In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Prospects for a Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Humanity

08 Oct

[Madaline George is the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute Fellow at Washington University School of Law.] More than 70 years after crimes against humanity were defined in Article 6(c) of the London Charter and prosecuted at Nuremberg, the international community may soon have a global convention on crimes against humanity. In Chapter IV of the Report of the International Law Commission on the work of...

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02 Oct

I am quoted in a long article by Ali Younes for Al Jazeera about a new communication to the ICC asking it to investigate the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, which was committed one year ago today. The communication advances two theories for why the Court has or could have jurisdiction over Khashoggi's murder. The article quotes me responding to one:...

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29 Sep

Call for Papers The Palestine Yearbook of International Law (PYBIL) has opened an invitation for an additional round of submissions for Volume XXII. We welcome general submissions related to public international law. We are interested in particular in critical approaches to international law, and welcome submissions in relation to Palestine. This peer-reviewed volume would include articles, case commentaries, and book reviews.  Articles should not exceed 12,000 words,...

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25 Sep

I sat down with Stephen Rapp, (formerly Chief of Prosecutions at the ICTR, Prosecutor at the SCSL, and US Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice; now a Fellow at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for Prevention of Genocide and Oxford University’s Blavatnik School) to talk about some of the burning issues in international criminal justice today.  There are very clear challenges...

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22 Sep

Call for Papers The Military Law and the Law of War Review / Revue de Droit Militaire et de Droit de la Guerre is a journal specialised in matters of interest for both civilian and military legal advisors as well as legal scholars and academics. Published since 1962, it is among the oldest publications at the international level in the areas of...

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20 Sep

Asymmetrical Haircuts is a brilliant new podcast on international criminal justice hosted by journalists Janet Anderson and Stephanie van den Berg. Check out their photos here and you'll see where the podcast gets its name. I had the pleasure last month of being their token male interviewee; here is their description of our conversation: Stephanie has a guilty secret. Or maybe...

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18 Sep

As most readers will know by now, Pre-Trial Chamber II has partially granted the OTP's request for leave to appeal the PTC's refusal to authorize the Afghanistan investigation. Eulogies for the investigation are thus premature. A few thoughts on the PTC's decision follow. To begin with, it remains scandalous that it took the PTC this long to certify the appeal. The...

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09 Sep

The irreplaceable Carmi Lecker called my attention yesterday to a proposal by Switzerland to deem the intentional starvation of civilians a war crime in non-international armed conflict (NIAC). At present, it is only a war crime in international armed conflict (IAC) -- Art. 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Rome Statute. Here is the text of the proposal: Add to article 8, paragraph 2...

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07 Sep

Announcements I am delighted to announce that CUP has recently published Freya Baetens' new book, Legitimacy of Unseen Actors in International Adjudication. Here's the publisher's description: International courts and tribunals differ in their institutional composition and functions, but a shared characteristic is their reliance on the contribution of individuals other than the judicial decision-makers themselves. Such 'unseen actors' may take the form...

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01 Sep

Announcement: Francis Lieber Prize 2020 The American Society of International Law's Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict awards the Francis Lieber Prize to the authors of publications that the judges consider to be outstanding in the field of law and armed conflict. Both monographs and articles (including chapters in books of essays) are eligible for consideration — the prize is...

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26 Aug

A few months ago, I was invited by the Polish Ministry of Justice to participate in a one-day conference on the responsibility of lawyers for judicial crimes, part of Poland's Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Stalinism and Nazism. The Ministry asked me to discuss American prosecutions of Nazi lawyers at the Nuremberg Military Tribunals -- something I wrote...

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