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[Barrie Sander is a Fellow at Fundação Getúlio Vargas, Brazil and Jason Rudall is Assistant Professor of Public International Law at Leiden University.] The entire symposium is accessible in PDF format here. As we write this introduction we are each sitting in different houses, in different countries, on different continents, and in different hemispheres. We could not be much farther apart. And...

Recent weeks have witnessed the rapid global spread of a novel coronavirus known as COVID-19. At the time of posting (23 March 2020) the World Health Organisation has reported 294,110 confirmed cases and 12,944 deaths across 187 countries, areas or territories.  In response to the pandemic, Opinio Juris will host a symposium on COVID-19 and international law, kicking off next week on Monday, 30 March...

[Todd Carney is a student at Harvard Law School. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Public Communications. He has also worked in digital media in New York City and Washington D.C.] Though most of the headlines regarding disputed territory in Eastern Europe focus on Crimea and Kosovo, there is another region in Eastern Europe that continues to be in question,...

[M. Vagias is a Senior Lecturer of Law with The Hague University of Applied Science] Introduction: Amnesties in the latest Gaddafi Admissibility proceedings The debate on the compatibility of amnesties with the duty to prosecute human rights violations, including war crimes and crimes against humanity, is far from new in the realm of international criminal law. It has troubled first and foremost the Inter-American Court...

[Jennifer Trahan is a Professor at the NYU Center for Global Affairs.] On March 5, 2020, the International Criminal Court’s Appeals Chamber issued an extremely significant ruling authorizing the opening of the Afghanistan investigation.  The decision is important in that it confirms the Prosecutor’s discretion in evaluating whether or not to proceed “in the interests of justice” under Article 53(1)(c) of the Rome Statute, thereby allowing the Afghanistan...

[Siddharth S. Aatreya is an LLM Candidate in International Law at the University of Cambridge  and a General Editor of the Cambridge International Law Journal.] The Canadian Supreme Court’s decision in Nevsun Resources v. Araya has shone new light on the debate around the horizontal application of international law, particularly international human rights norms. With a 5-4 majority, the court held that Nevsun, a Vancouver-based...

[Dr. Leonie Steinl, LL.M. is a post-doctoral researcher at Hamburg University, where she works in a DFG-project on "Strategic Litigation Networks and Accountability for Gross Violations of Human Rights". Dr. Wenke Brückner currently works as a lawyer in Berlin, specializing in German and international criminal law. Both authors have previously worked on different aspects of the case of Hanan v. Germany for...

[Ciara Laverty is a PhD candidate at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, Leiden University. Dieneke de Vos received her PhD in international criminal law from the European University Institute, Florence and currently works in the humanitarian sector on the prevention of sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse.]   On 11 February 2020, Colombia’s Constitutional Court made public its full reasoning in the precedent-setting tutela action...

Last Thursday, Pre-Trial Chamber I issued its decision concerning which states, individuals ,and organizations will be permitted to submit observations on the OTP's request for a jurisdictional ruling in the Palestine situation. The PTC granted leave to 43 of the 45 potential amicus curiae. It denied one request (para. 52) because the individual who submitted it did so on behalf...