like its sister tribunal...
[Gideon Boas is an Associate Professor in the Monash Law School and a former Senior Legal Officer at the ICTY.] This article deals carefully with the Lubanga proceedings before the ICC, and in particular the difficulty caused by the Prosecution collecting information through the extensive use of confidentiality agreements under Article 54(3)(e) of the Rome Statute. One of the great difficulties...
[Christian De Vos is a PhD researcher at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies. The author may be contacted at c.m.devos [at] cdh.leidenuniv.nl] Having recently embarked on a multi-year project that seeks to interrogate the possibilities for ‘local ownership’ in the context of the International Criminal Court (ICC), my article approaches the concept through the lens of locally-based informants and so-called...
That's the question asked by my friends at Wronging Rights, in response to a recent article in Time: TIME claims to have obtained an internal ICC memo showing that the Court is "compiling evidence of possible recent war crimes in southern Sudan, allegedly directed by Sudanese Defense Minister Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein." Apparently, in addition to the Prosecutor's request...
These are not the best of days for Greece, and even relatively small matters, like their ongoing dispute with Macedonia over the name "Macedonia" is going against them. Greece was wrong to block Macedonia's bid to join Nato in 2008 because of a row over its name, the International Court of Justice has ruled. It said Athens should have abided by a...
Following up on Dan Bodansky's excellent post, and our interesting discussion here on MEAs, I wanted to point readers to this useful report from Durban by Reason's science correspondent Ronald Bailey. Bailey has a very useful breakdown on why China's supposed shift on its views on a new climate change treaty is really meaningless. Here is his summary of China's...
Another year, another climate COP. This year's conference of the parties (COP) is in Durban, South Africa. The South Africans have provided a wonderful venue and the meeting has proceeded thus far with few of the histrionics of Copenhagen and Cancun. But a certain weariness has crept into the proceedings, as massive numbers of people gather year after year, with...
Professor Telesetsky, in her generous comments on my article in volume 12(1) of the Melbourne Journal of International Law, raises two pertinent questions. First, why has there been a profusion of cooperative efforts across treaty bodies and second, what are the linkages that are most effective in compelling compliance with treaty regimes? In relation to the first question, Professor Telesetsky disagrees...
[Anastasia Telesetsky is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Idaho] Professor Karen Scott’s recent publication on international environmental governance in the Melbourne Journal of International Law is a must-read piece for those concerned about international environmental law (‘IEL’) being fragmented and fractured across issues, institutions and implementation. In her article, Karen argues convincingly that the current disparate state...
[Karen N Scott is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand] The ‘fragmentation’ of international law is used as a term of description and — more commonly — as a lament. It emphasises the isolation and disconnect between regimes and institutions and is peculiarly apt as a description of international environmental law; a complex regulatory field comprising multiple regimes and...
I am very grateful to Kal Raustiala, Peggy McGuinness, Austen Parrish and Sarah Cleveland for taking the time to read my book – and I’m even happier that they liked it. They each make a number of important points, and I’ll now take the opportunity to respond to some of them. Kal is right in saying that one of my goals...
Louis Henkin Professor of Human and Constitutional Rights, Columbia Law School. From 2009-2011, the author served as Counselor on International Law to the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State. The views expressed here are personal and do not purport to reflect the views of the U.S. government. The period since September 11, 2001 has seen significantly heightened interest in...
