Search: jens iverson

...Darryl Robinson, examined why command responsibility had become so complicated, and blamed one early misstep. Ilias Bantekas’ response focused on causality whereas Jens Ohlin proposed to consider command responsibility as both a separate offence and a mode of liability. Darryl Robinson responded to these comments here. James Stewart wondered whether a failure to punish subordinates could be assimilated to ex post aiding and abetting. Darryl Robinson responded here. The final article of the MJIL Symposium, by Michelle Foster, argued why Australia’s MOU with Nauru about the processing of refugee applications...

The Al Nashiri case before the Guantanamo military commission is currently stuck in a quagmire over the bombing of the oil tanker MV Limburg on Oct. 6, 2002, which Al Nashiri is alleged to be complicit in. Before trial, the defendant, Al Nashiri, moved to dismiss the charges related to the MV Limburg (which is just one of many charges in the case) on the grounds that the government does not have jurisdiction over the MV Limburg bombing since it was not part of the armed conflict between...

The start of a new school year is a time for transitions and it is no different for Opinio Juris. Since founding the website fourteen years ago with Peggy and Julian, Opinio Juris has surpassed all of our original hopes with the additions of Roger, Kevin, Duncan, Peter, Ken, Deborah, Kristen and Jens. Each new member brought a unique perspective to the ongoing discussion. And the editorial assistance of Jessica Dorsey and An Hertogen allowed us to widen the scope of our activities. Now, once again, Opinio Juris is starting...

...and Methods of Warfare Robert Cryer, Royalism and the King: Article 21 and the Politics of Sources Jens David Ohlin, Joint Criminal Confusion Elies van Sliedregt, Article 28 of the ICC Statute: Mode of Liability and/or Separate Offense Mohamed Elewa Badar, Dolus Eventualis and the Rome Statute Without It? Olympia Bekou, A Case for Review of Article 88, ICC Statute: Strengthening a Forgotten Provision Ilias Bantekas, The Need to Amend Article 12 of the ICC Statute: Remedying the Effects of Multilateral Treaties upon Third Parties Cedric Ryngaert, The International Criminal...

I met Mike Lewis during my first year of law teaching at Cornell Law School. Mike was scheduled to give a lecture at the law school about torture and I was invited to give a commentary on his presentation. Mike had pre-circulated the paper that the presentation was based on. I disagreed with his thesis and pressed him sharply on its details during the event. His thesis had the virtue of proposing a very workable standard for defining torture, but I felt it yielded counter-intuitive results for particular...

I wanted to follow up on my previous post about the inter-branch dispute in the South African government over executing an international arrest warrant against President al-Bashir of Sudan. A South African court issued an order preventing al-Bashir from leaving South Africa, but notwithstanding this decision, the South Africa government appears to have let him escape anyway. It appears to be a case of executive branch defiance of a binding judicial order. Several readers have suggested that South Africa is not under a legal obligation to arrest al-Bashir...

The article, which is available in draft form on SSRN, is entitled “‘One Hell of a Killing Machine’: Signature Strikes and International Law.” It is forthcoming in the Journal of International Criminal Justice as part of a mini-symposium on targeted killing edited by Cornell’s Jens Ohlin. Here is the abstract: The vast majority of drone attacks conducted by the U.S. have been signature strikes – those that target “groups of men who bear certain signatures, or defining characteristics associated with terrorist activity, but whose identities aren’t known.” In 2010, for...

Today, the ICTY Appeals Chamber affirmed genocide convictions in the Srebrenica case, Prosecutor v. Popović et al. The full Appeals Chamber judgment is here. The PDF document is 792 pages (including a few short dissents), which is long-ish but certainly not extraordinary by ICTY judgment standards. In my opinion, the most critical part of the judgment relates to the connection between the defendants, their Joint Criminal Enterprise (JCE), and the perpetrators who actually performed the killings. As you will recall, back in the old days when the JCE...

...of Desert. Jonathan Barron commented how international criminal law is in transition from second-party to third-party punishment and Adil Haque questioned whether Andrew’s suggestions would make the international criminal law regime no longer a criminal regime or no longer a legal regime. Jens Ohlin debated Andrew’s assumption that international criminal law is fundamentally retributive and his application of social science insights about the power of moral sentiments to crowd out consequentialist calculations. Andrew’s response can be found here. The second article, by Alvaro Santos, discussed how developing countries can carve...

I am very sorry to report the shocking news, that many have already seen on Twitter, that Håkan Friman has passed away, much too young. Anyone involved in international criminal justice surely knows Håkan’s name, and more likely than not, knew Håkan personally. In addition to his many many academic publications on international criminal law (including the well-known Introduction to International Criminal Law and Procedure by him, Robert Cryer, Darryl Robinson, and Elizabeth Wilmshurst), Håkan was a Judge on the Solna District Court in Sweden, and also held...

News reports indicate that Jordan is engaged in frantic negotiations with the Islamic State (ISIS) over a proposed hostage swap. Jordan is apparently willing to turn over a prisoner, would-be suicide bomber Sajida al-Rishawi, in exchange for ISIS releasing both a Jordanian air force pilot and a Japanese captive. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, the deal appears to have collapsed. Earlier video appeared to show that another Japanese hostage was murdered by ISIS–a development that provoked shock and outrage in Japan. ISIS hostage-takers had earlier demanded $200...

...it has built. A senior U.S. defense official said on Thursday that additional sanctions were a possible response to any North Korea missile launch and the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific said he favored deployment of a U.S. anti-missile system in South Korea. Europe With a troubled peace plan for the Ukrainian conflict nearing its deadline, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg will attempt a balancing act to reassure Kiev of the West’s support without antagonizing Moscow when he visits Ukraine on Monday. Bitterly-divided European leaders will seek to find...