Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation
06 Feb ICC and Palestine Symposium: The (Non) Effects of Oslo on Rights and Status
the Oslo process The Oslo Process was a murky and flawed attempt to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The Process adopted an exceptionalist approach to international law, undermining Palestinians’ individual rights and their collective claim to self-determination. The Agreements are deficient in at least four respects. Firstly, the processes leading to them have involved limited participation from the full Palestinian political representation, not to mention ordinary Israelis and Palestinians who, according to international law, should have been provided an opportunity to determine their own future, such as by...
17 Feb The Other Carolines
the necessary and voluntary law of nations as well as conventional and customary agreements between states – which is beyond the scope of this blog post. Suffice to say that bilateral agreement was insufficient proof of general applicability. Especially considering that back then approaches to international law were quite diverse: “where the inference from the law of nature is not clear, each nation must be allowed its own interpretation of that law, with the result that in some instances the strict precepts of the law of nature may be evaded”....15 Jun What is De Facto Sovereignty?
...the Constitution authorizes our Government to enforce our laws abroad, then when the Government agents exercise this authority, the Constitution travels with them. Under this definition, the Constitution is an unavoidable correlative of the Government’s power to enforce the law. I don’t think it is clear which of these possible definitions future courts will adopt. It really is anyone’s guess. The Court in Boumediene seemed to emphasize a functional, ad hoc approach that would prevent the political branches from exercising power and then manipulating the circumstances under which that power...
10 Jun Are the Oslo Accords Still Valid? For the ICC and Palestine, It Should Not Matter
...to enforce jurisdiction over acts committed by Israelis in their territory. The term “prescriptive jurisdiction” refers to a state’s capacity to “make its law applicable to the activities, relations, or status of persons, or the interests of persons in things”. “Enforcement jurisdiction”, on the other hand, concerns the ability to “enforce or compel compliance or to punish noncompliance with its laws or regulations” (for more, here). As previously argued by Kai Ambos and Roger O’Keefe, and recently stated by the OTP, bilateral jurisdictional agreements such as Oslo could only affect...21 Feb Misrepresenting Al-Haq’s Position on Palestinian Rocket Attacks
Committee is of the opinion that recognition of the Palestinians’ right to resist the occupation and confirmation of their lawful struggle derives its legitimate status from the international law norms and principles…" While the report states that "The Committee further confirms that acquiring legitimacy of international law as well as international recognition of the lawful Palestinian struggle necessitates that Palestinians duly fulfill their legal obligations," it does not make direct reference to rocket attacks in this paragraph and given the vague wording, it is certainly far short of a condemnation...
11 Feb Two Distinct Legal Regimes of State Recognition: Somaliland, Israel, and the African Union
doctrine of non-recognition, which binds African states under the AU Constitutive Act. The next section briefly reviews recognition of a state under international law, highlighting the theories and requirements of state recognition and the doctrine of non-recognition. Then, the piece scrutinizes the legality of Israel’s recognition of Somaliland in light of these principles. The final section analyzes the African regional approach to state recognition. Recognition of States Under General International Law Recognition of states is one of the most consequential issues under international law. However, it is also one of...
05 May Symposium on the UNWCC: War Crimes Against Culture – Poland’s Charge File Submissions to the UNWCC
legal measures that could be taken to hold those responsible to account, informed debates at the United Nations War Crimes Commission, founded in October 1943. Representatives of the Polish War Crimes Office (created in November 1943) were cognisant of the pre-UNWCC discussions about war crimes, which had taken place in a range of unofficial fora, and had taken part in the Polish Government’s deliberations in 1942 and early 1943 on the draft Polish law relating to war crimes. That law, the ‘Decree of the President of the Republic of Poland...16 Jul On (Neo)Colonial Genocide
...the need to abandon views that “reduc[e] the history of international law to a Völkerrechtsgeschichte der Opfer” – a History of international law of victims. “Postcolonial scholarship”, he argues, “usually places the South American legal space as part of the history of the abusers”. According to him, “nineteenth-century South American republics are studied with respect to the topic of the ‘unequal treaties’ that were forced on them by imperial powers under the legitimation of the ‘standard of civilization’, with international law appearing mainly as Medium der Befreiung in a decolonization...21 Jun Makdisi on the Language of Israel and Palestine
who are practicing colonialism and apartheid in the Palestinian territories, as the findings of a recent report by The Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) make clear, summarized here by Valentina Azarov of the International Law Observer: The HSRC commissioned an international team of scholars and practitioners of international public law from South Africa, the United Kingdom, Israel and the West Bank to conduct the study. The resulting 300-page draft, titled ‘Occupation, Colonialism, Apartheid?: A re-assessment of Israel’s practices in the occupied Palestinian territories under international law’, represents...
02 Sep Back to the Drawing Board of the Partition Plan: Vice-President Sebutinde’s Erroneous Account of Palestinian and Israeli Claims of Title to the Territory of Mandatory Palestine (Part One)
[André de Hoogh is Associate Professor in International Law, University of Groningen; his research covers a wide range of topics in public international law. He is a member of the Advisory Committee on Public International Law , a statutory body which provides advice to the Dutch government and parliament; this contribution has been written in his personal capacity, and does not reflect in any way the views of the Advisory Committee.] In its advisory opinion on the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), the International Court of Justice (the Court) held that...