In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Author: Kevin Jon Heller

29 Sep

I pointed out last month that Owen Bowcott, a legal affairs correspondent for the Guardian, incorrectly claimed that "[g]enerals and politicians could evade responsibility for war crimes in future because of a ruling requiring proof that they 'specifically directed' atrocities." That is not what Perisic does: the Appeals Chamber did not say that a perpetrator must specifically direct a crime; it said that a perpetrator...

|
28 Sep

The Pre-Trial Chamber has ordered the Registrar to arrange a privileged visit between al-Senussi and his ICC lawyer, Ben Emmerson, in Libya. On the positive side, the PTC seems to have learned something from Libya's abhorrent detention of Melinda Taylor. Witness the following language in the order: 15. Taking into account the purpose of the visit, the provisions of the ad...

|
27 Sep

As readers know, the Special Court for Sierra Leone's Appeals Chamber upheld Charles Taylor's conviction and 50-year sentence yesterday. It's been interesting to watch human-rights groups and advocates claim, predictably, that the judgment is a milestone in the fight against impunity, a position that seems to wilfully ignore the significant failure of the prosecution in the case. After all, both...

|
25 Sep

For the non-twitterati, Omar al-Bashir has -- unsurprisingly -- cancelled his trip to the UN. That decision reflects an underappreciated "soft power" aspect of the ICC: even an unexecuted arrest warrant limits the freedom of a suspect facing charges. There may be no reasonable prospect of Bashir being arrested anytime soon. But there is also no reasonable prospect that he...

|
23 Sep

Ryan has a fascinating but problematic post today at Just Security in which he takes international-law scholars to task for opportunistically flip-flopping on whether the US is involved in an armed conflict with al-Qaeda. Here is the crux of his argument, taken from the post's introductory paragraph: Those arguments have been inconsistent with regard to one fundamental legal question: whether the...

|
23 Sep

Just Security is officially up and running. The lineup of contributors is amazing: the Editors-in-Chief are Steve Vladeck and Ryan Goodman; the Executive Editors are Mary deRosa, the ACLU's Jameel Jaffer, Fionnuala Ni Aolian, and Beth Van Schaack; and the Founding Editors are too numerous too mention but all extremely well known. (I won't play favorites by naming some of...

|
20 Sep

Eric Posner has a new Cassandra column at Slate, this latest one foretelling the doom of the ICC. There isn't much point in disagreeing with his basic thesis; no one knows at this point -- not him, not I -- whether the ICC will succeed. It is possible, however, to take issue with a number of assertions that Posner makes in...

|
19 Sep

In today's weekly news wrap, Jessica flagged an article that said Saif was due to appear in court in Tripoli for the beginning of the pre-trial phase of the case against him, al-Senussi, and 36 (!) other defendants. The article was inaccurate, and was later updated to make clear that Saif was appearing in Zintan on unrelated charges -- not...

|
17 Sep

According to Reuters, the US is dropping hints that it will grant Omar al-Bashir a visa to travel the UN for the annual meeting of the General Assembly: A senior State Department official said Bashir would "not receive a warm welcome" if he were to travel to the U.N. meeting. The official said Bashir had applied for a visa to attend...

|
17 Sep

Does anyone have a copy of Bin Cheng's article "International Law in the United Nations," 8 Yearbook of World Affairs 170 (1954)? It's not available online, and our library doesn't have that journal...

|
14 Sep

That's the tally in light of the deal that has been reached regarding Syria's chemical weapons. The US position was that any agreement had to permit the use of force against Syria in case of noncompliance. But the US-Russian deal simply calls for the Security Council to consider the consequences of noncompliance under Chapter VII; it does not commit the...

|