Search: Syria Insta-Symposium

This week, we are hosting another book symposium on Opinio Juris. This time, we feature a discussion of the new book by Jonathan Hafetz, Punishing Atrocities through a Fair Trial: International Criminal Law from Nuremberg to the Age of Global Terrorism, published by Cambridge University Press. In addition to comments from Jonathan himself, we have the honor to hear from a list of renowned scholars and practitioners: Mark Kersten, Gabor Rona, Sasha Greenawalt and Meg de Guzman. From the publisher: Over the past decades, international criminal law has evolved to become the operative...

[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...

...symposium reflects on the ECCC’s trials, tribulations, and legacy. In this post, Christoph Sperfeldt and Rachel Hughes consider the ECCC’s reparations mandate. [ Christoph Sperfeldt is a Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University and the author of ‘Practices of Reparations in International Criminal Justice’ (Cambridge University Press, 2022).  Rachel Hughes is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne, who has previously written for Opinion Juris on the dangers of reclassifying victim information at the ECCC.] When the Supreme Court Chamber of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)...

...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...

...symposium reflects on the ECCC’s trials, tribulations, and legacy. In this post, Melanie O’Brien analyses the ECCC’s approach to prosecuting forced marriage, and rape in forced marriage, during the Khmer Rouge period.  [ Melanie O’Brien is Associate Professor of International Law at the University of Western Australia and President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars .] Forced Marriage under the Khmer Rouge One of the main policies of the 1975–1979 communist Khmer Rouge regime was to increase the population of Cambodia (then known as Democratic Kampuchea). As part of...

[Daniel Halberstam, Eric Stein Collegiate Professor of Law and Director, European Legal Studies Program, University of Michigan Law School. External Professor, College of Europe, Bruges] This post is part of the Leiden Journal of International Law Vol 25-2 symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. Nico Krisch’s justly award-winning book thoughtfully elaborates on an approach to global governance that he sometimes calls “radical pluralism.” His basic point is that politics, not law governs the relationship among the different legal systems and regimes. Beyond...

Abstract The questions asked by the organizers of this symposium on recent challenges facing public international law—whether international law is “too weak to make a difference” or whether its institutions are “invasive to the point of being undemocratic”— and the specific challenges mentioned by way of example (“terrorism, hegemony, illegitimacy”) all converge in the topic of this paper: an inquiry into the proper role of the Security Council in addressing ongoing nuclear, biological, and chemical proliferation crises. Put simply, the challenge of bringing WMD proliferation under control is complicated by...

...symposium reflects on the ECCC’s trials, tribulations, and legacy. In this post, Julie Bernath, Somaly Kum, Boravin Tann assess the ways in which victims have participated in the ECCC’s legal process.  [Somaly Kum is a research fellow at the Center for the Study of Humanitarian Law in Cambodia who, since 2010, has worked closely with survivors of the Khmer Rouge regime through outreach programs of the Stanford Center for Human Rights and International Justice (Cambodia program) and ADHOC.  Boravin Tann is a researcher and lecturer at the Center for the...

[Efrat Arbel holds an SJD form Harvard Law School and is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia Faculty of Law.] This post is part of the Harvard International Law Journal Volume 54(1) symposium. Other posts from this series can be found in the related posts below. Moria Paz’s article, “The Failed Promise of Language Rights: A Critique of the International Language Rights Regime,” is an important contribution to the literature on language rights. Paz advances a timely and insightful critique of judicial and scholarly treatments of language...

[Colleen M. Flood is the Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law; Y.Y. Brandon Chen is a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto.] 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. In this thought-provoking article, Cohen proposes a six-prong framework to assess whether medical tourism diminishes health care access in destination countries. This kind of theoretical contribution...

[Mark Goodale is Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology and Director of the Laboratory of Cultural and Social Anthropology (LACS) at the University of Lausanne and also Series Editor of Stanford Studies in Human Rights. This is the latest post in our symposium on Kamari Maxine Clarke’s book, Affective Justice: The International Criminal Court and the Pan-Africanist Pushback.] Kamari Maxine Clarke’s superb ethnographic and critical study of the place of the International Criminal Court (ICC) within African history and politics demands a fundamental reevaluation of the meaning of “justice” against...

...symposium reflects on the ECCC’s trials, tribulations, and legacy. In this post, psychologist Yim Sotheary considers the ECCC’s contribution to the healing process of survivors.  [ Yim Sotheary is a Cambodian psychologist, psychotherapist, and conflict and peace consultant, whose authored works include The Past and the Present – of Forced Marriage Survivors (Cambodian Defenders Project, 2013).] As a mental health professional who supported many participating victims, survivors or ‘civil parties’ at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), I have seen up close the way that these legal...