In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Author: Kevin Jon Heller

05 Sep

PassBlue published a very disturbing article yesterday about nominations for five vacant UN Special Rapporteur positions. According to the article, although the President of the Human Rights Council, South Korea's Choi Kyonglim, has endorsed four of the selection committee's five first choices, he has refused to endorse its first choice for Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Karim...

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29 Aug

I have admired Mark Tushnet's work since I was a law student, so I was very disappointed to read his critique of the now-notorious letter the University of Chicago sent to first-year students about "safe spaces" and "trigger warnings." Here is the bit that got Tushnet so riled up: Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called...

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22 Aug

As regular readers know, although I'm opposed to academic BDS, I fully support its economic incarnation. Which is why I find stories like this both depressing and infuriating: “I have no problem with Jewish people or any other religion or different beliefs. But for personal reasons, you can’t ask me to shake the hand of anyone from this state, especially in front...

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01 Aug

We are looking for two Senior Teaching Fellows. Here is the advertisement: Salary: £34,336 - £40,448 per annum pro rata inclusive of London Allowance Fixed term, part time for two years from September 2016 SOAS, University of London is the world’s leading institution for the study of Asia, Africa and the Near and Middle East, offering programmes in arts, humanities, languages, law and social sciences. Inaugurated...

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25 Jul

Are you a new PhD or about to finish your PhD? Do you focus on comparative constitutional law? If so, you will definitely want to apply for one of the two postdocs at Melbourne Law School that Adrienne Stone, now a Laureate Fellow, is offering: About the role Professor Adrienne Stone's Kathleen Fitzpatrick ARC Laureate Fellowship Program aims to address a problem...

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24 Jul

My brilliant friend Sarah Kay, a prominent UK/EU human-rights lawyer who was born in Dublin and raised in Belfast, posted the following statement on Facebook about what Brexit means to her. We've had some legal and political analysis of Brexit on the blog, but Brexit is also, and perhaps fundamentally, personal -- if it happens, it will have a lasting effect on people's...

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23 Jul

I'm delighted to call readers attention to a symposium next week on my friend Itamar Mann's new book, Humanity at Sea: Maritime Migration and the Foundations of International Law, which was just published by Cambridge University Press. Here is the 411: This interdisciplinary study engages law, history, and political theory in a first attempt to crystallize the lessons the global 'refugee crisis'...

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23 Jul

I'm delighted to announce the publication of two new essays. The first is "The Use and Abuse of Analogy in IHL," which is a chapter in Jens's edited book for CUP, "Theoretical Boundaries of Armed Conflict and Human Rights." I'm very proud of the essay -- and all of the contributions to the book are excellent. The second publication is my article "Radical...

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22 Jul

[This is the third episode in the Multi-blog series on the Updated Geneva Conventions Commentaries, jointly hosted by the Humanitarian Law & Policy Blog, Intercross and Opinio Juris. The first, by Jean-Marie Henckaerts, can be found here, and the second, by Sean Murphy, here.] It is a great pleasure to contribute to this multi-blog series on the ICRC’s newly-released Commentary on...

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06 Jul

Did you hear the one about Judge de Gurmendi, the President of the ICC, taking bribes for from 2004 on to ensure Omar al-Bashir's indictment? The president of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is facing calls to resign after it emerged that she may have received financial rewards said to be in millions of dollars to ensure the indictment of Sudanese President...

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28 Jun

Today through Wednesday, June 27-29, 2016, the Annual Junior Faculty Forum for International Law will host its fifth edition, at the New York University School of Law. The Forum is convened by Dino Kritsiotis (Univ. of Nottingham), Anne Orford (Univ. of Melbourne), and JHH Weiler (EUI/NYU), who will be joined this year by Benedict Kingsbury (NYU) and José Alvarez (NYU)...

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23 Jun

Last week, Adrian Hilton -- a self-described "conservative academic, theologian, author and educationalist" -- published a vicious hit-piece in The Spectator about SOAS. It's entitled "A School of Anti-Semitism?", and the name basically says it all. According to Hilton: "[p]retty much all student societies at SOAS have no choice but to conform to the Islamo-Marxist orthodoxy"; "the entire student body defines...

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