Events and Announcements: 9 January 2021 (Updated)

Events

Webinar on ‘State of Emergency and Immigration Detention: The Grey Areas of the Right to Liberty’: Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Bologna in collaboration with ‘Beyond Detention’ Research Unit’ are convening a webinar on Tuesday, 26 January 2021 at 3 pm London time (4 pm CET or 10 am EST). The Webinar brings together international judges (Ksenija Turković, Paulo Pinto de Albuquerque), the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights (Fionnuala Ni Aolain), and leading scholars, in order to address key legal and criminological questions arising from States’ expanded use of preventive detention, with special regard to counterterrorism and immigration control. Speakers will explore the following issues: the abuse of preventive detention as an antiterrorism measure, the ‘tensions’ between immigration detention and the international human rights standards, and the human rights implications of immigration detention at the national level. The full programme of the event and registration are available here.

“Reconceptualizing International Law Session 2– Transforming the Future: The Making of International Law: This series features leading academics and practitioners who will engage in critical thinking across the core topics of public international law to conceptualize practical measures and mechanisms to convert and transform normative foundations of justice into procedural and substantive realities for today’s world. In the second session to be held at 10AM EST on Wednesday 13th January, we will explore the obstacles which prevent equal participation and equal impact of all peoples across the globe in the making of international law, reviewing both formal settings such as treaty conferences or expert bodies, and informal law creating through the day-to-day decisions that affect the development of customary international law and general principles of international law. This session seeks to tackle the key questions of who gets to shape international law, what needs to change to allow international law to incorporate the views of all people, and what can change. Panelists include: Daniel Stewart, Founder and Executive Director of Independent International Legal Advocates (IILA) (Moderator); Ambassador Michael Kanu, Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN for Sierra Leone; Professor Dire Tladi, Professor of International Law in the Department of Public Law at the University of Pretoria, Member of the International Law Commission, former Legal Adviser, Republic of South Africa, Director of International Relations and Cooperation; Ambassador Marie Jacobsson, Principal Legal Adviser on International Law at the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, former Member of the International Law Commission; and Professor Diane Desierto, Associate Professor of Human Rights Law and Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame, Member of the UN Working Group on the Right to Development. This series is co-organized by Independent International Legal Advocates, International Arbitration Group of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, and the TWAIL Seminar at UCLA Law. Registration for the Zoom webinar can be found here.

Announcements

Freya Baetens’ Book Announcement: Identity and Diversity on the International Bench: International courts and tribunals hold the power to decide on questions involving sovereignty over territory, grave human rights violations, international crimes, or millions of euros’ worth of economic interests. Judges and arbitrators are the ‘faces’ and arguably the drivers of international adjudication. Yet certain groups tend to be overrepresented on international benches, while others remain underrepresented. Although international courts and tribunals differ in their institutional make-up and functions, they all rely in essence on the judgement of a group of individuals, each with their own background and experience. Even if adjudicators’ identity is not the only, and may not be the decisive, influence on their decision-making, the relative lack of diversity has an effect on the judicial process and its outcomes, which in turn entails broader implications for the legitimacy of international law. This book analyses the implications of identity and diversity across numerous international adjudicatory bodies, focusing on a wide range of factors. Lack of diversity within the judiciary has been identified as a legitimacy concern in domestic settings, and the last few years have seen increasing attention to this question at the international level as well, making the book both timely and topical. For more information, please go here.

Hablemos de Derecho Internacional (HDI) – The International Legal Podcast (Spanish): HDI recently added the following Podcast Episodes in Spanish: Prof. Juan Antonio Travieso – ¿Cuales son los desafíos de la Política Mundial y el Derecho Internacional;  Prof. Monique Chemillier-Gendreau – La Arquitectura Política y Jurídica Mundial; Dr. Juan Nascimbene – Descubriendo el Derecho Internacional de Inversiones; Anne Coulon – Intervención, Genocidio, y la Corte Internacional de Justicia ; Prof. Marcos Salt – La Ciberdelincuencia y el Acceso a la Evidencia Digital; Dra. Íñigo Álvarez – Propuesta de un Régimen de Responsabilidad de los Grupos Armados en el Derecho Internacional ; Dra. Hélène Tigroudja – Comité de Derechos Humanos de la ONU y Obligaciones y Derechos en el Mundo Actual ; Gota #3 – Caso: Avena y Otros Nacionales Mexicanos ; Gota #4: Incautación y Detención de Determinados Documentos y Datos; Prof. María de la Colina – ¿Cómo piensa un (a) Profesional del Derecho? ;  Dra. Erika Montemor Ferreira – La FIFA y el Sistema de Resolución de Disputas ; and Gota #5: Opinión Consultiva – Muro en el Territorio Palestino Ocupado. Updated information about the guests and episodes can be found on HDI’s social media accounts: LinkedIn,Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube. The Podcast contributes to the dissemination and study of contemporary legal issues in Spanish, and is available on the main platforms: Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or through other podcast applications by searching “Hablemos de Derecho Internacional”, and on its website here.

If you would like to post an announcement on Opinio Juris, please contact John Heieck at eventsandannouncements[at]gmail[dot]com with a one-paragraph description of your announcement along with hyperlinks to more information. Failure to provide said information may result in delayed posting of your announcement. Thank you!