Search: Syria Insta-Symposium

[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,...

[ Alejandro Chehtman is Professor of Law at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella. This post is part of our New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace Symposium .] In New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace (CUP, 2018), Bill Boothby and his colleagues have written an important collection of essays exploring the regulation of new weapons systems under both the ‘laws of wars and peace’. The book concentrates on a number of pressing issues, including cyber capabilities, autonomous weapons systems, military human enhancement, non-lethal weapons (which they call...

[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...

This week, we are excited to host a symposium on Chiara Redaelli’s Intervention in Civil Wars: Effectiveness, Legitimacy and Human Rights. Scholars and practitioners who will be contributing include: John Hursh, Brad Roth, Luca Ferro, Erin Pobjie, Laura Iñigo and our own Alonso Gurmendi and will close with a rejoinder from Chiara herself From the publisher: This book investigates the extent to which traditional international law regulating foreign interventions in internal conflicts has been affected by the human rights paradigm. Since the adoption of the Charter of the United Nations,...

Robert Howse is the Lloyd C. Nelson Professor of International Law at New York University School of Law. Joanna Langille is a 2011 graduate of New York University Law School.] 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. Our article examines the extent to which countries can use animal welfare concerns to justify placing restrictions on international trade, under the law of the World Trade Organization (WTO). We argue...

[ Rain Liivoja is an Associate Professor in the TC Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland. He is currently a Visiting Scholar with the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. This post is part of our  New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace Symposium ] The interest of armed forces in emerging technologies sustains a lively normative debate. One might say that, at least in the law of armed conflict scholarship, technology is the flavour of the...

...Charnovitz for taking the time to read the book and provide their reactions for this symposium, and Opinio Juris for hosting it. Here we provide a brief response to their comments. Hafner-Burton and Victor focus on the relationship between political science scholarship and legal scholarship, and see in an empirically grounded economic approach a way to reconcile the disparate focuses of the two disciplines, where in the past scholars in the two disciplines seemed to have trouble communicating with each other. We agree with their sentiments. Political scientists and law...

[Ilias Bantekas is Professor of Law at Brunel University in London.] This post is part of the MJIL 13(1) Symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. Causality is central in the operation of criminal attribution in all legal systems. It makes sense of course that liability for particular conduct exists where it is proven that it caused the harmful outcome which constitutes the actus reus of an offence. Causation is the fundamental link between conduct and outcome and is as a result the...

[ Simon Chesterman is Dean and Professor at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law. This is the second post in the Defining the Rule of Law Symposium, based on this article (free access for six months). You can find the first post here.] Imprecision of meaning in international law is rarely accidental. Diplomacy is an architecture of compromise, with states routinely adopting malleable or self-serving definitions depending on their interests or aspirations. So it is with the international rule of law. A decade ago, every member state of...

...miss the symposium post at Justice in Conflict by Kate Gibson.] The ICC Prosecutor is first and foremost a leader, who needs to stimulate a work culture that empowers personnel in a safe and supportive environment – so that they can investigate and prosecute with excellence. Not only must the next ICC Prosecutor effectively tackle all forms of misconduct, they must also have a clean record. In December, the ICC Staff Union Council called on States Parties to give full meaning to the provisions on high moral character of elected...

...the ICCTs historical narratives) most chapters integrate many of these elements (for example, Chapter 6 also considers a number of different cases to demonstrate some of the broader points the author is making). The book is then not merely ambitious in its plan, it is ambitious in its delivery, and the first time I read it this felt a little bit intimidating (how does he do it). Now, re-reading it as I was preparing for the symposium it felt impressive (I imagine he did it by working relentlessly, because integrating...

[John Tasioulas is Yeoh Professor of Politics, Philosophy and Law at the Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London and Visiting Professor of Law, University of Chicago Law School. This is the third post in the Defining the Rule of Law Symposium, based on this article (free access for six months). The first is here and the second, here.] One can, without linguistic impropriety, use the phrase “the rule of law” to denote a number of significant though distinct ideas. Most expansively of all, it can be used to...