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12 Nov

[Johan D. van der Vyver is the I.T. Cohen Professor of International Law and Human Rights, Emory University School of Law, and Extraordinary Professor in the Department of Private Law, University of Pretoria.] This post is part of the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics, Vol. 47, No. 4, symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the...

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12 Nov

John Jackson died on Saturday, November 7, 2015, at the age of 83. He had an incredibly productive and creative career, with achievements enough for several lifetimes, and, despite that, he was a lovely and gentle man, who exuded true modesty. In this brief memorial, it would take too long to do justice to his achievements. The highlights of his...

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12 Nov

[Ruti Teitel is the Ernst C. Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law at New York Law School and the author of Globalizing Transitional Justice (2015).] This post is part of the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics, Vol. 47, No. 4, symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. I am pleased to join this symposium...

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11 Nov

[Mark A. Drumbl is the Class of 1975 Alumni Professor of Law and Director, Transnational Law Institute, Washington & Lee University, and Visiting Scholar, CICJ, VU University Amsterdam.] This post is part of the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics, Vol. 47, No. 4, symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. Atrocity begins with story-telling. Elegies lament unrighted wrongs from ancient battles. Fables weave and spin the bravado of national or ethnic superiority. The roll, pitch, and yaw of an entire literature ritualizes dehumanization: stories of vermin, poisonous mushrooms in children’s books, bespectacled intellectuals, enemies of the state. Then come exhortations to cut the tall trees, to take out the garbage, and to make way for Lebensraum. The filth is to be scrubbed, the society purified, the landscape cleansed. Atrocity metastasizes once these stories become performed. New stories then emerge. These stories narrate pain and suffering. Their tales, however, may redound with redemption; their ballads may record harrowing strategies of survival paired with forensic accounts of death; at times, too, chants of resistance arise. In the aftermath of atrocity, these stories become memory. The construction of memory, then, becomes an act of the living and a sign of life. For survivors, authorship over memory represents the exercise of agency and autonomy. For perpetrators and their supporters, revising (or denying) memory – also an act of authorship – becomes a tactic to thrive in changing times. It is no surprise that in the aftermath of mass atrocity the recovery of memory, and its reclamation, matters so much to so many. The hunger for memory, however, intersects with the blandness of law. This encounter frustrates, perhaps most acutely for victims. It is here that Professor Lopez enters the conversation. She recognizes this frustration. She also gestures towards a path forward. For her, law can respect memory. It can channel stories of survival, subjugation, and suffering. While Professor Lopez is an optimist about law’s potential, she remains more circumspect about how, exactly, we should understand memory. In a particularly thoughtful argument, she contends that conversations ought to move towards “collective memory.” For Professor Lopez, collective memory arises when those most affected by mass atrocity “though discussion and ritual … merge their fragmented recollections into one holistic narrative.” Collective memory is unscripted. It emerges organically through a synthesis of informal conversations, shared glances, tacit rejections, and knowing nods. Drawing from a rich array of sources, Professor Lopez posits that collective memory is more accurate, consistent, and concise than individual memory. In sum, then, Professor Lopez effectively exposes law’s predilection for individual conduct and illustrates how this penchant inhibits law’s ability to inflect collective action. For her, this is a loss. It is a loss because victims yearn for more. Professor Lopez’s response is reformist. Human rights lawyers should preserve and promote collective memory. Integrating collective memory of victims into legal process, for Professor Lopez, would clarify how atrocity begins and could document the pain it inflicts, while also furthering aspirations of reconciliation, transition, the development of an historical record, nation-building, and legal reform. How to accommodate collective memory into legal proceedings? Professor Lopez’s recognizes that the criminal law may find such accommodations awkward, if not downright unworkable. The criminal law, after all, is primarily about adjudging the guilt or innocence of the defendant. The need to focus on the defendant requires the foregrounding of all sorts of due process rules. This need stymies the use of collective memory in penal process because collective memory cannot be properly vetted. Professor Lopez therefore directs our gaze elsewhere. She points to tort-based claims, action civile, and the victims’ participation scheme built by the Rome Statute and present at the ECCC. Professor Lopez’s article makes a tremendously valuable contribution to the literature on transitional justice. Her diagnosis of law’s foibles, and her proclamation of the potential of collective memory, is sterling. She has the courage to offer some remedial responses. Her article is a rich base for a symposium. For me, her piece opens two shutters. The first is architectural. The second is discursive.
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10 Nov

[Andrew Gou is an Associate Professor at Jilin University. A translation of this post is also being circulated in Chinese via wechat, and that can be found here.] Once upon a time, a man was traveling with a white horse. They were stopped at the entrance to town, for the town had a “no horses allowed” rule. The man argued that a white horse was not a horse, for white horse was a new concept defined by both the concepts of white and of horse, and thus different from the original concept of horse. However, the gatekeeper insisted that the white horse was still a horse and should consequently be excluded from the town. The white horse story highlights the importance of the identification of the subject matter to the application of rules. Even for such simple rule as “no horse allowed”, identifying the true subject matter is inevitable. A key aspect of the ongoing South China Sea arbitration is to identify whether the submissions fall within the delimitation exception in the UNCLOS and China’s declaration under the exception: China argues yes, while the Philippines disagrees. On 29 October, the Arbitral Tribunal delivered its award on jurisdiction. Issues relating to delimitation exception are addressed briefly in paragraphs 155-157. The Tribunal states that it is “not convinced” by China; it considers that a dispute concerning maritime entitlement is distinct from a dispute concerning the delimitation; the Philippines has not requested the Tribunal to delimit, and the Tribunal will not effect the delimitation of any boundary. Then in paragraphs 397-412 titled “[t]he Tribunal’s conclusions on its jurisdiction”, the Tribunal concludes that 14 submissions of the Philippines do not concern maritime delimitation. I respectfully disagree with the award. In particular, I disagree with the manners in which the Tribunal reaches its conclusions on the delimitation exception. Basic understanding of the delimitation exception Article 298.1(a) of the UNCLOS provides that a State may declare that it does not accept compulsory procedures with respect to “disputes concerning the interpretation or application of Articles 15, 74 and 83 relating to sea boundary delimitations”. In a recent article of mine (paras. 7-37), I tried to interpret the exception in accordance with Article 31 of the VCLT. Some basic findings are as follows: First, delimitation is a process, and the term delimitation in the exception shall be understood as such. “The task of delimitation consists in resolving the overlapping claims” (Maritime Delimitation in the Black Sea, para. 77), which indicates that delimitation is a process of identifying, weighing and effecting competing claims, not only the final determination of the boundary line. Second, according to their ordinary meaning, the good faith principle and relevant case law, the terms relating to and concerning in the language of the delimitation exception shall be interpreted non-restrictively. They carry the meaning of on and connected with, or having a bearing on. Thus, the delimitation exception covers not only disputes on the determination of sea boundaries but also disputes having a bearing on the entire delimitation process. With an Article 298.1(a) declaration, the UNCLOS compulsory procedures shall not apply to those disputes. The Philippines has wrongly specified the nature of the disputes My article (paras. 73-100) also examines the Philippines’ submissions, and concludes that each of them has a bearing on delimitation and is excluded from arbitration by the declaration of China. For instance, the Philippines asks the Tribunal to declare that China’s maritime claims based on its “nine dash line” are inconsistent with the UNCLOS and therefore invalid (award, paras. 4, 99). Apparently the Philippines is of the view that the line represents China’s maritime claims. If the view is correct, then disputes on the line are typically disputes on overlapping claims: they arose only when the Philippines raised maritime claims overlapping with China’s; they could be settled only in the process of delimitation. If the Philippines’ view is not correct, then it must be proved that there exists a dispute concerning the interpretation and application of the UNCLOS; otherwise, the Tribunal will have no jurisdiction.
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09 Nov

[Shane Darcy is a lecturer at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland Galway and the author of Judges, Law and War; the Judicial Development of International Humanitarian Law (Cambridge, 2014). This is Part 1 of a two-part series.] The recruitment and use of Palestinian collaborators by the Israeli authorities, and their ill-treatment and execution by Palestinian forces,...

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06 Nov

In my post on biological and chemical weapons yesterday, I rejected the idea that Art. 8(2)(b)(xviii) "squarely appl[ies]" (Ralf Trapp) or "plainly applies" (Alex Whiting) to chemical and biological weapons by arguing that the drafters of the Rome Statute intended Art. 8(2)(b)(xviii), the war crime of “[e]mploying asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases,” to have precisely the kind of "special meaning" that Art. 31(4) of...

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04 Nov

U.S. commentary has largely celebrated the UNCLOS Arbitral Tribunal’s award finding it has jurisdiction to consider the merits on many of the Philippines’ South China Sea related claims against China.   Perhaps the most positive note is found in Jill Goldenziel’s essay at the Diplomat entitled, “International Law Is the Real Threat to China in the South China Sea.” But just by...

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30 Oct

I have been curious to see how China would respond to yesterday's UNCLOS Annex VII Arbitral Tribunal's ruling finding it has jurisdiction to hear the Philippines South China Sea related claims.  Well, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was ready with this blistering response: Q: The Arbitral Tribunal established at the request of the Republic of the Philippines rendered the award...

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