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26 Apr

[Carlos Lopez is a Senior Legal Adviser at the International Commission of Jurists.] Claire Bright has nicely concluded the series of blogs in this online symposium on the legal and policy implications of the UK Supreme Court judgment on jurisdiction in Vedanta v Lungowe. It is time now to close the symposium and gratefully acknowledge the participants (Robert McCorquodale, Doug Cassel, Anil Yilmaz, Gabrielle Holly, Lucas Roorda and Claire Bright) and our...

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26 Apr

[Claire Bright is a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute and a Research Fellow in Business and Human Rights at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law.] In the Vedanta case, the claimants relied on Article 4.1 (combined with Article 63) of the Brussels I Recast Regulation to establish the jurisdiction of the English courts over the parent company since Vedanta...

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25 Apr

[Lucas Roorda is a PhD candidate at Utrecht University on jurisdiction in foreign direct liability cases in EU Member States, and a policy advisor at the Netherlands Human Rights Institute. He can be found on Twitter at @lroordalaw. This blog only represents his personal view, and not those of any institution.] This month’s seminal UK Supreme Court decision in Vedanta v. Lungowe, [2019] UKSC 20 has...

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24 Apr

[Gabrielle Holly is a business and human rights specialist and an experienced commercial disputes practitioner with Omnia Strategy LLP, who acted for the International Commission of Jurists and the CORE Coalition in this case. You can find her on twitter at @Gabriellellell.] With the rise in power of multinational groups and the intricacies of global supply chains, the question of where a company should...

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23 Apr

[Anil Yilmaz Vastardis is a Lecturer in Law at the Essex School of Law and Human Rights Centre. You can find her on Twitter @anil_yv.] In this post, I will focus on the implications of one of the central questions that the UK Supreme Court (‘UKSC’) addressed in its much-awaited Vedanta Resources PLC and anor v Lungowe and orsjudgment: whether the claimants’ pleaded a...

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19 Apr

[Doug Cassel is an Emeritus Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School.] The unanimous jurisdictional ruling of the United Kingdom Supreme Court in Vedanta Resources PLC and another v Lungowe and others, issued April 10, is the most important judicial decision in the field of business and human rights since the jurisdictional ruling of the United States Supreme Court in Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum in 2013. ...

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18 Apr

[Robert McCorquodale is a Professor of International Law and Human Rights at the University of Nottingham UK, a barrister at Brick Court Chambers in London, and is the founder and principal of Inclusive Law, a consultancy which aims to bring together business, law and human rights. He was part of the legal team which represented the International Commission of Jurists...

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17 Apr

I have been thinking more about how the OTP can appeal the Pre-Trial Chamber's refusal to authorize the Afghanistan investigation. I was perhaps a bit too dour in my assessment of whether the Appeals Chamber is likely to get the chance to reverse a decision that I consider fundamentally flawed. The most obvious option would be to seek leave to appeal the...

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16 Apr

Many thought this day would never come, and I consider myself one of them. Last week President Omar al Bashir became former President Omar al Bashir after months of citizen led protests and a definitive intervention by the Sudanese Army. The remarkable power of citizen protests and the dogged determination to topple a corrupt regime has been inspirational to observe...

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13 Apr

In my previous post, I defended the right of the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) to review  the OTP's assessment of whether there were, to quote Art. 53(1)(c) of the Rome Statute, "substantial reasons to believe that an investigation would not serve the interests of justice." In this post, I want to explain why I think the PTC got that review completely,...

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12 Apr

I will write a longer post tonight criticising the PTC's understanding of the "interests of justice," but I thought I'd start by cutting to the legal chase: can the OTP appeal the PTC's decision to reject its request to investigate the situation in Afghanistan? As I read the Rome Statute, I don't think so. Here is the text of the relevant...

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