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08 Feb

I’d find it difficult to think of a book more deserving of the ASIL certificate of merit than Anthea Roberts’ Is International Law International? This is especially so because this is a book about international lawyers, rather than about the law as such; it is a foray into a sociology of our profession, examining in particular to what extent that...

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08 Feb

[Paul Stephan is the John C. Jeffries, Jr., Distinguished Professor of Law and John V. Ray Research Professor of Law at the University of Virginia.] First a disclosure. I have cheered on this project since Anthea Roberts began working on it. We, along with Pierre Verdier and Mila Versteeg, have collaborated on a book of essays as well as an American...

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06 Feb

As Patryk Labuda noted earlier today on twitter, the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) has ordered the OTP to provide it with additional information concerning the investigation in Afghanistan. Here are the key paragraphs of the order: 3. The Chamber observes that the Prosecutor seeks authorisation to initiate an investigation for crimes committed on the territory of Afghanistan from 1 May 2003 onwards,...

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05 Feb

[Ian Seiderman is the Legal and Policy Director, International Commission of Jurists] Andrew O’Hehir, an ordinarily astute analyst of US political skullduggery, adopts a contrarian posture when it comes to Trump, Trumpism and the rule of law. He thinks that all the brouhaha about trampling on cherished rule of law traditions misses the point. What’s so precious anyway, he suggests, about...

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27 Jan

Nikolas Stürchler, the Head of International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Justice Section at the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, has a new post at EJIL: Talk! discussing the ASP's decision to completely exclude states parties from the crime of aggression unless they ratify the aggression amendments -- the "opt-in" position advocated by a number of states, most notably...

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26 Jan

[Massimo Frigo is the Senior Legal Advisor of the International Commission of Jurists, Europe Programme.] A legal dispute between first instance ordinary courts and the Constitutional Court in Turkey is leading the country into a major constitutional conflict and severely limiting the chance of people in Turkey to access effective remedies for human rights violations. On 11 January, two criminal courts in Istanbul...

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22 Jan

At Lawfare yesterday, two law professors at West Point defended the US's right to attack North Korea if it tests another nuclear weapon or fires another missile into Japanese waters: North Korea is extraordinarily close to becoming a global nuclear power. This very real possibility has reportedly resulted in the United States debating a limited military strike dubbed the “bloody nose” strategy. In...

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17 Jan

Justice in Conflict has a guest post today from a scholar who has written a book about the Lubanga trial. I think the post makes some excellent points about the problems with the trial. But I have serious reservations -- acknowledging that I have not read the book -- about the author's take on why the trial did not focus...

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10 Jan

[Sina Etezazian serves as Digest of State Practice Regional Coordinator for the Journal on the Use of Force and International Law. He recently completed his PhD at Monash University. His doctoral thesis was titled “Ambiguities Regarding the Necessity and Proportionality Criteria for the Exercise of Self-Defense in International Law”. In 2017, he won the 2016 Monash Law School Students’ Publication...

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03 Jan

[Maziar Homayounnejad is currently a PhD researcher at the Dickson Poon School of Law, King's College London. His research primarily focuses on law of armed conflict aspects of autonomous weapon systems, with a secondary focus on arms control and non-proliferation.] On November 13-17, 2017, the UN, acting under the auspices of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), convened its first...

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02 Jan

Although aggression received most of the attention at the Assembly of States Parties (ASP) last month, the ASP also adopted a series of amendments to Art. 8 of the Rome Statute, the war-crimes provision, prohibiting the use of three kinds of weapons in both international armed conflict (IAC) and non-international armed conflict (NIAC): [W]eapons, which use microbial or other biological agents, or...

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