Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation
31 Mar HILJ Online Symposium: Volumes 54(2) & 55(1)
This post is part of the HILJ Online Symposium: Volumes 54(2) & 55(1). Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. The HILJ Online Symposium is a week-long discussion by scholars and practitioners on selected print articles from the Harvard International Law Journal. The Symposium takes place on the Opinio Juris website once or twice a year and features responses by scholars and practitioners selected by the Journal and sur-responses by the original authors. The schedule for HILJ Online Symposium: Volumes 54(2) & 55(1) is...14 Apr Virginia Journal of International Law, Vol. 48-3: Opinio Juris Online Symposium
The Virginia Journal of International Law is pleased to continue its partnership with Opinio Juris in this third online symposium. This week’s symposium will feature three articles recently published in Vol. 48-3 of VJIL, available here . Our discussion on Tuesday will focus on the mysterious history of Alexander Nahum Sack, the Russian-born legal scholar whose once obscure theory of “odious debts” has found new life among contemporary proponents of debt forgiveness. In their article, A Convenient Untruth: Fact and Fantasy in the Doctrine of Odious Debts, Sarah Ludington (Duke)...
28 May Futureproofing Human Rights Symposium: Human Rights in the Era of Blockchain – A Polycentric Accountability Framework
while embedding human rights and sustainability principles into their foundational structures. Author’s notes: This post builds on research in Gustavo Prieto, ‘International Human Rights Law in the Era of Blockchain: Redefining Accountability in Decentralized Systems’ in Irene Couzigou (ed.), International Law and Technological Change: Testing the Adaptability of International Law (Edward Elgar, forthcoming 2025) The text was written during a Research Foundation – Flanders fellowship (FWO.3E0.2022.0079.01) at Ghent University. The views expressed are solely the author’s and do not represent those of the institutions mentioned. This blog is part of...
15 Oct International Organizations Accountability Symposium: Reputation and Accountability
[Kristina Daugirdas is a Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School.] Absent a contractual relationship, individuals who have been harmed by the acts of international organizations rarely have access to institutions to hear their claims. National courts are often unavailable on account of organizations’ immunities. Some organizations have established alternative mechanisms to resolve such claims. The World Bank Inspection Panel is one example; the Ombudsperson for the ISIL and Al-Qaida UN Security Council Sanctions regime is another. Such accountability mechanisms must be deliberately designed, adopted, and implemented....11 Apr VJIL Symposium: Robert Howse Comments on “Interpretation and Institutional Choice at the WTO”
[Robert Howse is the Lloyd C. Nelson Professor of International Law at the New York University School of Law.] This post is part of the Virginia Journal of International Law Symposium, Volume 52, Issues 1 and 2. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. The Article by Shaffer and Trachtman is a tour de force: it identifies and explains many of the most important interpretative choices that panels and the Appellate Body have made in adjudicating disputes under WTO law, and speculates on the...31 May VJIL Symposium: Jason Webb Yackee Responds to Bjorklund/Litwin and Wong
[Jason Webb Yackee is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin School of Law.] This post is part of the Virginia Journal of International Law/Opinio Juris Symposium, Volume 52, Issue 3. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. It’s a pleasure to receive such thoughtful (and in Professor Wong’s case, humorous) feedback on my short VJIL Essay, and I greatly appreciate their engagement with the piece. I intended the Essay to be provocative but not absurd in its policy recommendations. My...
08 Apr A New Approach to Criminal Responsibility? Discussing the Separate Opinions on Indirect Co-Perpetration in the Ntaganda Appeals Judgment
...and ‘contributing’ to the crimes of a group acting with a common purpose (accessory liability) is also blurred. ICC jurisprudence has adopted a peculiar approach for differentiating between those situations and for justifying the assertion that the perpetrators of crimes, defined in Article 25(3)(a), bear greater blameworthiness. Borrowing heavily from German criminal law theory, and especially from the writings of Claus Roxin, the Lubanga and the Katanga and Ngudjolo Pre-Trial Chambers chose the ‘control over the crime’ theory to distinguish between principals and accessories to the crime. On this account,...
25 Jun Falsa Demonstratio Non Nocet: The Record of the Proceedings at the ICC is a Case File–Now More Than Ever
70). This seems to turn a blind eye on the way proceedings are being conducted at the ICC, though. Some Chambers, such as in Ongwen (paras 24 ff) rejected the Chambers’ previous practice of deciding on admissibility issues at the moment of submission (‘admission approach’) and promoted an alternative approach that deferred the admissibility decision ‘until the end of the proceedings’ (‘submission approach’) (Bemba et al., para 9). The submission approach was more recently adopted by Trial Chamber X in the Al Hassan case (paras 29 ff), and given that...
14 Nov Symposium on Erin Pobjie’s Prohibited Force: Reflections on the Utility of Erin Pobjie’s ‘Type Theory’ Approach to the Meaning of ‘Use of Force’
[James A. Green is Professor of Public International Law at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK ,co-rapporteur of the International Law Association’s Use of Force Committee and a former editor-in-chief of the Journal on the Use of Force and International Law . His most recent book is Collective Self-Defence in International Law (CUP, 2024).] Pål Wrange once wrote that the meaning of prohibited ‘force’ was “the subject of controversy par excellence in international law.” The question of what exactly Article 2(4) UNC (and its customary international law...25 Jan Executing Foster v. Neilson: The Two-Step Approach to Analyzing Self-Executing Treaties by David Sloss
[ David Sloss, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Global Law and Policy, Santa Clara University School of Law, describes his recently published article, Executing Foster v. Neilson: The Two-Step Approach to Analyzing Self-Executing Treaties. This article is part of the Third Harvard International Law Journal/Opinio Juris Symposium.] The Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in Medellin v. Texas unleashed a flood of new scholarship on the doctrine of self-executing treaties. Unfortunately, the entire debate has been founded on two erroneous assumptions. First, courts and commentators have assumed that...