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Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation

07 Jan

...is 6.8 percent. While we want that number to be zero, that small percentage does not justify holding in perpetuity the overwhelming majority of detainees, who do not subsequently engage in wrongdoing. In light of these statistics, those who argue against continuing transfers are indeed, as Sloan puts it, “constrained by an overabundance of caution.” As I’ve noted here before, and described in detail in a piece just out in the Cardozo Law Review, in all of the major wars of the 20th and 21st centuries in which U.S. detention...
07.01.15 | |

04 Apr

on LAWS to include AI-DSS is not advisable (as it may thwart regulatory efforts and progress made within various fora), states should broaden their focus in regulatory discussions beyond just (L)AWS. For example, in line with the approach adopted within the Human Rights Council, states need to expand discussions to include AI-DSS within the UN General Assembly First Committee on Disarmament and International Security, a forum that could potentially assume a leading role in drafting a regulatory framework. Another forum that could bring this issue more prominently to the fore...
04.04.24 | and |

11 Jul

comply with sodomy laws? Heaven forefend! Jordan Diplomats have been prosecuted in the past for war crimes, e.g., the French case of Abetz in 1952 and see United States v. Weizsacker, et al. (The Ministries Case) addressed in Paust, Bassiouni, et al., International Criminal Law 51 n.3(4 ed. Carolina Academic Press 2013), and in 34 Houston Journal of International Law 57 (2011). Most international criminal law instruments apply expressly to, e.g., "any person who" Phu Nguyen For your information, in 2012, the Austrian Foreign Ministry has issued 1220 Notes to...
11.07.13 | |

18 Mar

[Melanie O’Brien, Associate Professor of International Law, University of Western Australia, is an award-winning IHL teacher and President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.] Following the news from Ukraine, the list of violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) being reportedly committed by Russia is like a checklist through the rules of IHL, particularly the First Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions (API) (which Ukraine and Russia are both party to) and customary international law (CIL) rules. There has been much discussion and support for the International Criminal Court’s (ICC)...
18.03.22 | |

24 Jul

to avert from the law. Post Gaza, the law’s impartiality and its blindness in the pursuit of justice remain on paper only. In Amarata Sen’s understanding of justice, he argues that professing for ideal justice is limited and exclusionary as it fails to address the everyday injustices faced by people, which hinder the application of the law universally. When discussing the application of international rules and laws the Global South has learnt, through experience, that the social, political and systematic realities of people is the context in which the law...
24.07.25 | |

26 Jun

[Marie Steinbrecher is currently a teaching fellow at UCL’s Department of Political Science while completing her PhD at Royal Holloway’s School of Law.] The Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT) obliges State Parties to designate a National Preventive Mechanism (NPM). NPMs are mandated to visit all places of deprivation of liberty to prevent torture and ill-treatment. To date, 90 States have ratified OPCAT and must allow independent oversight of their detention facilities. In this post, I discuss the concept of independent oversight, and why independence is important yet...
26.06.20 | |

06 Apr

operates within every nook and cranny of the field. As for my own chapter (which is still up on SSRN, although you should really buy the book), its inspiration lay in one other aspect of the conventional approach to interpretation — defining interpretation simply as a process of giving meaning to treaty texts. I’ve always thought that this approach under-claimed the functions interpretation can serve. Certainly, interpretation has an expository function where its processes help interpreters ascertain what meaning to assign some treaty provision or other aspect of international law....
06.04.15 | |

03 Nov

...state from direct ownership of its technological foundations means its digital sovereignty is contingent and reversible. It exists only so long as those that host its data permit it. In physical terms, data centres are fixed installations subject to territorial law. In functional terms, however, they form a transnational terrain of power that no single state controls. A classified dataset may reside on servers located in multiple jurisdictions, connected by fibre networks crossing oceans. Encryption and access protocols create enclaves of virtual territory that can be expanded, contracted, or deleted...
03.11.25 | and |

02 Aug

...not a lot of international law in the eastern Sierra Nevada. There is an important body of sovereign nation law, given that there are several Indian tribes and tribal lands up and down the Owens Valley, including the Paiute-Shoshone tribal lands in the center of Bishop. But one feels somewhat removed from the Law of Nations. However, I thought I would share one conversation with one of the rangers here in the national park. She remarked that the ranger services – national parks, national forest, etc. – had been watching...
02.08.10 | |

07 Mar

...those that support the aims of the organization from within, and did not “just” participate in daily life by looking after their families and potentially pursuing an ordinary occupation. Interestingly, Sibel H., lived in the same area occupied by ISIL as Mine K. and Peter Frank, the Head of the Office of Federal Public Prosecutor, remarked that investigations against Sibel H. have no yet been concluded, suggesting that another arrest warrant may be sought from the Federal Supreme Court in the future on the basis of Section 9 (1) CCAIL....
07.03.19 | |

16 Dec

...and inescapable unit of analysis in international law is the sovereign Westphalian nation-state. In this mythos, a system of European states, ravaged by religious wars, gathered in Westphalia, the “holy birthing place” of international law, to produce treaties that “above all set out to protect states’ independence from intervention by outsiders”. This key idea of nascent religious tolerance (“cuius regio, eius religio”, or roughly, “to each kingdom, its own religion”) therefore fundamentally changed the world leading to what we know as the Westphalian Tradition in international law: each state protects...
16.12.23 | |

10 Jun

Any student of international humanitarian law knows the story: “In 1861 Francis Lieber (1800-1872), a German-American professor of political science and law at Columbia University, N.Y., prepared on the behalf of President Lincoln a manual based on international law (the Lieber Code) which was put into effect for the first time in 1863 for the Union Army of the United States in the American Civil War”. This Lieber Code was “the first attempt to set down, in a single set of instructions for forces in the field, the laws and...
10.06.22 | |