Search: Syria Insta-Symposium

[Tamara Cummings-John works for the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (UN Women) and previously worked for the Offices of the Prosecutor of the ICTR and the SCSL. The views and opinions expressed here- in are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations. This essay was initially prepared at the request of FIU Law Review for its micro-symposium on The Legal Legacy of the Special Court for Sierra Leone by Charles C. Jalloh (Cambridge, 2020). An edited and footnoted version is forthcoming in Volume 15.1 of...

[Srinivas Burra is in conversation with Sundhya Pahuja, ARC Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate Professor and Director of the Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH) of Melbourne Law School, the University of Melbourne.] Srinivas Burra: Professor Pahuja, thank you very much for accepting to share your thoughts in this symposium. As you have a long experience of supervising doctoral students, we would like to gain an insight into some of the challenges involved in pursuing doctoral studies. Your thoughts from your personal experience of supervision as well as from the...

[Isabel Feichtner is a professor of law and economics at Goethe Universität Frankfurt] This post is part of the Yale Journal of International Law Volume 37, Issue 2 symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. Robert Howse’s and Joanna Langille’s article on the Seal Products Dispute is a truly admirable piece of normative doctrinal scholarship. The authors do not hide their preferences with respect to animal welfare and the protection of seals in particular. Their propositions as to the interpretation of WTO law...

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...

[Rachel Brewster is an Assistant Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.] 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. I have the pleasure of commenting on Gregory Shaffer and Joel Trachtman’s innovative and important article, “Interpretation and Institutional Choice at the WTO,” recently published in the Virginia Journal of International Law. The authors present an analytical framework for assessing the interpretative choices made by treaty drafters...

...that there is common ground between both prosecution and defence perspectives. Please don’t miss James A. Goldston’s post in the symposium at Justice in Conflict: Choosing the Next ICC Prosecutor—Lessons from the Past.] The public release of the names of several candidates vying for the position of ICC Prosecutor has triggered a significant amount of speculation and comment as to their suitability for what is arguably the most high-profile prosecutorial appointment in the world. This post will focus on the abstract qualities that should define this role, rather than the specific...

[Kobi Leins is an Honorary Senior Fellow at the University of Melbourne. This post is part of our New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace Symposium.] The machine itself makes no demands and holds out no promises: it is the human spirit that makes demands and keeps promises. In order to reconquer the machine and subdue it to human purposes, one must first understand it and assimilate it. —Mumford, Technics & Civilization (1934) The idea for collaboration on this book sprang out of a conversation on a sunny...

[Milena Sterio is The Charles R. Emrick Jr. – Calfee Halter & Griswold Professor of Law at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law and Co-Coordinator for Global Justice Partnerships at the Public International Law and Policy Group.] It is my pleasure to contribute this guest post to the Opinio Juris symposium about Professor Jennifer Trahans’s recent book, Existing Legal Limits to Security Council Veto Power in the Face of Atrocity Crimes.  Professor Trahan’s book is a significant contribution to existing literature on the subject of the Security Council and the role...

[William A. Schabas is a Professor of international law at Middlesex University London and Professor of international criminal law and human rights at Leiden University. This essay was initially prepared at the request of FIU Law Review for its micro-symposium on The Legal Legacy of the Special Court for Sierra Leone by Charles C. Jalloh (Cambridge, 2020). An edited and footnoted version is forthcoming in Volume 15.1 of the law review in spring 2021.] For much of the first four decades of its history as an independent State, Sierra Leone was in a situation of great...

...These different bridging mechanisms will be better or worse suited to different international law projects and questions. What the conversation at the November symposium demonstrates though is that figuring out how to relate these projects is something best achieved through active dialogue between the scholars pursuing them. I’m grateful to have been able to start this conversation with the scholars in this book project, all of whom are at the cutting edge using these methodologies and look forward to continuing it with both them and the readers of Opinio Juris....

...forward in a positive account of NGOs in governance. Indeed, in some respects it was quietly the most audacious of the papers at the seminar, because Steve set out the form of an argument for asking how anyone could propose to leave the NGOs out. I will very much look forward to reading the essay when published in the symposium issue. At the broadest and most abstract level, I found that the crucial legitimacy issue was leading, as Weber said that it must, to questions of society and not just...

[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...