In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Asia-Pacific

06 Sep

Okay, it didn't directly say that. But that is the logical consequence of the Pre-Trial Chamber's new decision upholding the Court's jurisdiction over the deportation of the Rohingya from Myanmar. According to the PTC (para. 71), the crime against humanity of deportation (unlike forcible transfer) necessarily takes place in two states, because one of the essential elements of the crime...

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08 Aug

[Maitreyi Gupta is an International Legal Adviser for the International Commission of Jurists, Based in India.] The Supreme Court of India will soon deliver its judgment in a historic case -- Navtej Singh Johar et al v. Union of India and others -- on the criminalization of consensual same sex relations in the country. Branded outlaws by the law, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT)...

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09 Apr

Major news out of the ICC today: the OTP has formally asked the Pre-Trial Division to determine whether the Court has jurisdiction over the deportation of the Rohingya from Myanmar to Bangladesh. Here is the introduction of the OTP's brief: 1. The Prosecution seeks a ruling on a question of jurisdiction: whether the Court may exercise jurisdiction over the alleged deportation...

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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 Aug

Snapshot of two days in the life of the ICC. On Tuesday, the ICC issued a new arrest warrant in the Libya situation -- for Mahmoud al-Werfalli, a commander in the so-called Libyan National Army (LNA), which defected from the Libyan army during the revolution and is currently vying for power with the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA). The arrest warrant represents...

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11 Jun

I've got a new draft article up on SSRN (you can download it here) entitled China and the U.S. Strategic Construction of Cybernorms: the Process is the Product.  It was written for a really great inter-disciplinary workshop held at Stanford Law School earlier this Spring by the Hoover Institution's National Security, Technology and Law Working Group (which is chaired by...

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24 May

[caption id="attachment_33128" align="alignright" width="374"] Grand Justices of the Constitutional Court, Judiciary Yuan, Republic of China - Taiwan[/caption] In a first for Asia, Taiwan's Constitutional Court ruled today (with two dissents) that Taiwanese law limiting marriage to a man and a woman violated the Republic of China's constitutional guarantee of "equality before the law." (Taiwan is home to the exiled Republic of China government,...

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11 Mar

It is difficult to overstate the horrors the US inflicted on Cambodia from the air during the Vietnam War: 230,000 sorties involving 113,000 different sites; 500,000 tonnes of bombs, as much as the US dropped in the entire Pacific theatre during WW II; at least 50,000, and probably closer to 150,000, innocent civilians killed. Even worse, that bombing campaign, along with...

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15 Feb

As has been widely reported, 17 international-law scholars -- including yours truly -- recently submitted a 105-page communication to the Office of the Prosecutor alleging that Australia's treatment of refugees involves the commission of multiple crimes against humanity, including imprisonment, torture, deportation, and persecution. The communication is a tremendous piece of work, prepared in large part by the Global Legal Action Network (GLAN) and...

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19 Jan

[Simon Chesterman is Dean of the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law. He is also Editor of the Asian Journal of International Law and Secretary-General of the Asian Society of International Law. Educated in Melbourne, Beijing, Amsterdam, and Oxford, Simon’s teaching experience includes periods at Melbourne, Oxford, Columbia, Sciences Po, and New York University.] An academic learns most through errors...

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