In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Author: Kevin Jon Heller

16 Mar

In an excellent recent blog post at Just Security, Tom Dannenbaum identified four options for prosecuting Russia's unprovoked aggression against Ukraine: [T]he International Criminal Court, an ad hoc international tribunal (whether along the lines proposed at Chatham House or pursuant to a General Assembly resolution), a domestic court exercising territorial jurisdiction (in Russia, Belarus, or Ukraine), or a domestic court exercising...

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11 Jan

Every scholar, from the most junior to the most senior, has a horror story about the languorous pace of academic publishing. The journal that took six months to reject their article. The journal that took six months to ask them to revise and resubmit their article and then took another six months to reject the revisions. The journal that accepted...

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30 Dec

When Telford Taylor was planning the trial programme for the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMTs), he was faced with a dilemma concerning the Nazis' pre-war mistreatment -- legal and physical -- of Jews and members of other despised groups. Unlike the London Charter, Control Council Law No. 10, the NMTs' enabling statute, did not require crimes against humanity to be committed...

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09 Oct

The blogosphere and twitterverse are replete with horror stories about how universities treat their academic staff. And rightly so: for most academics, particularly those who are part of the ever-growing ranks of the adjunct professoriat, the rise of the neoliberal university has meant -- as summarised by a recent book on the subject -- little more than "de-professionalisation, worsening conditions...

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07 Jul

We at Opinio Juris take great pride in the fact that we have never, at any point in our 17-year history, asked readers to give us money. Fortunately, despite rarely having been flush with cash, we have never needed to. None of the permanent members of the blog have ever taken a penny for their blogging (which means I've been...

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28 Jun

In my previous posts on the crime of ecocide -- Post 1, Post 2 -- I argued the theoretical/normative case against the IEP's decision to subject lawful acts to anthropocentric cost-benefit analysis via the "wantonness" requirement. In this post, I want to bracket the issue of whether the definition of ecocide should distinguish between lawful and unlawful acts and question...

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26 Jun

In my previous post, I criticised the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide (IEP) for endorsing a definition that is unjustifiably anthropocentric. In particular, I criticised the idea that "knowingly" causing a substantial likelihood of either widespread or long-term severe environmental damage is not criminal unless it is "wanton," defined as "reckless disregard for damage which would...

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23 Jun

I have been eagerly awaiting the results of the Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide (IEP), which includes a number of excellent lawyers and some close friends. The exercise has always been largely symbolic: even if 2/3 of states parties are willing to support an ecocide amendment, which is unlikely, an amendment to Art. 5 of the...

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10 Jun

My first academic position, now 15 long years ago, was at the University of Georgia. I was one of two Assistant Professors hired that year; the other was Erica Hashimoto, who is now a Professor at Georgetown. We were about the same age, quickly became close friends, and taught similar courses -- Prof. Hashimoto, criminal law; me, evidence. Yet our...

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26 May

Alas, we are losing our wonderful Editorial Assistant, Parisa Zangeneh, who needs to focus on her PhD at NUI-Galway. Parisa has been an incredible asset to Opinio Juris as an editor and in terms of her own blogging. (See here for an example of the latter.) She will be much missed, though she will maintain her blogging rights and we...

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04 Mar

As readers no doubt know, Fatou Bensouda announced yesterday that the OTP is opening a formal investigation into the situation in Palestine. Doing so was a foregone conclusion, given the Pre-Trial Chamber's recent decision that the ICC has jurisdiction over crimes committed in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Regardless, even if the bulk of the work will fall...

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