Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation
02 Aug Al Hassan: The International Criminal Court’s First Judgment on Gender Persecution (Part 2)
[ Rosemary Grey is a Senior Lecturer at Sydney Law School, The University of Sydney. Valerie Oosterveld is Western Research Chair in International Criminal Justice and Professor at the Faculty of Law, Western University (Canada). While she serves as Special Adviser to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Crimes Against Humanity, this post was written in her personal capacity, and she was not involved in the Al Hassan case.] Although the ICC’s Al Hassan case seemed like a clear example of gender-based persecution, the Trial Chamber did not...
20 Apr The Elephant in the Courtroom
and the brief final section in which the right does appear deals primarily with Israel’s obligations not to impede humanitarian interventions. One paragraph makes brief reference to the imposition of Israeli domestic laws onto East Jerusalem (where Israel’s ‘territorial claim… has long been declared “null and void”’, para 219), but the natural extension of this idea – that the occupation itself is ‘inconsistent with [Israel’s] obligation not to impede the Palestinian people from exercising its right to self-determination’ – is left unexpressed. Frustration in separate opinions In their Separate Opinions,...02 Aug Assessing the Legal Issues of the Moldovan Separatist Conflict
...history helped us tease out the state practice concerning the underlying law. We found there has been a consistent view that there is no general right to secession—or “external self-determination”—under international law. Attempted secessions are largely viewed as domestic affairs that need to be resolved by the state itself. As a matter of international law, a successful claim for external self-determination must at least show that: (a) the secessionists are a “people;” (b) the state from which they are attempting to secede seriously violates their human rights; and (c) there...23 Sep A Reply to Goodman Re: War/Not War with Al-Qaeda
Ryan has a fascinating but problematic post today at Just Security in which he takes international-law scholars to task for opportunistically flip-flopping on whether the US is involved in an armed conflict with al-Qaeda. Here is the crux of his argument, taken from the post’s introductory paragraph: Those arguments have been inconsistent with regard to one fundamental legal question: whether the US is, as a matter of law, in an armed conflict. In fact, a pattern has emerged over the years: opposition to different actions has alternated between arguing that...04 Mar In Memory of Edward R. Cummings
David Kaye, a State Department lawyer who is on leave as director of the Center for International and Comparative Law at Whittier Law School, wrote to tell me that Edward R. Cummings, a long-time lawyer at the State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser has passed away. Ed was not the type of guy who is often mentioned on blogs. He wasn’t an academic celebrity. He wasn’t a bomb-thrower. He was a quite simply a great lawyer. George Washington University Law School, his alma mater, has posted an obit and...
17 Apr Symposium on Confronting Colonial Objects: Returning Colonial Objects – The Role of Transitional Justice and Alternative Dispute Resolution
of ADR mechanisms with strategies grounded on the interplay between international cultural heritage law, human rights law and transitional justice. First, claimants should endeavour to persuade holding institutions to settle colonial-era restitution claims by involving not only cultural heritage experts, but also transitional justice specialists. The aim is to ensure that parties consciously pursue the goals of transitional justice – and not unwittingly as in past settlements. Second, States and communities should advocate for the development, application and ‘hardening’ of principles guiding the conduct of all parties entangled in disputes...
26 Apr The ICJ and the ECtHR’s Provisional Measures in the “Lachin Corridor” in Azerbaijan: Can Armenia Use the Civilian Passage for Military Purposes?
provisional measures should be seen in a broader context of ongoing Azerbaijan-Armenia reciprocal claims before the ICJ and the ECtHR under the UN Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The parties allege various violations of international law and human rights law, including military occupation, ethnic cleansing, property rights, security of persons, etc., arising from Armenia’s occupation of Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region and adjacent districts from 1991-2020. Provisional Measures ECtHR On 21 December 2022, the ECtHR adopted its provisional measure...
02 Apr Is Judicial Determination of Territorial Jurisdiction in the Palestine Situation Unprecedented?
depart from this international practice of the UN and other international judicial bodies. Therefore, the Court was right not to exclude any parts of OPT. Such exclusion could have been considered an encouragement to the Israeli occupation policies of annexation, settlement and unlawful excessive use of force against the Palestinian civilians. In addition, such ruling could have been discriminatory against the Palestinian People and inconsistent with Article 21(3) of the Statute, which stipulates that: “The application and interpretation of [the Court’s applicable law] must be consistent with internationally recognized human...
01 May The Brazilian Army in Haiti – Foreign Intervention and Domestic Politics
...area of favelas in Rio. And four years later, military intervention was authorized in the state of Rio de Janeiro, which lasted until after the start of the Bolsonaro government. The legal authority for armed forces to participate in domestic security issues (in so-called Guarantee of Law and Order (GLO) missions) derives from executive decrees issued under a 1999 law which in turn depended upon power afforded the military in Article 142 of the Brazilian Constitution. There have been dozens of such operations over recent decades to protect high-ranking officials...