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...
27 Dec Access to Freshwater and Accountability Issues in the Israel-Hamas Armed Conflict
is the external dimension of the obligation to ensure respect by other actors, its customary law status, and whether common Article 1 imposes any obligation on third parties. This external dimension has evolved over time. In its Wall Advisory Opinion, the ICJ emphasized that states, both occupying powers and third states, have a responsibility to ensure respect for Geneva Convention IV (ICJ’s Advisory Opinion on Wall (2004), para. 158) and ‘all the States parties to the Convention ‘are under an obligation, while respecting the United Nations Charter and international law,...18 Feb Guest Post Part II: The Chilcot Inquiry–The Publication Saga of an Official History
[Charlotte Peevers is a Lecturer in Law at the University of Technology, Sydney and author of ‘The Politics of Justifying Force: the Suez Crisis, the Iraq War, and International Law‘ (Oxford University Press: 2013). Part one of this guest post can be found here.] Legal-Political Authority and International Law Any review of the inquiry hearings would be incomplete without a word from Tony Blair. In this extract from his so-called ‘recall’ to the inquiry on 21 January 2011 Sir Roderick Lyne asks him about his statement to the House of...
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...22 Jan [Kevin Bangs Head on Table Repeatedly]
...Vietnam: They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not “ready” for independence, and we again fell victim to...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...
13 Nov Symposium on Erin Pobjie’s Prohibited Force: Scoping out the Prohibition on the Use of Force in Anomalous Situations
has limits under contemporary international law. As Adil Haque puts it “Under the law of self-defense, even a legitimate aim must be set aside if it is outweighed by the harmful effects of the force necessary to achieve it.” As is well known to readers of this blog-site there are attempts to infuse the law of self-defence with old ideas from the law of neutrality. The suggestion is that, where a state is unwilling or unable to deal with threats emanating from its territory, the law of self-defence would allow...16 Mar Cheng Book Roundtable: When Should a Court Not Decide (A Response to Professor Brown)
Mihai Martoiu Ticu == But should the Court have accepted a request that so clearly sought to use a court of law, whose legitimacy depends on it being perceived to offer neutral advice, for the political purposes of some states to engage in what we now call "law-fare"?== Is that not what happens in all lawsuits? If I believe that Johny has stolen my wallet and I ask a judge to give me my wallet back, I use a court of law, whose legitimacy depends on it being perceived to...07 Dec Secretary Rice, Torture, and the Meaning of Berlin
...adviser wrote in 2002 about why it is important to follow the path of international law, law that the U.S. itself had created over decades of practice: *It has high costs in terms of negative international reaction, with immediate adverse consequences for the conduct of our foreign policy.*It will undermine public support among critical allies, making military cooperation more difficult to sustain.*Europeans and others will likely have legal problems with extradition and other forms of cooperation in law enforcement, including brining terrorists to justice.*It may provoke some individual foreign prosecutors...