Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation
17 Mar UK House of Lords UNCLOS Inquiry: A Significant Intervention
[Reece Lewis is Lecturer in Law at Cardiff University.] This year marks 40 years since the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) was opened for signature. This landmark provides an opportunity to reflect on its achievements and challenges it faces today. Leading the way is the Report by the UK House of Lords International Relations and Defence Select Committee, entitled “UNCLOS: the Law of the Sea in the 21st Century”—published 1 March 2022. The Inquiry sought to examine whether UNCLOS remains fit for purpose in the...
26 Jul A Word on Criminal Omission and its Prominence in International Criminal Law
to conceptualise omission liability. Occasional lack of a clear-cut understanding of different types of omissions and failure to distinguish between superior and other forms of omission liability are just two among many examples testifying to a pressing need to further explore this highly complex debate. On the one hand, omissions have been analysed quite substantially in domestic criminal law and, at the international level, there is some case law dealing with the responsibility of states for omissions. On the other hand, the few decisions of international criminal courts dealing with...
29 Jul Ecocide: Environmental Crime of Crimes or Ill-Conceived Concept?
...by the IEP – or a pure negligence standard, as Heller offers. The “Unlawful” Requirement What exactly is unlawful environmental destruction? The IEP elaborates that “the qualifier ‘unlawful’ captures environmentally harmful acts that are already prohibited in law.” Finding the term “unlawful under international law” too narrow, they considered that “[i]nternational environmental law contains obligations for States in treaties and customary international law but relatively few absolute prohibitions, and leaves the bulk of the protection to be formulated at the national level, through national laws.” The IEP’s core legal text...
18 Sep Setting Sail: Tales of an Academic Nomad
...project, contextualising its resonance on possible futures for international law, for purposes of this blogpost, I wish to comment on something more intimate. Alongside Malcolm X, Samir Amin, and CLR James, Ibn Battuta is one of the scholars who has most shaped my academic trajectory and guided my next career move. * * * Like many critical idealists before me, I have found myself both drawn to the potential of international law and disillusioned by its reality. From my formative years in law school, it was evident the global legal...06 Nov CIA’s Approach to Drones?
Jordan Exactly, and JAG officers are also more likely to be better equipped to make proper choices and provide proper legal advice with respect to the law of self-defense -- the other paradigm used over the years by the Executive as an alternative legal basis for targetings and captures. Additionally, if CIA persons are doing the targeting, they would not have "combatant immunity" as "combatants" under the laws of war unless a particular CIA person happens to alse be a member of the regular armed forces of the United States...17 Oct Treaty Interpretation 101
...Convention and US law. Certainly, Article 32 would seem to owe much to the rule of English common law relaxed in Pepper v. Hart, viz. the rule against the use of Hansard in statutory interpretation. I take it that such a rule has never existed in US law? Also, Lord McNair would certainly not have been talking about similarities to American law (in the passage I seem to remember). This would, of course, raise the question of how English law has come to influence international law quite so much, if...
28 May Symposium on Advancing Effective and Comprehensive Reparation for Victims of the War in Ukraine: Ukraine’s Emerging Compensation Architecture and Its Systemic Challenges
appropriate, strike out cases under Article 37 of the Convention, allowing applicants to pursue their claims through the international compensation mechanism. This approach reflects the practical reality that enforcement through Strasbourg is currently limited, with awards unpaid by Russia already exceeding €2.8 billion. However, such an approach must be treated with caution. At present—and potentially in future procedural developments within the ECtHR inter-State proceedings—reliance on the emerging international compensation mechanism may lead to the postponement of consideration of just satisfaction for pre-2022 violations. This is particularly sensitive given that the...05 Dec Reply to Raustiala, McGuinness, Parrish and Cleveland
...the most to lose if it accepts a broad approach to extraterritorial application since it is exerting its power extraterritorially all the time, and the least to lose by resisting such constraints, i.e. it can afford to buck the trend more easily than, say, a state subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights. Similarly, because human rights law is not directly applicable within US domestic law, it is unlikely that US courts will push the government to change its position on the extraterritorial application of human...08 Nov The Oxford Guide to Treaties Symposium: Validity of Reservations Revisited
[Marko Milanovic is Lecturer at the University of Nottingham School of Law] I am grateful to Duncan for inviting me to contribute to this conversation, inspired by his important new book. Let me continue where David Stewart and Harold Koh left off, namely with the issue of the validity of reservations and the innovations in that regard in the ILC’s freshly minted Guide to Practice. I would disagee with Professor Koh that the approach ultimately adopted by the ILC ‘makes little sense and smacks of unfairness’. On the contrary –...
26 May Symposium on Advancing Effective and Comprehensive Reparation for Victims of the War in Ukraine: Towards a Holistic Care Model – Lessons from the DRC Experience for the Ukrainian Context
...SOFEPADI facilitates access to legal representation through collaborations with lawyer collectives, ensuring victim representation during hearings. The organization covers legal fees, and lawyers’ costs, which are often a major obstacle. The link between medical and legal components is essential: medical certificates established by SOFEPADI doctors serve as evidence for the judicial file. To compensate for the absence of courts in remote areas, SOFEPADI facilitates mobile hearings by moving magistrates, clerks, and lawyers directly into communities. This allows for the judging of perpetrators near the crime scene, which has a strong...