Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation
16 May COVID-19 devastates an educational system already in crisis
...de Profesores de Venezuela, indicated that that there are only half of many teachers needed in certain subjects, including mathematics, physics, biology, and English. Of equal concern is that the Ministry of Education has, instead of providing justified wage increases, seemingly sought to address the shortage of teachers by replacing them with unqualified personnel. International obligations on the right to education The poor state of the Venezuelan education system is evidence that Venezuela is failing in its obligation under international law and requirements of domestic law to ensure the right...08 Jul Foreign Official Immunity: Wuerth Responds to Bradley, Helfer, and Stewart
courts resolve them may have a significant impact on the development of international law and on U.S. foreign relations. In my view, there is an important role for the executive branch in some immunity cases. Deference is appropriate regarding the prerequisites for status-based immunity, the development of customary international law, some questions of fact and law on which the government has particular expertise, and perhaps even the outcome of individual cases under exceptional circumstances. Professor Stewart says that I afford “at best a very limited” role for the executive, but...
13 Feb When War Bets on Protest: Iran’s Civilians in a Double Bind
...deliver: seize facilities, confront coercive organs, and force collapse from within. That positioning pulls two legal regimes onto the same bodies on two different clocks. In real time, international humanitarian law (IHL) sorts people for targeting: civilians are protected unless—and only for such time as—they directly participate in hostilities, a rule reflected across treaty and customary law in both international and non-international armed conflict. Afterward, Iran’s late-September 2025 statute on intensifying punishment for espionage and “cooperation” with hostile states supplies an emergency-tuned attribution architecture that can convert ambiguity into a...07 Jul Foreign Officials Immunity: The Judicialization of Immunity Decisions?
...as the functionality of this procedure, in which the Department of State makes the decision and the court accepts it as binding. Locating the issue within the general framework of foreign relations law, she criticizes the linked assertions that the President has “lawmaking power” and that the Department of State can “control” determinations of foreign official immunity, arguing that the constitutional basis for such assertions is at best tenuous. Instead, she argues for the judicialization of immunity decisions, resting on federal common law, with at best a very limited role...
25 May Symposium on Advancing Effective and Comprehensive Reparation for Victims of the War in Ukraine: Between Recognition and Procedure – Lessons from Colombia’s Victim Identification Commission for Ukraine’s Emerging Claims Mechanism
[Laura Posada-Orjuela is a Colombian lawyer with an LL.M. from McGill University, specializing in international human rights and transitional justice. She served as legal advisor to a commissioner at the Commission for the Verification of Identity and Kinship of Victims of the Patriotic Union (Comisión para la Constatación de Identidad y Parentesco de Víctimas de la Unión Patriótica, UP)] Introduction On March 31, 2026, the mandate of the Commission for the Verification of Identity and Kinship of Victims of the Unión Patriótica (CCIPVUP or « The Commission ») formally came to an end, followed shortly by the public presentation...
23 Apr International Law for a Fragile World: When Risk Outpaces Control – AI, Bioengineering, and Cyber-Autonomy
[Dr Sergey Sayapin is Professor of Law at KIMEP University (Almaty, Kazakhstan) and Distinguished Visiting Global Scholar at the NUS Centre for International Law (2025)] If climate change exposes the limits of consent-based governance in ecological systems, technological disruption reveals a parallel fragility in the architecture of international law. Artificial intelligence, bioengineering, and cyber-autonomous systems do not simply pose new regulatory challenges – they transform the underlying conditions under which harm occurs, responsibility can be attributed, and control can be exercised. Like ecological risk, technological risk is transboundary, cumulative, and...07 Jul Foreign Officials Immunity: Implications for Human Rights Litigation
(CIL) confers immunity on foreign officials from lawsuits alleging human rights violations. Instead, the Justices instructed U.S. courts to determine the immunity of foreign officials under the “common law”—the legal regime that prevailed prior to the FSIA’s adoption. Notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s inattention to the international law backdrop to the Samantar case, I fully agree with Professor Wuerth that CIL is relevant to how U.S. courts should develop the common law of foreign official immunity. I also agree that a return to the pre-FSIA immunity regime should not be understood...24 Dec Presidential Wiretapping – Not Such an Easy Legal Question
...enemies, than that is a plain violation and probably an impeachable offense. But there is nothing like that even alleged so far. The functional problem, though, is how to interpret and cabin the AUMF to keep it from being a blank check to the President. I agree this is a problem, although not an insurmountable one. Congress can obviously amend the AUMF or even withdraw it. It can amend the FISA to plainly prohibit the President’s activities here. I just don’t think Congress has spoken plainly here (whatever Tom Daschle...06 Nov From the Trenches: Head of State Immunity Discussed in Sixth Committee of GA
highlights the areas of contention. Many states want to maintain a broad regime of immunities and discouraged a lex ferenda approach to the topic. Germany, however, reiterated that immunity does not mean impunity, because states can always waive immunity, prosecute under their own national laws, or defer to international criminal jurisdiction. For those following this topic, a few useful background notes are available here and here. The ILC will begin producing draft articles for debate, and we can expect this will be a hot topic in the years to come....