In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Recent Posts

02 Oct

[Arez Rizgari is an Iranian scholar. The author is writing under a pseudonym because they are concerned that this post will subject them to political retaliation or restrictions on their academic freedom by Iranian authorities.] The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has repeatedly targeted Rojhilat (Iranian Kurdistan) parties based in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) with missile and drone strikes...

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02 Oct

[Sué González Hauck is a postdoctoral scholar at Helmut Schmidt University Hamburg.] In her opening statement, Germany’s Agent adamantly insisted that questions related to Germany’s actual breaches of or adherence to the fundamental rules of international law have no place in the Preliminary Objections phase (CR 2026/30, p. 15, para. 9 (Monar)). Yet, Germany spent a considerable portion of its pleadings...

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01 Oct

[Matthias Goldmann is Professor of International Law at EBS University (Oestrich-Winkel, Germany) and a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law.] The recent hearings before the ICJ in the case of Nicaragua v. Germany revolved around preliminary objections. Yet the arguments the parties exchanged reached well beyond questions of admissibility and touched repeatedly...

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01 Oct

[Shahd Hammouri is a lecturer in international law and legal theory at the University of Kent, and a senior legal advisor at Law for Palestine. She is the author of Corporate War Profiteering and International Law (CUP, forthcoming 2026).] Germany’s insistence that ICJ advisory opinions cannot become a route around consent in contentious proceedings is doctrinally intelligible. But its argument risks...

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30 Sep

[Jinan Bastaki is Associate Professor of Legal Studies at New York University, Abu Dhabi. Victor Kattan is Assistant Professor of Public International Law, University of Nottingham. He is also a Smuts Visiting Fellow at the University of Cambridge (2026-7).] The proceedings in Alleged Breaches of Certain International Obligations in Respect of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Nicaragua v. Germany) before the International Court...

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30 Sep

[Dr Nahed Samour is Associate Researcher at Radboud University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.] While the oral hearings in the ICJ Alleged Breaches of Certain International Obligations in respect of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Nicaragua v. Germany) from September 7-10, 2026 raise questions of jurisdiction and admissibility only, it would be misleading to understand the question of temporal limitations (ratione temporis) as...

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29 Sep

[Ihsan Adel is the Founder and Chair of Law for Palestine and an international lawyer currently pursuing a PhD in Germany.] The preliminary objections proceedings in Nicaragua v Germany raise a temporal question extending beyond that case: when an occupation lasts for decades and its legal character evolves over time, how should a court identify the “situations or facts” giving rise...

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29 Sep

[Adil Ahmad Haque is a Distinguished Professor of Law and Judge Jon O. Newman Scholar at Rutgers Law School.] In its Preliminary Objections, Germany argues that Nicaragua’s claims are inadmissible because their resolution would require the Court to find Israel responsible for illegal conduct in its absence and without its consent. In its prior cases, namely Monetary Gold and East Timor,...

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28 Sep

[Dr Marco Longobardo is a Reader in International Law at the School of Law of the University of Westminster. He is the author of The Use of Armed Force in Occupied Territory (Cambridge University Press, 2018) and Sufficient Gravity before the International Criminal Court (Edward Elgar 2026).] Introduction In the week that started on 7th September 2027, the ICJ heard the pleadings...

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28 Sep

[Jinan Bastaki is Associate Professor of Legal Studies at New York University, Abu Dhabi.] The International Court of Justice’s proceedings in Alleged Breaches of Certain International Obligations in Respect of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Nicaragua v. Germany) raise questions that extend well beyond the immediate dispute between the two States. At their core is the question of when international law can hold one...

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28 Sep

[Zsuzsanna Deen-Racsmány holds a Ph.D. in public international law from Leiden University. She is an independent researcher and has worked, inter alia, at Leiden University and the University of Amsterdam, and been a rapporteur for Oxford International Organizations.] Introduction This post concludes a series of three. Following an introduction that described the parse mention in the submissions in The Gambia v. Myanmar...

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28 Sep

[Zsuzsanna Deen-Racsmány holds a Ph.D. in public international law from Leiden University. She is an independent researcher and has worked, inter alia, at Leiden University and the University of Amsterdam, and been a rapporteur for Oxford International Organizations.]  Introduction This post is the second in a series of three in which I advocate for reconsideration of the dominant interpretation of Article II...

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