Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation

[Siobhán Wills is a Professor of Law at the Transitional Justice Institute, Ulster University, Northern Ireland. This post is a part of the Protection of Civilians Symposium.] In 2014 the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services published an ‘evaluation of the implementation and results of Protection of Civilians mandates in United Nations peacekeeping operations’ which: noted a persistent pattern of peacekeeping operations not intervening with force when civilians are under attack…Partly as a result…civilians continue to suffer violence and displacement in many countries where United Nations missions hold protection of...

[Darryl Robinson is an Assistant Professor at Queen’s University, Faculty of Law] This post is part of the MJIL 13(1) Symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. Much has been written about command responsibility. In my article, I argue that views on the nature of command responsibility have become unnecessarily obscure and convoluted, and that the problem flows from an early misstep in the jurisprudence. If we revisit the first misstep, a simple and elegant solution is available. Famously, early Tribunal jurisprudence concluded...

[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...

[Jean Galbraith is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School] One mechanism through which international law regulates the behavior of states and other actors is deadlines. Although little studied, deadlines appear throughout international law, especially in treaty regimes. Drawing on a future book chapter, in this post I describe some of the roles played by deadlines in international law. I also consider what insights research on the use of deadlines in domestic contexts might have for good and bad ways to use deadlines in international law. Uses...

[Ruti Teitel is the Ernst C Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law, New York Law School and the author of Globalizing Transitional Justice (OUP paper2015).] I have learned a great deal from the thoughtful responses to my article (.pdf) by the participants in this symposium. Dinah PoKempner is correct to say that my article doesn’t address the merits of a “right of accountability” as such but rather looks to how the move to judicialization and application of human rights law interacts with political and other domestic processes of transition. She speculates...

...litigator, investigator, prosecution strategist, manager, and delegator with a commitment to the objectives of international justice, in-depth technical knowledge of international criminal law, international humanitarian law and human rights law and knowledge of the country contexts and crimes over which the Court exercises jurisdiction, while being an adept communicator. The current structure of the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP), with a deputy prosecutor and chiefs of investigation, prosecution and appeals – all of whom should hold the same qualities – make this possible provided there is a recognized diversity of...

[Gregory Shaffer is the Melvin C. Steen Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. Joel P. Trachtman is the Professor of International Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.] 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. We were delighted to learn that Profs. Brewster, Howse, and Pauwelyn had agreed to comment on our article, Interpretation and Institutional Choice...

This week we are hosting another great online symposium, this time on the 20th anniversary of Ruti Teitel’s seminal book, Transitional Justice, (OUP, 2000). The book’s abstract: At the century’s end, societies all over the world are moving from authoritarian rule to democracy. At any such time of radical change, the question arises: should a society punish its ancien regime or let bygones by bygones? Transitional Justice takes the debate to a new level with an interdisciplinary approach that challenges the very terms of the contemporary debate. Teitel explores the recurring question of how regimes...

effectively addressed with international consensus. It is noted that there are several projects being undertaken at an international level to bring some clarity and certainty to the laws affecting the use of outer space. One of these projects, the Woomera Manual on the International Law of Military Space Operations, brings together experts from across the globe to identify and articulate the existing international law, including space law and law of armed conflict, that currently applies to the space environment, drawing upon real life practices and examples. In addition to being...

[Joost Pauwelyn is Professor of International Law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.] 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. Thank you to Opinio Juris and the Virginia Journal of International Law for inviting me to participate. This Article, by Greg Shaffer and Joel Trachtman, makes the important point that choices in treaty drafting and judicial interpretation allocate authority. For...

Although everyone is justly excited about International Law Weekend, I wanted to mention another conference in New York that took place yesterday at Brooklyn Law School, Governing Civil Society: NGO Accountability, Legitimacy and Influence. Congratulations to Professors Claire R. Kelly and Dana Brakman Reiser at BLS for putting it together. I was on one of the panels at this one day session and there were many other terrific people who represented a quite fascinating and too-rare mingling of the international law and nonprofit law worlds. As someone who cuts across...

[Harlan Cohen is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Georgia School of Law] What is the study of “International Law as Behavior”? At the workshop in November, Elena Baylis, Tomer Broude, Galit Sarfaty, Jean Galbraith, and Tim Meyer (whose chapters/presentations were described earlier) were joined by Kathryn Sikkink, who presented on the role of agency in constructivism, Ron Levi and Sungjoon Cho, who drew upon sociology to study the “fields” of international criminal law and international human rights practice and the social structure of the WTO, respectively,...