Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation
10 Apr LJIL Symposium: Where to Find the Liberal Principles of Criminal Law
[Jens David Ohlin is Associate Professor of Law at Cornell University Law School.] This post is part of our symposium on the latest issue of the Leiden Journal of International Law. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. I agree with almost everything in Darryl Robinson’s plea for a cosmopolitan liberal approach to international criminal justice. Robinson’s article sketches out the development of ICL scholarship, noting the beginnings of the field, followed by the liberal critique of early ICL development, and then the counter-critique...08 Jan The Growth of International Law Scholarship
thing that I thought that was interesting is that the first time that the phrase international law rises above the lines for criminal law, constitutional law and torts is in the mid 1850s. Stuart Ford I played around with the ngram viewer a bit more to compare the phrases "international law" with "the law of nations." I began with the hypothesis that the phrase international law would replace the phrase law of nations over time. And indeed, that appears to be what happens, with usages of "the law of nations"...01 May Guest Post: Landmark French Ruling on West Bank Construction and International Law
...law (or attempted to be) and therefore the Israeli authorities' violations of international law by constructing, facilitating development and expansion and providing services to illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territory. If anything, the French court appears to assume that the Israeli government is prima facie involved in the internationally unlawful settlement enterprise, but the problem it sees is with the causal link and proximity between the companies and the government's actions, which are those that violate the international law provisions invoked by the claimants to annul the company's contract....25 Jan Wrap Up Discussion II
...makes a distinction between lawful and unlawful combatants. The unlawful combatants, like lawful combatants, are subject to capture and detention, “but in addition they are subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals for acts which render their belligerency unlawful.” The Court went on to discuss “familiar examples of belligerents who are generally deemed not to be entitled to the status of prisoners of war, but to be offenders against the law of war subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals” Members of al Qaida such as Khalid Shaykh...17 Dec Top French Law Firms Requiring UK and US Law Degrees
I don’t know very much about French legal education, but I’m still surprised by this article, which claims that because France lacks a first-rate law school, the most prestigious French law firms are now requiring their new hires to have an American or British law degree: It isn’t easy for corporate law firms to find qualified law-school graduates in the land of Montesquieu, one of the founders of modern Western legal theory. “Because law schools are so weak in economics and out of touch, people who want to be corporate...07 Jul Selectively Ignoring International Law in Hamdan
about the present day international criminal tribunals. I believe one reference is made in the context of the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia) regarding “conspiracy.” While the Court took strong views about international law in Roper v. Simmons and Texas v. Lawrence, it was less bold in relying on international law, especially international criminal law, in the Hamdan case. I was surprised that the majority/plurality in particular did not make any reference to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. While that Statute’s provisions still remain...19 Jul The Philosophical Underpinnings of Human Rights Norms
law is the product of “Christian civilization” and that international law is derived from immutable natural laws of God. We then had a 19th-century antithesis, represented by Oppenheim’s positivist argument that “we know nowadays that a Law of Nature does not exist” and that “only a positive law of nations can be a branch of the science of law.” With the birth of modern human rights, we seem to be at a point of synthesis. Fathered by 20th-century American idealism, we no longer believe that international law is simply a...22 Jul Guest Post: The D.C. Circuit’s En Banc Ruling in Al Bahlul: Legal Innovation, Tradition, and America’s Domestic Common Law of War
Milligan and its progeny. They caution against allowing international law to displace a domestic practice of prosecuting law of war offenses in military commissions, but, in fact, they seize on the notion of war crimes—a concept itself grounded in international law—to weaken the much deeper domestic tradition of civilian court prosecution. When one starts with the domestic tradition of Article III prosecutions—and the conception of military commissions as exceptional departures from it (as Rogers does)—international law looks very different. Third, the opinions underscore how judges’ approach to war can vary...
27 Jan International Law’s Invisible Frames Symposium: Teaching Against the Textbook – A Comment on ‘Going by the Book: What International Law Textbooks Teach Us Not to Know’ by Ana Luísa Bernardino
for disruption. And indeed, the examples of teachers who challenge traditional international law structures and authorities are ample and inspiring. To name just some examples: the earlier mentioned symposium on Critical Pedagogy, the many cool critical/feminist/TWAIL oriented international law syllabi shared on Twitter (for example the Open Syllabus on Public International Law created by the International Law and the Global South blog), Christine Schwöbel’s work on teaching international law (see for example this thread on her work on decolonializing the curriculum), and the experimental Moot Court project initiated by her...