Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation
27 Feb Chinese Victims of Forced Labor Sue Japanese Companies in Chinese Courts; They Might Even Win
In a legal wrinkle to the ever-worsening Sino-Japanese relationship, the Chinese government has now publicly backed a lawsuit filed in Beijing courts against Japanese companies that used Chinese citizens as forced laborers during World War II. The lawsuit names Mitsubishi Materials Corporation and Mitsui Mining and Smelting as defendants and asks for compensation of 1 million yuan ($163,000) for each defendant as well as apologies in the Chinese and Japanese languages to be placed with the country’s major media outlets. Japan’s government has already opposed these lawsuits, saying that any...
04 Jul Death and Dignity in Ukraine’s Armed Conflict: An Insight into the Protection of Victims’ Remains under International Law Part I
to respect human dignity, although it does not resolve the thorny issue of the legal status of human remains. In particular, the recently published ICRC’s Guiding Principles for Dignified Management of the Dead in Humanitarian Emergencies and to Prevent them Becoming Missing Persons (2021, thereafter: the Guiding Principles) bring together the many standards, technical directives and legal instruments on the treatment of the dead that are scattered throughout various corpora: international humanitarian law (IHL), international human-rights and criminal law and disaster response law (see the conclusions of a 2018 expert...10 Sep The Problems with “Criminal Membership”
...it is for the court to decide if the underlying Law of Nations being defined actually exists. Congress used a term "Conspiracy" and some language that is very similar to the domestic criminal definition. We are all agreed that that type of Conspiracy does not exist in international law. So the CMCR then enumerates dozens of prior cases where Military Commissions and International Tribunals have tried something they also called "Conspiracy" (though defined differently), and some things that are similar to conspiracy, or are "membership" offenses, to suggest that there...
17 Jun The Domestic Definitions of the Crime of Genocide: A Dizzying Diversity
countries have not even implemented the crime of genocide in their domestic criminal law. This brings up interesting questions about the formation of customary international law and to what extent such domestic norms could (or should) be regarded as evidence of custom. [This entry is a brief summary of my forthcoming chapter ‘The Crime of Genocide in Its (Nearly) Infinite Domestic Variety’ in Marco Odello, Piotr Łubiński (eds.) The Concept of Genocide in International Criminal Law – Developments after Lemkin (Routledge, 2020) 67-97. If you are interested in reading the...22 Oct Paperback Edition of “The Nuremberg Military Tribunals”
willingness to take part in the destruction of millions of innocents manifested what Hannah Arendt famously called ‘the banality of evil’. The book is divided into five sections. The first section traces the evolution of the twelve NMT trials. The second section discusses the law, procedure, and rules of evidence applied by the tribunals, with a focus on the important differences between Law No. 10 and the Nuremberg Charter. The third section, the heart of the book, provides a systematic analysis of the tribunals’ jurisprudence. It covers Law No. 10’s...
04 Jul Death and Dignity in Ukraine’s Armed Conflict: An Insight into the Protection of Victims’ Remains under International Law Part II
of Geneva. Her research examines the concept of mass crimes impunity from an international law perspective.] The authors contributed as legal consultants to the drafting of the ICRC’s Guiding Principles for Dignified Management of the Dead in Humanitarian Emergencies and to Prevent them Becoming Missing Persons. This is the second part of a post that aims at presenting the principal international law rules underlying the dignified management of the dead in armed conflict, with a specific focus on the main norms applicable to the ongoing war in Ukraine following the...
24 Jun Why Do Some Wars Matter More Than Others? And Why Must That Change?
...and response. If international law—and the broader pursuit of justice—is to retain its moral authority and normative coherence, legal professionals, journalists, and other key actors must actively challenge the practice of selective attention. Every armed conflict demands rigorous scrutiny, and violations of international law, along with the profound human suffering they cause, must be unequivocally condemned and effectively addressed. Only through such commitment can international law fulfill its promise as a credible and impartial instrument of accountability, rather than risk becoming a tool shaped by geopolitical interests and media influence. ...
21 Nov Regarding (Pictures of) the Pain of Others: Photographic Images of Conflict-Related Deaths under International Law
exclusively matters of international humanitarian law; others may be exclusively matters of human rights law; yet others may be matters of both these branches of international law” (para. 106). In absence of explicit IHL provisions regulating privacy issues, human rights law seems to provide a valuable general framework for addressing these concerns. Most notably, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has developed robust standards on privacy, in the context of media and photographic representations, under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The ECtHR has recognized...
21 May Is Aggression a Leadership Crime? Revisiting Nuremberg Principles
those who violate the laws of war “cannot obtain immunity”; individuals are criminally responsible if they comply with orders which are “in violation of the International Law of war”. These statements convey the message that all individuals in the world (not only leaders) have an international duty not to commit the crimes proscribed by the IMT Charter, i.e. aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Note that these three statements appear in a section of the judgment entitled “The Law of the Charter”, a section which essentially consists of considerations...
04 Apr Equality and Non-Discrimination in International Arbitration: Recent Developments in the English Context
United Kingdom’s primary anti-discrimination law. While amendments designed to increase diversity in arbitration should be welcomed, the wording, function, and consequences of any anti-discrimination provision governing arbitral appointments merit careful consideration. Such an examination is particularly germane given the novelty of the proposed obligation, which would have no equivalent in other major arbitral jurisdictions (see, for instance, the UNCITRAL Model Law, Singapore Arbitration Act, Swedish Arbitration Act, and Chapter 12 of the Swiss Federal Act on Private International Law). This post explores some of those issues, both with a specific...