Middle East

[Marina Aksenova is a Professor of Comparative Criminal and International Law, IE Law School Madrid and Linde Bryk is Legal Advisor - Bertha Justice Fellow, European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights.] On 11 December 2019, ECCHR together with a group of NGOs - Mwatana (Yemen), Rete Disarmo (Italy), Centre Delàs (Spain), the Campaign Against Arms Trade (UK) and Amnesty International Secretariat...

My last post raised a few questions on how we should approach the issue of targeted killings as first strikes in international armed conflicts (IACs). The ensuing Twitter debate proved very enriching, generating some answers and many more questions. This time around, I would like to elaborate on some of these answers and what do I make of their implications...

Yes. The American strike against Qassem Soleimani was illegal. This is the common conclusion of some of the world’s best experts on international law and jus ad bellum (see here and here for a couple of examples). And, lets be clear, the Iranian response was also illegal (see here and here). Let’s not dwell on these already explored and answered...

[Beatrice Walton is a 2018 graduate of Yale Law School and served as Judicial Fellow at the International Court of Justice in The Hague in 2018-2019. Paul Strauch graduated from Yale Law School in 2018, where he was a Herbert J. Hansell student fellow at the Center for Global Legal Challenges and Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal of International Law....

[Beatrice Walton is a 2018 graduate of Yale Law School and served as Judicial Fellow at the International Court of Justice in The Hague in 2018-2019. Paul Strauch graduated from Yale Law School in 2018, where he was a Herbert J. Hansell student fellow at the Center for Global Legal Challenges and Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal of International Law.]  This...

[Cale Davis is a PhD candidate at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies at Leiden University in The Netherlands. He was previously a Prosecutor with the Northern Territory DPP and a Judge’s Associate at the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory in Australia. His research concerns prosecutorial discretion in international criminal justice.] From the rarefied corridors of The Hague’s international...

As readers are no doubt aware, the OTP has once again declined -- now for a third time -- to open an investigation into Israel's violent attack on the MV Mavi Marmara. That decision was wholly expected; the only question was how the OTP would deal with the Appeals Chamber's recent decision in the Comoros situation, in which the Chamber...

[Solon Solomon is a Lecturer in the Division of Public and International Law at Brunel University London School of Law.] The last few days have seen a renewed legal interest in both sides of the Atlantic concerning the legality of the Israeli settlements. On November 12, the European Union’s court, the ECJ, held that products coming from these settlements must be labelled accordingly....

I've been meaning to write for a while now about Stefan Talmon's brilliant new article for the Chinese Journal of International Law, which is entitled "The United States under President Trump: Gravedigger of International Law." It's rare you see an international lawyer of Talmon's eminence and care give an article such a provocative title, so you know he must be...

On October 22, Jay Sekulow -- best known as one of Trump's lawyers -- filed a request to submit observations concerning the Afghanistan appeal on behalf of the European Centre for Law & Justice (ECLJ), the European branch of the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ), an ultra-right NGO. The Appeals Chamber granted the request on October 24, despite...

[Jeremie Bracka is a  Post-Doctoral Transitional Justice Fellow at the Hebrew University Minerva Center for Human Rights Law (Jerusalem) and currently works at the International Legal Forum (Tel Aviv).] Background On 2 September 2019, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) rejected the Prosecutor’s appeal against the decision of the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) I on the “Application for Judicial Review by the Government...

[Ralph Janik teaches international law at the University of Vienna, Webster University Vienna, and the University of Rostock. He specializes in the interplay of international law and international relations. Twitter: @RalphJanik] A couple of days ago the research services of Germany’s parliament (the Bundestag) published an expert opinion on the legal aspects of Turkey’s Syria invasion. Its principal findings are clear: “Operation Peace Spring”...