Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation
14 May How did the Israeli Supreme Court Legitimise Starvation as a Weapon of War? An Autopsy of a Ruling (Part 2)
[Neve Gordon is a professor at the School of Law, Queen Mary University of London, a Fellow of the British Academy of Social Sciences and the former Chair of the British Society of Middle Eastern Studies’ Committee on Academic Freedom. He is the author of Israel’s Occupation (University of California Press 2008) and co-author of The Human Right to Dominate (Oxford University Press, 2015), Human Shields: A History of People in the Line of Fire (University of California Press, 2020). Muna Haddad is a Palestinian human rights lawyer and a PhD candidate at the School of Law,...20 Jan Why the Palestinian Authority Should Avoid Arafat’s Death
...Jerusalem for non-payment and instigating lawsuits abroad through its own parastatal agents. Like any other state, Palestine should assert its statehood and international standing in the normal course of events, while pursuing its own claims against Israel's foreign assets in the courts of every single country that has recognized it. There have been reports which indicate the Palestinian Authority has over a billion dollars in frozen accounts around the world as a result of lawsuits. So, it would definitely be in Palestine's best interest to have its own foreign sovereign...08 Nov Saddam News
...violence in Iraq. Leandro Despouy, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, harshly criticized Saddam’s trial. His primary criticisms: the IHT’s inability to prosecute international crimes committed by non-Iraqi soldiers during the Gulf War and the invasion of Iraq; the Tribunal’s creation during an occupation by a foreign power; the death penalty; the impossibility of holding a fair trial in a climate of violence; the Tribunal’s failure to satisfy international standards of due process. Despouy recommends creating a new international tribunal to deal with the trial....
03 Oct People Make the World: A Conversation with Georges Abi-Saab
...and, as he wrote, “may the personal cost be damned.” This idea resonated deeply with the previous generation of critical Third World international legal scholars, including Mohamed Bedajoui, Taslim Olawale Elias, and, the subject of this essay and podcast, Georges Abi-Saab. Intellectual insurgency—or guerrilla legality as Abi-Saab termed it—is evident throughout his intellectual trajectory, particularly his role in introducing a Third World perspective to the discourse on international law. Indeed, Abi-Saab’s scholarship and praxis reveal the same courage and commitment that Said praised. In a podcast Omar Kamel and I...22 Oct Louis Henkin (1917-2010): The Power of His Ideas Live On
law. He asserted that war “has no significance in international law…. War stands in the way of international law…. [T]he Constitution accepts the word “war” and uses it colloquially[.]” But, squaring the Constitution with the U.N. Charter, Lou acknowledged that while “the word ‘war’ is in the U.S. Constitution, and therefore it binds us… the most important [provision] in the U.N. Charter is Article 2, Section 4 [, which] says, ‘Nations shall not use force.’” As far as Lou was concerned, the U.N. Charter’s exception for self-defense under Article 51...07 Apr Jurisdictional Problems Everywhere
Homework, people, homework: Bangladesh may request the International Criminal Court to put on trial Pakistani forces for alleged war crimes, a top official said Tuesday. ‘We will take the matter to the International Criminal Court and seek the trial of the members of the Pakistani occupation forces who committed crimes against humanity during our liberation war,’ State Minister for Liberation War Affairs, AB Tajul Islam, told German Press Agency dpa. The alleged perpetrators of the atrocities among the Pakistani forces were not in Bangladesh now, so Dhaka needed international assistance...
11 Jul Space Resource Discussions in the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space
[Valerie Oosterveld is a Professor at the University of Western Ontario (Western University) Faculty of Law in Canada and a faculty member with her university’s Institute for Earth and Space Exploration, also known as Western Space. Anne Campbell is a recent graduate of Western University and a current Western Space summer intern.] Plans for the extraction of water and minerals in outer space – particularly on the Moon – are developing faster than international law is evolving to address this reality. As a result, the Legal Subcommittee of the United...21 Jul Bernstein, Israel, and White Phosphorous
the post: Her presentation of the relevant facts and relevant international law is tendentious in the extreme [Gaza, with not a single Israeli soldier or civilian, is “occupied?” Israel “transferred” its population to the West Bank? Using white phosphorous to illuminate targets violates international law?]. She accuses Israel of apartheid. She consistently refers to the wars in Lebanon and Gaza as “Israel’s wars,” even though, obviously, they were fought against foes that were launching cross-border attacks against Israel’s civilian population and which declare themselves to be at war with Israel....
08 Aug Doing Justice to History Symposium: Exploring the Narrative Limits and Potential of International Criminal Law Judgements
of survivors, called a powerful state to account, and went beyond the confines of individual criminal responsibility. While some aspects of the TWT are not easily replicable, such as its combination of individual criminal responsibility and state responsibility, the TWT judgment stands out for pushing the boundaries of international criminal law and human rights law while adhering to accepted legal limits. As I argue elsewhere, the TWT’s formal approach to law enhanced its legal legitimacy and facilitated its penetration of formal legal spheres. Another exciting experiment in adjudication may be...06 Apr Spoils of War and The Golden Tablet of Ishta Temple
...returned some, but not all, of the objects in 1957…. The estate claims that under the applicable laws of the Soviet Union … cultural property taken by Russian troops during the occupation of Berlin after World War II was lawfully transferred from one sovereign to another and that this taking of the gold tablet by Russian troops extinguished the rights of the museum pursuant to international law. Thus, a party subsequently acquiring the tablet could obtain good title and transfer good title to others. The museum maintains, however, that the...