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31 May

[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...
31.05.12 | |

07 Sep

[Marten Zwanenburg is legal counsel at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. The views expressed herein are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands.This post is a part of the Protection of Civilians Symposium.] Let me start by saying that the publication of “Protection of Civilians” is very timely. As Ralph says in his introductory post, this topic is a well-established topic in international law but controversial in practice. The latter is particularly true in the context...
07.09.16 | |

28 May

...responsibility, actors like NGOs, corporations, and international organizations also play crucial roles. Yet key functions such as standard-setting and decision-making still follow a predominantly top-down logic, driven by states and international judicial or quasi-judicial bodies. This creates a system where decentralized participation coexists with hierarchical authority .  There are several new developments of blockchain infrastructures that illustrate the relation between human rights accountability and blockchain nature. For instance, projects like the UN World Food Programme’s Building Blocks sought  to enhance refugee aid distribution, while digital identity initiatives attempted to provide...
28.05.25 | |

13 Dec

[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...
13.12.15 | |

13 Apr

...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...
13.04.20 | |

06 May

[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...
06.05.19 | |

02 Dec

[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...
02.12.20 | |

22 Mar

[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...
22.03.21 | |

21 Jan

...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....
21.01.15 | |

23 Oct

...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...
23.10.10 | |

11 Apr

[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...
11.04.12 | |

11 Apr

[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...
11.04.12 | |