Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation
04 Apr COVID-19 Symposium: Israel and its International Law COVID-19 Obligations Towards Gaza
[Solon Solomon is a Lecturer in the Division of Public and International Law at Brunel University London School of Law.] There is no question that Israel has an obligation to alleviate the health crisis that COVID-19 may trigger in the Gaza Strip. After all, according to the jurisprudential line taken by the Israeli Supreme Court, the State cannot allow the emergence of a humanitarian crisis in post-disengagement Gaza. The current post would like to examine how these international law obligations are translated when it comes to the need to avert...
07 Feb ICC and Palestine Symposium: ‘Imprisoning’ Self-Determination–The Israeli Military Law Enforcement System in the West Bank and Its Relevance for the ICC
brought to a judge (24 hours in Israeli domestic law, compared with 8 days under military orders), or the maximum period of detention without access to a lawyer (48 hours under Israeli domestic law, against 90 days under the military orders). The legal discriminations are then aggravated by the unequal law enforcement policies. Organizations denouncing settlers’ violence against Palestinians, for example, have reported that – in ten years of activity – 85.3% of the investigations have been closed due the failure to locate suspects or to collect sufficient evidence; just...05 Jun Please, Can We Stop the Stupid Gaza Piracy Charge?
Union of Postal Workers (!?!?) I could go on, but I won’t. Aside from demonstrating the limits of this blog’s readership the flagrant stupidity of this “piracy” meme reflects a remarkable lack of seriousness among (some of) Israel’s critics about the legality of the raid and the blockade. So next time you hear the Foreign Minister of Turkey decrying Israel’s violations of international law, for instance, you can feel confident he actually cares nothing at all about international law, and is just looking for a convenient slogan to slam Israel....20 May The Unredeemable Republic of China: Why Professor Lung-Chu Chen’s Theory of Effective Self-Determination May Be Harmful to Taiwan’s Statehood Claim
[Dr Ming-Sung Kuo is an associate professor of law at University of Warwick (UK) where he has taught international law, constitutional and administrative law, and legal theory. He earned his JSD and LLM from Yale University and his LLB and another master degree from National Taiwan University.] In Professor Lung-Chu Chen’s recent post on Opinio Juris, he reiterates his justification of Taiwan’s statehood, which I first heard when I was still a senior law student at National Taiwan University. In this brief note, I aim to point out why Professor...09 May Jus Post Bellum Symposium: Jus Post Bellum and the Ethics of Care
principles is developing incrementally through practice and lawmaking in different areas, such as peace treaties (see e.g., Christine Bell pp 191-204, Jennifer Easterday, pp 379-412), peace operations (Dieter Fleck, pp 43-57), (post-) occupation law (see e.g,. Adam Roberts, Kristen Boon, Yael Ronen, pp. 428-445), international criminal justice (Fréderic Mégret, pp. 519-541) and statebuilding practice (Matthew Saul, pp. 447-464). One of the deficits of modern jus post bellum principles (e.g. accountability, vetting, reparations) and approaches to peacebuilding is that they are often presented in technical labels (‘rule of law’, ‘capacity-building’, ‘civil...
19 Sep Public-Private Genocide?
[Professor Sundhya Pahuja is ARC Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate Professor and Professor of international law at the University of Melbourne. She is the Director of the Laureate Program in Global Corporations and International Law . Dr. André Dao is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Laureate Program] On 30 June 2025, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese issued a report detailing corporate complicity in Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and genocide against the Palestinian people. Special Rapporteurs are independent experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate and...
29 Apr Symposium on Boyd van Dijk’s Preparing for War: The Making of Future Wars – A Methodological Note
[Karin Loevy is a fellow at NYU School of Law, where she serves as the manager JSD Program. She is also a researcher at the Institute for International Law and Justice (IILJ) where she leads the History & Theory of International Law workshop series. Her current work is in history of international law in the Middle East in the period leading to the mandate system.] One thing that I find fascinating about history of law generally is that it allows us to think deeply about one main aspect of what...22 Jan Guest Post: The Palestinian Accession to the Rome Statute and the Question of the Settlements
...words "directly or indirectly", looks like an ex post facto law to me, unless I am to suppose that the presence or absence of the words makes no difference. Ex post facto laws are forbidden in most jurisdictions of the world. Jordan Edward: use of ex post facto law for criminal sanction purposes would constitute a violation of international law (e.g., human rights law as well as the customary principle of nullum crimen sine lege [no crime without law], set forth in Article 22 of the Rome Statute for the...
28 Jul The Oslo Accords and the International Criminal Court’s Jurisdiction in the Situation in the State of Palestine
paras. 13-16) Furthermore, “considering the complexity and novelty of the Prosecutor’s Request” the court invited other States, organizations and/or persons to submit amicus curiae (friends of the court) observations. (Ibid., para. 17) The author assisted Dr. Robert Heinsch and Dr. Giulia Pinzauti in submitting their amici curiae observations to the ICC on the said case. The Heinsch-Pinzauti amicus curia brief was the only academic brief to focus on the relevance of the law of occupation in determining Palestine’s statehood under relevant rules of international law, and remarkably it was the...17 Oct China’s Rising Geolegal Sphere
power. Evidence from the South China Sea, however, suggests an important exception to this claim, with China increasingly demonstrating effective exercise of regional power without the authority of international law. The observation that international law facilitates effective power turns on a globally recognised order in which legal rules inform states’ rational calculations about what actions will likely be challenged as threats to that order. In Hathaway and Shapiro’s words: “Real power—power useful for achieving important political objectives—does not exist in the absence of law. Law creates real power. States can...