In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Environmental Governance: Managing Fragmentation through Institutional Connection

06 Dec

[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...

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05 Dec

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...

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05 Dec

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...

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02 Dec

In Extraterritorial Application of Human Rights Treaties: Law, Principles, Policy, Marko Milanovic has written an illuminating and comprehensive analysis of the increasingly contested question of the geographic scope of human rights treaties. Of course, this is a dynamic area of law—as Marko notes, many of the cases he examines are of quite recent vintage—so undoubtedly  he will be at work...

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01 Dec

It's official -- or almost is, to be completely accurate.  Mark Kersten first reported the news at Justice in Conflict, and a Reuters story has now confirmed it.  On December 12, Fatou Bensouda will become the next ICC Prosecutor: An informal meeting of ICC members will be held in New York on Thursday to discuss the appointment, said Liechtenstein's U.N....

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30 Nov

Well, not really today, but it was about twenty years ago that what we now call (incorrectly, at times) the "frozen conflicts"-- the separatist conflicts in Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Moldova-- weren't  frozen but were actually brushfire wars before settling into stalemates. Long-time readers of this blog may remember my interest in these conflicts, starting with the ongoing conflict in Moldova...

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29 Nov

The ICC has announced that the Assembly of States Parties has eliminated Andrew Cayley and Robert Petit from consideration as Moreno-Ocampo's replacement: The Assembly of States Parties of the International Criminal Court (“the Assembly”) will hold its tenth session at the United Nation Headquarters in New York from 12 to 21 December 2011. The tenth session will be marked...

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29 Nov

The High Court of Kenya has held that the government has an obligation to arrest Bashir if he sets foot on Kenyan territory: The Kenyan High Court ruling was the result of a case that the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) brought against Kenya's attorney general and internal security minster in 2010. "The courts have said that Kenya has an...

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26 Nov

Dapo Akande has a typically excellent discussion of the surrender issue today at EJIL: Talk!, in which he agrees with Jens Ohlin and disagrees with me.  In his view, Libya is entitled to challenge the admissibility of the case against Saif without having to first surrender him to the ICC. I find much of Dapo's argument convincing, but I am...

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25 Nov

My friend and PhD supervisor Carsten Stahn has posted a very interesting discussion of Libya and the ICC at the Hague Justice Portal.  Here is a taste: One possible option to reconcile domestic jurisdiction with accountability before the ICC may be a division of labor based on temporal jurisdiction. In line with the Council referral, the ICC enjoys ...

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