[Marina Lostal is a Lecturer in International Law at The Hague University of Applied Sciences.] On 27 September 2016, the International Criminal Court (ICC or the Court) entered a conviction and sentence that marked several firsts in the history of the Court. It found the Accused - Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi, guilty of the war crime of intentionally directing attacks...
[Steven Ratner is the Bruno Simma Collegiate Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School.] Ecuador’s announcement that it had severed Julian Assange’s internet connection in its London Embassy can be seen as a cynical manipulation of international law or a principled stance in favor of an important rule. Recall that Assange has been holed up in the embassy since...
I want to call readers' attention to Oxford University Press's publication of my friend Kim Priemel's new book, The Betrayal: The Nuremberg Trials and German Divergence. Here is the publisher's description: At the end of World War II the Allies faced a threefold challenge: how to punish perpetrators of appalling crimes for which the categories of 'genocide' and 'crimes against humanity'...
[Mariam Kizilbash read for her LLM in Public International Law from UCL, has worked as a legal officer with charities in London and Islamabad on areas such as death-row offences, US drone strikes and large-scale corporate corruption. She now works now as a freelance writer.] An Englishman of Bangladeshi origin, an Irishman, two Scotsmen resident in France, a Welshman and and a Gibraltarian, whose wife...
[Boyd van Dijk is a doctoral candidate at the European University Institute and a GTA at the War Studies Department of King’s College, London. He holds degrees in History and Political Science from the University of Amsterdam and Columbia University. He is currently working on a new international history of the Geneva Conventions of 1949. His first post can be...
[Boyd van Dijk is a doctoral candidate at the European University Institute and a GTA at the War Studies Department of King’s College, London. He holds degrees in History and Political Science from the University of Amsterdam and Columbia University. He is currently working on a new international history of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.] Fifteen years ago, the longest war in...
[William S. Dodge is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Law at the UC Davis School of Law, where he specializes in international law, international transactions, and international dispute resolution.] American law has many doctrines based on international comity—doctrines that help mediate the relationship between the U.S. legal system and those of other nations. The Second Circuit’s decision last week...
As we face the first U.S. presidential debate tonight (on my home campus of Hofstra University!), the possibility of a President Trump seems more and more real. Although U.S. election analysts all make Hillary Clinton the favorite, most of them continue to give Trump a very realistic chance of winning on November 8. I am not a Trump supporter, but I think...
[Dan Joyner is Professor of Law and Director of International Programs at the University of Alabama School of Law.] In July 2015 a historic diplomatic accord was reached among Iran, the E.U., and the P5+1 states (the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Russia, China). The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the accord was titled, consisted of 159 total pages of...
After months (or even years) of threats, Ukraine finally filed an arbitration claim against Russia under Annex VII of the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea. According to this statement from the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign of Affairs, the claim will focus on Russia's actions in the maritime zones bordering Crimea. Since the Russian Federation’s illegal acts of aggression in...
[Ralph Mamiya is team leader for the Protection of Civilians Team in the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations but writes here in a purely personal capacity, and the views expressed do not represent official positions of his Department or the United Nations. This post is the concluding post of the Protection of Civilians Symposium.] This week’s symposium on the protection of civilians highlighted...
[Kjetil Mujezinović Larsen is Professor of Law, Director of Research, and Deputy Director, at the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights at the University of Oslo. He is the author of «The Human Rights Treaty Obligations of Peacekeepers» (Cambridge, 2012). This post is a part of the Protection of Civilians Symposium.] By way of introduction, let me state that I agree with Marten’s...
