Recent Posts

[Philip Collins is a US-based immigration attorney and a PhD Researcher at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the University of Galway, Ireland, where he also holds a Master's Degree in International Human Rights Law.] On June 5, 2024, President Biden’s ‘Proclamation on Securing the Border’ went into full effect, with the stated purpose of suspending and limiting ‘[t]he entry of any...

[Mark A. Drumbl is Class of 1975 Alumni Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University. Barbora Holá is Professor in Empirical Legal Studies of International Criminal Justice at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.] Even the journey can be the destination…Mňága a Žďorp, Czech rock band Writing this book, as we note in its opening pages, lifted us to many places and spaces, physically...

[Dr. Mia Swart is Visiting Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand Law School] Informers Up Close focuses almost exclusively on informers in the context of Communist Czechoslovakia. Drumbl and Holá state explicitly that, but for a sideways glance here and there, the book is not comparative in nature. It zooms in on individuals that informed to the secret police or...

[Nesam McMillan is an Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and author of Imagining the International: Crime, Justice and the Promise of Community (2020)] In their new book, Drumbl and Holá offer a meditative scholarly inquiry into the practice, motivations and social significance of informing. They invite the reader to better appreciate the everydayness of informing (p....

[Saira Mohamed is Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley] Mark Drumbl and Barbora Holá’s fascinating Informers Up Close: Stories from Communist Prague offers a rigorous and engrossing account of the lives of informers in Czechoslovakia and the reckoning that comes for them after the fall of Communism. The book gives the reader so much to grapple with and...

[Sergey Vasiliev is Professor of International Law at the Open University in the Netherlands] Why bring a new book about the secret police (StB) collaborators in Communist Czechoslovakia, of all topics, into the burning, drowning, and splintered world of 2024? Can it serve purposes other than indulging one’s historical curiosity or wanderlust – an unaffordable distraction? I certainly thought so, if...

To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Events Nuremberg Forum 2024: The International Nuremberg Principles Academy cordially invites you to attend the Nuremberg Forum 2024, which will take place from 10 to 12 October 2024 at Courtroom 600, Palace of Justice, entrance via Memorium Nuremberg Trials, Bärenschanzstraße 72,...

[I serve as the ICC Prosecutor's Special Adviser on War Crimes. This post is written in my academic capacity and does not reflect the position of the Office of the Prosecutor.] It is being widely reported that President Zelensky has submitted the Rome Statute to Ukraine's parliament for ratification. If so, that is great news: although Ukraine's two Art. 12(3) declarations...

[Sanjana Ragu is an Bachelor of Laws graduate from Strathmore University and currrenly works as a trainee lawyer at Anjarwalla & Khanna] Be it Palestine in the East, or Sudan in the South, in the chessboard of global politics and economy, the suffering of the Global South is often a pawn, sacrificed for strategic advantage. This wretched reality becomes apparent once...

[Dr Cristiano d'Orsi is a Lecturer and Senior Research Fellow at the Faculty of Law, University of Johannesburg and Senior Consultant in AFRICAN Refugee Law at Witness Experts in London] Mandela and his First Struggles with the ANC Nelson Mandela’s birth coincided with the beginning of British rule in Palestine (1918) and what has been called the Third Aliyah, another wave of...

[Lazola Nomkala holds Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Laws degrees from the University of the Western Cape (UWC)] On 19 July 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that the Israeli occupation in Palestine was illegal. Despite the disputed nature of Israel’s origins, the occupation formally began in 1967. What followed was the violent dispossession of Palestinians achieved via...