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19 Nov

[Andrea Pin is senior lecturer at the University of Padua, where he teaches constitutional law, comparative public law, and Islamic law. He is also a fall 2014 Kellogg visiting fellow at Notre Dame.] A few weeks ago, the Italian Constitutional Court’s decision no. 238 of 2014 struck blows to the theory and practice of sovereign immunity, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), German-Italian relationships, and even the Italian Government. On October 3, 2012, the ICJ decided that the customary sovereign immunity from jurisdiction protects Germany from suits brought before Italian domestic courts seeking compensation for Nazi crimes perpetrated in Italy during World War II. Later on, new suits were filed against Germany in Italian domestic courts. This time, Italian judges requested a preliminary ruling from the Italian Constitutional Court to ascertain if the sovereign immunity protection, as crafted by the ICJ, was against the Italian Constitution. If the Court found that such immunity violated the Constitution, the judges would process the suits. The Constitutional text proclaims that “The Italian legal system conforms to the generally recognised rules of international law” (Art. no. 10). International customary law falls in this category and therefore prevails over incompatible domestic legal provisions. But there has always been a caveat: the generally recognized rules of international law cannot be enforced in Italy if they conflict with the supreme principles of the Constitution. This is the doctrine of counter-limits, which the Constitutional Court shaped with special regards to the European Union integration: according to this doctrine, core constitutional values would set exceptional boundaries to the domestic enforcement of EU laws, which can ordinarily subordinate constitutional provisions. The hypothetical non-enforcement of international law for violating a supreme constitutional value had never become reality—until now. The 2014 decision of the Constitutional Court found that Art. no. 24 of the Constitution (“All persons are entitled to take judicial action to protect their individual rights and legitimate interests”) encapsulates a fundamental principle of the Constitution. Therefore, the Court blocked the application of sovereign immunity from jurisdiction, and allowed the referring Italian judges to proceed with the relevant trials. This unprecedented decision surely is in conflict with the ICJ Statute. In fact, the Italian Court consequently struck down the pieces of Italian legislation that commanded the enforcement of the ICJ’s judgments in cases of gross human rights violations as well. But it will also create some turbulence in the relationships between Italy and Germany. The Constitutional Court’s decision, finally, is in conflict with the Italian Government’s attitude. After the ICJ’s judgment, the Government signed and had the Parliament execute the New York Convention on Jurisdictional Immunities of States and Their Property (2004). This Convention confirmed the ICJ’s approach to sovereign immunity: practically speaking, after losing at the ICJ, the Italian State happily legitimized Germany’s jurisdictional immunity. The Constitutional Court also needed to quash these pieces of Italian legislation.
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18 Nov

[Rob Howse is the Lloyd C. Nelson Professor of International Law at NYU and is guest blogging this week here at Opinio Juris.] According to Jacob Heilbrunn, the editor of The National Interest, the neocons are about to make a spectacular comeback in American foreign policy.  Writing about the midterm elections in the Financial Times last Friday, Heilbrunn observed: "the Republican party is resurrecting the unilateral foreign policy doctrines that first took hold under President George W Bush and his vice-president Dick Cheney." So let's take a hard look at the weapons the neocons have in their arsenal these days. The first, as Heilbrunn notes, is Barack Obama, or more precisely discontent with his apparently reactive and hesitating approach to foreign and security policy, exemplified by situations such as Ukraine, Syria and the rise of ISIS.  If you read the fine print, to the extent there is any, the neocons like Cheney and Bill Kristol don't have any master plan or worked out strategy of their own for dealing with these problems.  They appeal to the heartwarming (for some Americans) fantasy that, if the United States simply drops enough bombs and puts enough boots on the ground, victory over the forces of evil will prevail.  In this fantasy world, every apparent failure of intervention--Afghanistan, Iraq--can be explained by not enough American force being applied.  Consider Bill Kristol's approach to ISIS: "What's the harm in bombing them at least for a few weeks and seeing what happens?" This is the key logic:force has got to be better than no force, a sort of dogmatic inversion of pacifism. Of course, Kristol's remark also speaks volumes to the neocons' stance toward international law. Then there is Senator-elect Tom Cotton.  As Heilbrunn notes,"Perhaps no one has been more impassioned in their support of the foreign policy of George W Bush than Tom Cotton." Cotton, 37 years old, is the neocon wet dream.  After Harvard College (where he wrote for the Crimson, citing intellectual idols Allan Bloom and Leo Strauss) and Harvard Law School, Cotton signed up for the military insisting that he be sent into combat in Iraq.  While, as the legend goes, the army urged him toward a JAG-type position, Cotton would have none of it:  he had little interest in the laws of war, he wanted to fight one.  Cotton is perhaps the most credible of any of the neocons--he, at least, chose to risk his life in the war that he praised as "just and noble".  He has also (at least somewhat) distanced himself from the main neocon strategy of withering attacks on Barack Obama, calling on Republicans to support the President's plan for use of force in Syria and rather nobly lecturing partisan Republican conservatives: "we have one commander in chief at a time, and the United States is weakened if our presidency is weakened. No matter the president’s party or his past failures, all Americans should want, and help, him to succeed when it comes to our national security."   While he shares the outlook of the ideological and partisan neocons, offering his conviction that America can and should seek "victory" in Afghanistan and Iraq, my hunch is that, given that he has had the responsibility as a soldier for the lives of men and women in combat, Cotton may actually prove a constructive and moderating force behind the scenes, if he does not consume too much energy in battles with the isolationist Rand Paul wing of the Republican Party.
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18 Nov

As I read – and re-read – the OTP’s decision regarding the attack on the Mavi Marmara, one thought kept going through my mind: what was the OTP thinking? Why would it produce a 61-page document explaining why, despite finding reason to believe the IDF had committed war crimes during the attack, it was not going to open an investigation?...

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16 Nov

[Daniel Bodansky is Foundation Professor of Law at Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law, Arizona State University.] Is the US-China joint announcement on climate change a big deal? Opinions differ widely. Paul Krugman says yes, Tyler Cowan, no. Who’s right? Is the announcement a “gamechanger,” as Joe Romm thinks, or “a well-timed, well-orchestrated press release,” as Cowan calls it? In part, the different answers reflect different measures of success, a point to which I will return in a moment. But, first, a little background. Back in 2011, the parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change adopted the Durban Platform, which launched negotiations to develop a new legal instrument to limit global greenhouse gas emissions post-2020. The Durban Platform negotiations are to be completed and a new agreement adopted in December 2015 at the Paris conference of the parties. A decision adopted last year in Warsaw called on states to communicate their intended national contributions to the new agreement well in advance of the Paris meeting. What the United States and China unveiled in Beijing – although generally characterized as an “agreement” or “pact” – were their intended national emission targets under the 2015 agreement. At least four metrics are relevant in evaluating the joint announcement: First, do the announced targets put us on a pathway towards limiting climate change to safe levels? Safety involves value judgments, of course, but most scientists believe that warming of more 1.5-2° C above pre-industrial levels would result in dangerous impacts – impacts that most people would wish to avoid. (The earth is already about .8 degrees warmer than pre-industrial level, so we’re almost halfway there.) Even the most ardent boosters of the US-China deal don’t claim that, by itself, it will put the world on a 2° pathway, only that it is a first step. Second, do the targets announced by the United States and China represent a significant improvement over business as usual? Or, to put it differently, will achieving them require the US and China to significantly ratchet up their level of effort? Here, opinions differ widely, because they depend on judgments about what would happen in the absence of the targets, which in turn depend on assumptions about the economy, technology, and government policies more generally – all of which are highly uncertain. Who would have predicted, ten years ago, the Great Recession and the rapid expansion of fracking, both of which have had a huge influence on US emissions? So it is perhaps not surprising that some analysts say the US-China announcement “doesn’t change things much,” while others think it represents a major advance. Climate Interactive, for example, calculates that the US-China targets, if fully implemented, would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 650 billion tons through 2100 – and if other countries follow suit, taking similar targets, global emissions would be reduced by about 2500 billion tons through 2100. A brief sampling of estimates of Chinese and US emissions: 
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12 Nov

[Jean d’Aspremont is a Professor of International Law, University of Manchester and a Professor of International Legal Theory, University of Amsterdam.] The identification of customary international law is à la mode among international lawyers. Seminars, research handbooks, special symposia in scholarly journals and on-line discussions devoted to the question are mushrooming these days. Arguments and constructions heard on these occasions are sometimes admirably...

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05 Nov

[Giacomo Pailli is a PhD in comparative law at University of Florence, Italy] Many readers will recall the judgment of the International Court of Justice in Germany v. Italy, where the Court upheld Germany’s claim of immunity under international law vis-a-vis Italy’s exercise of jurisdiction over certain Nazi crimes that had occurred during World War II. The decision received a lot...

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30 Oct

Earlier this year, Chris Gevers blogged about the Zimbabwe Torture Docket case, in which the Constitutional Court of South Africa was asked to determine whether the South African Police Service (SAPS) is required to investigate allegations that high-ranking government and security officials in Zimbabwe committed acts of torture. Those acts took place solely in Zimbabwe and involved only Zimbabweans, so the key...

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29 Oct

In observance of United Nations Day on October 24, China's foreign minister Wang Yi issued a long statement expressing China's view of itself as a "staunch defender and builder of international law" (Chinese version here). As China-watchers know, China's Communist Party has just completed its "Fourth Plenum" (sort of a Party leadership strategy meeting) on the theme of the promotion of...

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24 Oct

These days, I usually use Twitter to point readers to blog posts that deserve their attention. But Mark Kersten's new post at Justice in Conflict is so good -- and so important -- that I want to highlight it here. The post achieves the near-impossible, passionately indicting Canada's right-wing government for creating a political environment ripe for terrorism without in any way suggesting that...

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23 Oct

[Chimène Keitner is Harry & Lillian Research Chair and Professor of Law at UC Hastings. She is on Twitter @KeitnerLaw.]  I look forward to discussing developments in the international law of non-state actor immunity on a panel on “Responsibility and Immunity in a Time of Chaos” at International Law Weekend this Saturday morning with co-panelists Kristen Boon and August Reinisch, moderated...

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05 Oct

[Başak Çalı is Associate Professor of International Law at Koç University Law School, Turkey, and a member of the Executive Board of the European Society of International Law] We, in the ‘from Reykjavik to Vladivostok’ Europe, have grown accustomed to being proud of the European Human Rights System in the last forty or so years. We teach courses on European Human Rights Law that distill over ten thousand European Court of Human Rights judgments. We start our lectures on European Human Rights Law by pointing out that Europe, despite all its flaws, has the most effective regional system. We note that the European Court of Human Rights has been cited by the US Supreme Court.  We celebrate how the effective rights doctrine has recognised and empowered Irish catholic women trying to divorce, Cypriot gay men wishing to walk safely on the streets, Kurdish mothers looking for their disappeared sons, Bulgarian rape victims, Azeri journalists, British children wrongly placed in care and more, so many more. We underline the importance of the guidance that the European Court of Human Rights has provided to domestic judges, prosecutors, law enforcement agencies and legislators on how to take into account human rights when doing their respective jobs. We also salute the fact that the European Human Rights System has brought those us of who live between Reykjavik and Vladivostok together in a recognition of our common humanity, its frailty and our desire for a common dialogue on human rights regardless of our jurisdictional differences. That is why a judge in Diyarbakır, Turkey has given some thought to Mr. McCann and the British military operation in Gibraltar in 1988. Why a judge in Scotland has asked herself what does the case of Salduz mean for her to respect fair trial rights.  We also spend long hours in classrooms, courtrooms and parliaments discussing whether the European Court of Human Rights got the ‘margin of appreciation’ right this time. Now all that celebration and all the hard and painstakingly incremental gains of the European Human Rights System, a system based on solidarity to reach the common purpose of the promotion of human rights of all, is under serious threat. Unlike the debates that have ensued in the last ten years, the danger is not the Court’s famed gigantic case-load (as has been captured in the cliche of the ‘victim of its own success’) or the slow implementation of its judgments by some of the worst offenders. One political group in one country is out to shake the very foundations of the European Human Rights System.
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