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19 Dec Weaponized Archaeology and Sovereignty Disputes
...regions can conveniently help to contravene international law. At issue is how archaeological research is being injected into political rhetoric on issues such as claims of sovereignty in the Arctic, in the South China Sea, and over Crimea. Campbell writes: China’s deputy minister of culture, Li Xiaojie, put it bluntly: “Marine archaeology is an exercise that demonstrates national sovereignty.” Russia has followed suit. In 2011, when he was prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin made headlines by retrieving two ancient ceramic jars from a shipwreck at Phanagoria, the ancient Greek city...17 Sep Guest Post: A Presumption Against Authorization in the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act
...for example, might motivate Congress to affirmatively delegate foreign affairs decisions to the President to leave time to focus on domestic matters that are more salient to constituents. The aggregation of these dynamics means that assessing the legality of presidential action by reference to Congress tends toward the expansion of presidential power. One way to check this expansion is to begin the search for congressional approval with a presumption against authorization. Applying such a presumption to the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act would render Professor Ackerman and Golove’s interpretation, and...
25 Oct Framing Critique, on Celluloid and Paper
...Black and female empowerment. It would be a story of slaver self-discovery. These kinds of framing decisions are important not only for filmmaking, but for our own research as international legal scholars. In fact, if the conventional history of international law that floods the introductory chapters of most classic textbooks were a movie, it would have a distinctly white-saviour-y flair. International Law (1539) is a movie about how a wise white man from Salamanca, Francisco de Vitoria, created the concept of the international to account for the recent encounter of...
11 Oct The Use of AI at the ICC: Should we Have Concerns? Part II
...AI tool by the user; and the human who interprets that output. Each of these variables have a valence for bias which could impact an AI’s output. Further, research has clearly shown that gender biases are found in datasets in general and training data sets in particular. Thus, if the data contains certain biases, this will be replicated by the algorithm and can even be exacerbated by it. Importantly, every database has a point of view. What a researcher finds in the process of searching depends heavily on who builds...23 Sep Sexism in Reporting on the ICC
...legal issues not previously handled in the court’s jurisprudence. These included among other things definitions of a “case”, “investigations”, “prosecutions” among others and which the judge accused the pretrial chamber of unilaterally fixing meanings without giving parties chance to contribute. At first I thought using a judge’s first name might simply be an unusual house style, so I did a quick google search and found this Nairobi Star article written by the same journalist (my emphasis): In their separate filings at the court supplemented by oral presentations by their lawyers...02 Jul A Thought Experiment About ICC-State Cooperation
...genocide, Evans is detained by the Rantanian intelligence service and her bag searched. Intelligence officers discover a list of suspects provided to her in confidence (and anonymously) by one of the human-rights NGOs. Evans is promptly charged with espionage on the ground that the “accusations” on the list are an attempt by Evans and the NGO to subvert the lawful government of Rantania. She is imprisoned and repeatedly interrogated concerning the identity of the NGO that gave her the list. How would the ICC respond to such a situation? Would...08 Mar R.I.P. Jean Baudrillard
...than a war. [snip] One of his better known theories postulates that we live in a world where simulated feelings and experiences have replaced the real thing. This seductive “hyperreality,” where shopping malls, amusement parks and mass-produced images from the news, television shows and films dominate, is drained of authenticity and meaning. Since illusion reigns, he counseled people to give up the search for reality. “All of our values are simulated,” he told The New York Times in 2005. “What is freedom? We have a choice between buying one car...11 Apr My Compilation of On-line Treaty Databases
...or UST (the US Treaty Series). But, far more often, I did my research on-line. As a result, I’ve now become a bit of a connoisseur of treaty databases. For years, a new major, multilateral treaty meant a new web-site dedicated to that treaty, which invariably includes its text and other relevant documentation (Final Acts, Records of the Meeting of the Parties, etc.). Bilateral treaties have long been much harder to track down. Today, however, States and International Organizations (IOs) are increasingly making all their treaty commitments publicly available on...
08 May New Technologies Symposium: Autonomous Weapons Systems– Why Keeping a ‘Human On the Loop’ Is Not Enough
...human degradation technologies), nanomaterials, and biometrics, among others, featuring fantastic scholars. It also provides a useful introductory section outlining the legal frameworks that regulate these new technologies, both inside and outside armed conflict. Needless to say, this book embarks in a phenomenally ambitious enterprise, which the authors largely honour. The book is informative, tightly argued, and highly topical. It is a wonderful resource for researchers and advanced students. Most likely, it should be required reading in any IHL course in the world. I am grateful to the editors of Opinio...