In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Initial Thoughts on the ICC’s Decision to Investigate Afghanistan

03 Nov

Very significant news out of the ICC today: after a decade-long preliminary examination, the OTP has finally decided to ask the Pre-Trial Chamber to authorize a formal investigation into the situation in Afghanistan. Here is a snippet from Fatou Bensouda's announcement: For decades, the people of Afghanistan have endured the scourge of armed conflict.  Following a meticulous preliminary examination of the...

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31 Oct

[Jennifer Trahan is Associate Professor, The Center for Global Affairs, NYU-SPS, and Chair of the International Criminal Court Committee of the American Branch of the International Law Association.] On Friday, October 27, Burundi’s withdrawal from the International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute, filed one year earlier, became effective. This sad event —the first ever withdrawal from the Court to become effective —...

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29 Oct

As has been widely reported, Burundi has just become the first state to formally withdraw from the ICC. The OTP has been examining the situation in Burundi since April 2016, but it did not formally ask the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) to authorize an investigation prior to Burundi's withdrawal becoming effective. So what does Burundi's withdrawal mean for the OTP's preliminary...

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25 Oct

I have just posted on SSRN a draft of a (very) long article entitled "Specially-Affected States and the Formation of Custom." It represents my first real foray into both "classic" public international law and postcolonial critique. Here is the abstract: Although the US has consistently relied on the ICJ’s doctrine of specially-affected states to claim that it and other powerful states...

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22 Oct

Announcement ASIL presents "International Law and the Trump Administration: The Use of Force under International Law" Online, Monday, October 30 at 2:00 PM ET. This live online briefing, the eighth in the American Society of International Law's series on "International Law and the Trump Administration," will feature former senior U.S. officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations who were responsible for formulating...

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17 Oct

[Malcolm Jorgensen is a Research Fellow at the Berlin Potsdam Research Group "International Law--Rise or Decline?"] In their new book The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World, Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro assert that Chinese occupation of maritime features in the South China Sea is “worth little as long as the rest of the world refuses...

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08 Oct

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...

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02 Oct

[Astrid Reisinger Coracini is is Lecturer at the University of Salzburg and Director of the Salzburg Law School on International Criminal Law, Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law (SLS). This is the second of a two-part post on the subject. The first can be found here.]  1. Does the non-application of Art. 121(5) second sentence violate the law of treaties? Article 40(4) of...

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29 Sep

[Astrid Reisinger Coracini is is Lecturer at the University of Salzburg and Director of the Salzburg Law School on International Criminal Law, Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law (SLS). This is the first of a two-part post on the subject. The second can be found here.]  In December 2017, the Assembly of States Parties of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal...

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28 Sep

[Milena Sterio is a Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Academic Enrichment at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law.] On September 25, 2017, Kurds voted in a self-declared independence referendum organized by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). , According to the referendum results, it appears that about 78 per cent of Kurds actually participated in the referendum and that nearly 93...

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27 Sep

[Elvina Pothelet is a Visiting Researcher at the Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Geneva.] A few days ago, US Army Lieutenant Colonel Shane Reeves and Lieutenant Colonel Ward Narramore published a harsh criticism of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry (COI) on Syria for its “emphatic, and faulty, conclusion that the U.S. violated the Law of...

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26 Sep

[Mohamed Helal is an Assistant Professor of Law at the Moritz College of Law & Affiliated Faculty, Mershon Center for International Security Studies – The Ohio State University.] Cherif Bassiouni, Distinguished Research Professor of Law Emeritus and President Emeritus of the International Human Rights Law Institute at the DePaul University College of Law, Honorary President of the Siracusa Institute (formerly known...

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