In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Author: Kevin Jon Heller

31 Mar

From April 17-19, the University of Southampton is scheduled to host a conference entitled "International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism." As the title indicates, the conference was always going to be controversial. (Full disclosure: I was originally scheduled to present at the conference, but pulled out a couple of weeks ago because I simply didn't...

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31 Mar

Just in time for the activation of Palestine's membership in the ICC, over the next few days Mark Kersten's blog, Justice in Conflict, will be featuring posts by all of the people who participated in last week's roundtable at the LSE -- Mark, me, Kirsten Ainley, Dov Jacobs, Chantal Meloni, Leslie Vinjamuri, and Michael Kearney. Mark's introductory post can be found here. I...

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26 Mar

Just Security published a post by Laurie Blank, Geoffrey Corn, and Eric Jensen yesterday criticizing two surveys that are interested in how laypeople think about IHL's principle of proportionality. Much of what the authors say is absolutely correct, particularly about the need to recognize that assessing ex post the ex ante decision-making process of military commanders is fraught with difficulty and likely...

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24 Mar

My friend Rogier Bartels published two excellent posts at Just Security over the past few days (here and here) in which he argues that it is inherently perfidious to launch an attack from a military object disguised as a civilian object. Just Security has just posted my lengthy response. Here is how I conclude the post: At the risk of sounding like an...

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22 Mar

I just learned -- much belatedly -- that Chinua Achebe, the great Nigerian novelist, died two years ago today at 82. Here is a snippet from his 2013 obituary in the New York Times: Nadine Gordimer, the South African novelist and Nobel laureate, hailed Mr. Achebe in a review in The New York Times in 1988, calling him “a novelist who...

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11 Mar

Another complementarity fight is brewing, this time between the ICC and Cote d'Ivoire concerning the fate of Simone Gbagbo. In 2012, the ICC issued a warrant for her arrest, claiming that there are reasonable grounds to believe she is responsible as an indirect co-perpetrator for the crimes against humanity of murder, rape, other forms of sexual violence, and persecution. Just yesterday, however,...

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21 Feb

Here is the advertisement, which I hope will be of interest to Opinio Juris readers: 3 x full-time posts & 1 x part-time (0.5 fte) post Lecturer: £33,476-£48,088 p.a / pro rata inclusive of London Allowance Senior Lecturer: £49,462-£56,975 p.a / pro rata inclusive of London Allowance The SOAS School of Law invites applications for 3 full-time and 1 part-time (0.5) Lectureships/Senior Lectureships in Law...

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18 Feb

Big news -- and news I wasn't expecting: A former prisoner at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from Australia on Wednesday won a legal challenge to his terrorism conviction before a military court. The U.S. Court of Military Commission Review struck down the March 2007 conviction of David Hicks in a unanimous ruling that reverses what had been one...

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14 Feb

Today's a travel day, so I don't have time to write a full post. But I thought I'd flag a very interesting article in The Diplomat about China's new draft anti-terrorism bill, which seems to have a strong chance of becoming law. Here's a snippet: Obviously owing to the worrisome escalation of terrorist acts since the Tiananmen Square attack in October...

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