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Search: jens iverson

12 Jan

...force against Greenland, significant damage has already been done. The Trump Administration’s actions are approaching a point at which they amount to coercive intervention into the affairs of Denmark and a threat to use of force. They may in fact have crossed those thresholds. At some point, European governments may have no choice but to confront the strategic dilemma they are facing head on. Photo attribution: “ Scenery from Ravnefjeldet, Nanortalik (Southernmost part of Greenland) on a clear December morning ” by Jens Buurgaard Nielsen is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0...
12.01.26 | |

17 Nov

...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...
17.11.12 | |

02 Oct

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...
02.10.14 | |

17 Jun

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...
17.06.15 | |

30 Sep

House Speaker John Boehner said in an interview on Sunday that ground troops may be necessary in order to stop the threat of ISIS. Although his comments were interwoven with lots of unnecessary talk of ISIS being barbarians, which I don’t think is terribly helpful, I do agree with his bottom-line assessment: air power and proxy ground troops won’t be enough to win this war. This points to a frequent mistake. Politicians think they can eliminate the cost of going to war by conducting an air war. That...
30.09.14 | |

25 Sep

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...
25.09.18 | |

13 Apr

...of their effectiveness and legitimacy. Ruti Teitel suggested to open up the question of legitimacy. The authors’ response can be found here. The second article in the symposium was by Darryl Robinson, entitled A Cosmopolitan Liberal Account of International Criminal Law. Jens Ohlin commented how the article had made him take a step back. Mark Drumbl raised points on moral agency and how ICL can understate responsibility in mass atrocity. Darryl’s response is here. Another series of guest posts was by Jonathan Horowitz and Naz Modirzadeh who provided two posts...
13.04.13 | |

15 Jun

I’m not one to get hysterical over ICC news, but this recent development today strikes me as deeply problematic, and perhaps a tipping point. But perhaps not the tipping point that the ICC detractors have in mind. Sudanese President al-Bashir was attending a conference in South Africa this weekend with other heads of state and officials from several African nations. The government of South Africa took the position that Bashir was entitled to immunity and could not be arrested; apparently, this was Bashir’s assumption as well, otherwise I...
15.06.15 | |

30 Oct

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...
30.10.12 | |

30 Jan

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...
30.01.15 | |

02 Jun

...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...
02.06.12 | |

18 Oct

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...
18.10.16 | |