In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Author: An Hertogen

11 Sep

President Obama has offered conditional support to the another round of diplomacy on Syria and called off Congress' vote on the authorization of military action. Meanwhile, France will put a resolution under Chapter VII on the Security Council's agenda to force Syria to clean up its chemical weapons stock under international control for destruction. The trial of Kenya's deputy President, William Ruto,...

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10 Sep

An inadvertent suggestion by John Kerry may have provided a solution to the international stalemate on Syria, as it led to a Russian proposal to bring chemical weapons under international control for destruction. The US is open but sceptical to the proposal, as are its allies. Syria's foreign minister has welcomed the proposal, tacitly admitting in the process that the...

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08 Sep

Calls for Papers A workshop on Sociological Inquiries into International Law will take place at the London School of Economics on May 16, 2014. The aim of this workshop is to help bring contemporary international law scholarship into a closer conversation with a number of inspiring and theoretically rich literatures on law and markets deriving from traditions of thinking within sociology and...

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31 Aug

This week on Opinio Juris, the possible intervention in Syria  took centre stage. Julian rounded up statements by the UK, Russia and France on the legality of a military intervention without UN authorization, and declared that the doctrine of humanitarian intervention suffered a massive blow when the UK House of Commons rejected a resolution on military strikes. Deborah discussed why the...

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25 Aug

Events Applications for the 2014 Workshop of the Institute for Global Law and Policy will close on September 15, 2013. The workshop will take place from January 3-11, 2014 in Doha, Qatar. More information is here. Calls for Papers The ASIL International Law in Domestic Courts Interest Group Conference will hold its annual paper conference on Friday, December 6, 2013 at Yale Law School. Proposals to...

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24 Aug

This week on Opinio Juris, Harold Koh, Bill Dodge and Hannah Buxbaum wrote an obituary for Professor Detlev Vagts, who passed away on August 20. As part of our ongoing Emerging Voices symposium, Peter Stockburger provocatively asked whether the R2P doctrine is the greatest marketing campaign international law has ever seen? Tamsin Paige shared some of the findings of her field work on piracy enforcement in the Seychelles. Laura Salvadego discussed the obligation to protect witnesses in the fight against transnational organized crime, whereas Sven Pfeiffer examined the feasibility of an international convention to ensure cooperation in the domestic prosecution of international crimes. HJ van der Merwe discussed the transformative influence of international criminal law on domestic law, and looked at the South African experience post-Apartheid.
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11 Aug

Announcements The Goettingen Journal of International Law, Europe’s first student-run peer-reviewed journal in the field of international law, has released a special Issue on "The Law and Politics of Indigenous Peoples in International Law". The eight selected articles are available on www.gojil.eu. A completely modernized version of the journal's web page was launched in July, too. Calls for Papers The Goettingen Journal of International...

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10 Aug

This week on Opinio Juris, Kevin marvelled at Libya's flexible approach to time. He also posted NASA's visualization of the warming world since 1880, which Chris followed up on with a discussion of a recent report linking climate change to a surge in armed conflicts. In our Emerging Voices series, Gilad Noam discussed three ways of conceptualizing admissibility challenges at the ICC, and the implications for the...

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03 Aug

This week on Opinio Juris, Kevin continued his discussion of the al-Bahlul amicus brief started last week. He pointed out how the Prosecution had disclaimed JCE before the trial and the military commission was asked not to consider this mode of liability, making its invocation in the amicus brief unacceptable in his opinion. Kevin pointed out that JCE was also rejected...

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28 Jul

Announcements From September 23-26, 2013, the British Institute of International and Comparative Law will be running a new four day programme called International Law in Practice. Led by many of the Institute's leading researchers and practitioners, the course will provide a broad introduction to key issues in international and comparative law – from public to private and from commercial to human rights....

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27 Jul

This week on Opinio Juris, we teamed up with the American Journal of International Law to bring you a discussion on the two lead articles in their latest issue. Jose Alvarez, the co-editor in chief of the AJIL, explained their decision to run this online symposium, and discussed what ties both articles together, despite their differences. First up was Leila Sadat's article, Crimes Against Humanity in the Modern Age, summarized here. In his comment, Darryl Robinson traced the history of academic discourse on the policy element and highlighted the most recent decision in Gbagbo. Elies van Sliedregt argued in favour of the humaneness side of humanity to give the concept of crimes against humanity a modern meaning. Leila's response is here. Eyal Benvenisti then introduced his article, Sovereigns as Trustees of Humanity, in which he tests the limits of the traditional concept of state sovereignty in light of the intensifying interdependence between states.
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20 Jul

This week on Opinio Juris, we continued our Emerging Voices symposium. Patricia Tarre Moser started the week with her proposal for the unilateral withholding of sovereign immunity as a countermeasure against jus cogens violations. Scott McKenzie wrote on the application of international water law principles to the simmering tension between Egypt and Ethiopia on the latter's decision to dam the Nile. Daniel Seah...

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