Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation
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....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 Aug The Trial Judgment in Yekatom and Ngaïssona: A Judgment of Many Firsts Built on Case Management (Part 2)
[Alexander Heinze is an Acting Professor at the University of Bremen and lecturer at the University of Göttingen] Part 1 of this post examined the Trial Chamber V’s remarkably efficient case management approach in Yekatom and Ngaïssona, highlighting how flexibility became the key to handling an exceptionally complex trial with nearly 20,000 exhibits and 174 witnesses. I explored the Chamber’s innovative approach to modes of liability – particularly its elastic application of Article 25(3)(c) regarding aiding and abetting – and its paradigmatic “submission approach” to evidence that prioritized manageability over...
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...
02 Feb International Economic Law Symposium: Emerging Powers and International Economic Governance–More Promises, More Risks or Irrelevance?
CESCR at this stage is still preliminary. It is hard to predict to what extent the CESCR can expand that approach to international economic governance. More importantly, the “normative benchmarks” deriving from Buser’s human rights-based approach, arguably represent minimum requirements for great powers. It is hard to say whether such an approach can justify reform of international economic governance to an extent expected by many developing states. Second, I think a major impediment to better international economic governance and further global justice is the very approach of economic liberalization that...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...
26 Nov Symposium on Open Source Investigation Labs: MobWatch: Building a Community-Based Approach to Verification for Claims of Jungle Justice in Nigeria
[Opeyemi Lawal is an investigative journalist with the Foundation of Investigative Journalism (FIJ), Nigeria, and creator of MobWatch. She was a cohort member of the WITNESS’ Fortifying Community Truth project in West and Central Africa cohort for 2024. Georgia Edwards is the senior program coordinator of Evidence and Investigations at WITNESS. She works with journalists and activists on investigations using visual evidence through video documentation, analysis and presentation and is part of the Fortifying Community Truth project, led by the Africa team at WITNESS] Introduction The proliferation of smartphones and...
07 Aug Symposium on The Principle of ne bis in idem in International Criminal Law: The Role of ne bis in idem in Transitional Justice – A Multi-level Approach to Justice, Truth, and Reconciliation
[Nandor Knust is an associate professor of law at the Arctic University of Norway (UiT)] Gaiane Nuridzhanian’s The Principle of Ne Bis in Idem in International Criminal Law offers a comprehensive examination of the ne bis in idem principle in the realm of international criminal law. Drawing from her extensive academic and professional background, Nuridzhanian provides an in-depth analysis of how this principle functions within international legal frameworks. Introduction The principle of ne bis in idem, rooted in Roman law, holds that no individual should be tried or punished twice for...
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...
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,...