Search: Syria Insta-Symposium

is unclear that many judges would be interested in recognizing foreign country judgments “in the abstract”—that is, when recognition is sought neither to establish a judgment’s preclusive effect in pending in-state litigation nor as a prelude to enforcement of the judgment against in-state assets of the defendant. After all, the recognition action would in that case have nothing to do with the step-two state. A defendant faced with this step of judgment arbitrage would be well advised to consider filing a motion to dismiss the recognition action on forum non...

[Hanan Salah is the Senior Libya and Mauritania Researcher at Human Rights Watch. This is the latest post in our symposium with Justice in Conflict on Libya and International Justice.] The scars ran deep. His back was a maze of thick welts, thinner scars and parts that resembled small craters. His wrists and ankles were raw from where he’d been shackled and suspended from a ceiling for hours, and his limbs appeared limp and stretched. His eyes were expressionless. The torture destroyed me as a person, Ali[1] said. Ali, 24,...

This week, we are hosting a symposium on Defining the International Rule of Law: Defying Gravity?, (free access for six months) the latest article from Robert McCorquodale, the Director of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, Professor of International Law and Human Rights, University of Nottingham, and Barrister, Brick Court Chambers, London. The article was recently published in the International and Comparative Law Quarterly. The article’s abstract: This article aims to offer a definition of the international rule of law. It does this through clarifying the core objectives...

[Richard Gardiner is a Visiting Professor at University College London, Faculty of Laws] The article which this symposium addresses is important, timely, and elegant. It is an important study because it examines one of the most common misunderstandings about the VCLT provisions on the role of preparatory work in treaty interpretation. It lays to rest the mistaken idea that an interpreter may only consider preparatory work if interpretation of a treaty provision by applying the general rule reveals ambiguity or obscurity, or leads to a result which is manifestly absurd...

[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...

...32 of the VCLT guide interpreters to discovering the common intention of treaty parties. Thus, ordinary meaning, context, preparatory work, and other means of interpretation help interpreters understand the legally correct meaning of a treaty. A detailed analysis of the preparatory work of the Vienna Convention is an appropriate method for a scholarly analysis of the legally correct meaning of Articles 31 and 32 of the VCLT. As I will explain in my two posts for this Symposium, I think all three of Julian’s assumptions are either fundamentally flawed or...

In response to the online symposium on LGBT asylum and refugee law held two weeks ago by the NYU Journal of International Law & Politics and Opinio Juris, the Journal received several additional pieces of commentary. The contributions below specifically tie to Professor Ryan Goodman’s article, Asylum and the Concealment of Sexual Orientation, which also appears in issue 44:2: “To counteract some of these concerns, [Hathaway & Pobjoy] place great faith in international human rights and anti-discrimination law pertaining to LGBT rights to constrain decision-makers’ reliance on their own subjectimve...

...until you realise that you might not just be running out of academic-time but also life-time. What a rude awakening from the manic scramble from one deadline to another! We all have one final dead-line I guess, and I am extremely thankful that I have been granted an extension. But I am already starting to ramble. Thank you so much for your careful and thought-provoking engagements with Marketing Global Justice. Filip, thank you for agreeing to engage with my book in this symposium at short notice; I am so glad...

[Mona Khalil is a Legal Advisor with Independent Diplomat (ID) and formerly a Senior Legal Officer in the UN Office of the Legal Counsel; the views expressed herein are her own and do not necessarily represent the views of either ID or the UN. This post is a part of the Protection of Civilians Symposium.] The protection of civilians (POC) mandate in UN peacekeeping was borne out of the failed UN mandates and genocidal massacres in Srebrenica and Rwanda. Since the first POC mandate was entrusted to UNAMSIL in 1999,...

This has been an exceptional symposium, so it’s difficult to know what to add. As many of the contributors have noted, the next Prosecutor, whoever she is, has to be a jack-of-all-trades: a skilled lawyer, so she can oversee effective investigations and prosecutions; a talented administrator, so she can herd the hundreds of cats that populate her office; and a gifted politician, so she can navigate the treacherous waters of state cooperation, the sine qua non of a successful ICC. Instead of simply reiterating those points, I thought I would...

[Dr Gleider I. Hernandez is a Lecturer at Durham Law School] I am grateful to the organisers of this symposium on the collection, edited by Dr Baetens, on the interaction of international investment law (‘IIL’) with other areas of public international law (‘PIL’). Broadly speaking, I identify as a ‘generalist’ international lawyer, one who is interested in the system as a whole and how its organs and agents grapple with emerging problems of global governance. As such, when I was approached in 2011 to consider and address the interaction between...

[Robert McCorquodale is the Director of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, Professor of International Law and Human Rights, University of Nottingham, and Barrister, Brick Court Chambers, London. This is the introductory post in the Defining the Rule of Law Symposium, based on this article (free access for six months).] References to the ‘rule of law’ in international law books, articles and blogs are everywhere. Yet very few of these authors set out what they mean by an international rule of law. Most of those who engage with...