Author: Kevin Jon Heller

I discovered the error this morning, as I was re-reading the Appeals Chamber decision for the joint criminal enterprise section of my book on the Nuremberg Military Tribunals.  The decision cites Einsatzgruppen as an example of JCE I, "basic" joint criminal enterprise, and then attributes the following quote to the Einsatzgruppen tribunal (para. 200): the elementary principle must be borne in...

Dapo Akande has an important post today at EJIL: Talk! that asks, as he puts it, "what exactly was agreed in Kampala on the crime of aggression?"  I think this paragraph is particularly important: The opt out provision is the most confusing aspect of the aggression amendments. Who exactly  is required to opt out? Once the requisite number of...

The following is a guest post by Scott Paul, the Making Amends Campaign Fellow with the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict.  I'm delighted to welcome Scott to OJ; in his previous life, he was was one of my favorite bloggers -- a regular contributor to The Washington Note and Bolton Watch. Mohammad was approaching a checkpoint with his brother...

Both Marko and Joanna Harrington (in comments) have relied on Article 31 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties to justify the idea that the Court will have to rely on understanding seven to interpret new Article 8bis, the idea being that the adoption of the understandings by consensus is a subsequent agreement that Article 31 makes relevant...

Marko posted the following long response to my previous post on understandings.  I'm promoting it to the main page to make sure everyone reads it. Kevin, Thanks so much for your post. Not only is this issue fascinating in its own right, there are also several fundamental, more conceptual questions here that sort of poke their head through. Let me...

Readers who have been following the Review Conference are most likely aware that the delegates adopted by consensus seven "understandings" concerning aggression in addition to a definition of the crime, the conditions of jurisdiction of the crime, and the elements of the crime.  I believe that those understandings have no actual force and should be ignored by the judges when...

The following is a guest post by Greg Gordon, Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Human Rights and Genocide Studies at the University of North Dakota.  He attended the Review Conference on behalf of the International League for Human Rights. A VIEW OF THE AGGRESSION AMENDMENTS FROM KAMPALA Having been on the ground in Kampala, my take on...

A few days ago, I recorded a conversation for Bloggingheads.tv with Mark Leon Goldberg of the invaluable UN Dispatch.  It was a wide ranging discussion -- and long, 45 minutes -- covering everything from the Gaza blockade to the definition of aggression to drone attacks.  Something tells me, though, that the only thing people will remember is my description of...