Emerging Voices Symposium 2016 Comes to a Close

The summer is coming to a close and so is our fourth annual Emerging Voices Symposium. We have featured fantastic posts from emerging scholars, practitioners and students over the course of the summer and a roundup follows of what it is that they have covered.

Alexandra Hofer started our 2016 edition off with her post on assessing the role of the European Union as an enforcer of international law in the Ukranian crisis, concluding that both the EU and Russia ought to change their practices in order to escape the stalemate in which they currently find themselves. Wolfgang Alschner weighed in on a novel approach to dealing with the complexities of international law in his post on computational analysis of international law, specifically focusing on text-as-data tools for investigating international investment agreements.

Our next post featured an analysis by Andrea Bowdren of the trial of Ahmed Al Faqi Al Mahdi before the International Criminal Court, which represented a series of firsts for international law and justice. as Al Mahdi is the first individual from Mali brought before the ICC, the first Islamic extremist to face charges at the ICC, the first individual to be prosecuted solely for cultural destruction as a war crime, and the first individual who indicated an intention to plead guilty to an ICC charge (which he subsequently did). John Coyle asked whether foreign investors can enforce international investment law in U.S. courts, and after a careful analysis concluded that the government should at least consider the possibility that an FCN treaty might impose legally enforceable limitations on its freedom of action.

The Symposium continued with Jenny Poon’s insightful contribution discussing whether the margin of appreciation accorded to European Union Member States is too wide, which may lead to violations of international law and used the topic of asylum as a lens in which to analyze this question, ultimately calling for more clarification on the margin of appreciation in order to protect the rights of the vulnerable. Myriam Feinberg weighed in with a thoughtful analysis of the role of international organizations in the context of sovereignty in the age of global terrorism, contending that this can be examined in the wider context of state sovereignty, even though a number of international law analyses consider the concept of State sovereignty obsolete or in need of reform.

Amina Adanan discussed the role of national prosecutors in the context of domestic regulation of universal jurisdiction, concluding, in particular, a balance must be struck between prosecutorial discretion and the need to prevent impunity for the worst atrocities, after a thorough analysis. Finally, Grazyna Baranowska analyzed the European Court of Human Rights and women affected by the disapperance of their relatives, positing several alternatives for action and concluding that actions that countries should take in order to address specific needs of female relatives of disappeared persons face could be included in ECtHR judgments.

Thank you again to all of our participants. We hope you have all enjoyed reading and interacting with the contributions in our fourth annual Emerging Voices Symposium.