[Alonso Gurmendi is a Lecturer in International Relations at Kings College London’s Department of War Studies and a contributing editor at Opinio Juris. I wish to thank Dr. Helen M. Kinsella, Prof. Adil Haque, and Ms. Sarah Zarmsky for their comments on previous versions of this post] On October 7th, Hamas militants broke down the security fences around Gaza, took over...
In a world where powerful states are becoming more brazen in their impunity, it is crucial to give voice to those who resist. Along with nearly 800 lawyers, scholars, and practitioners, representing a diverse range of perspectives from academia and practice, I have signed a statement warning of the possibility of genocide in Gaza, Palestine. This open letter underscores the...
Introduction In March 2022, I wrote a piece for Opinio Juris in which I described the international legal community as a “visible college.” Playing on Schachter’s concept of an “invisible college” of international lawyers “dispersed throughout the world” (p 217) but united in their faith in the law’s pacifying and transformative potential, my piece celebrated international lawyers’ willingness to engage with...
Since my fields of research include criminal law, international law, and international humanitarian law, several colleagues and students have asked for my preliminary legal assessment regarding the recent attacks in Israel by Hamas terrorists. These terrorist attacks were egregious and shocking violations of human dignity and cannot be justified in any context. Although facts are still being gathered, the available evidence...
[Shawan Jabarin is General Director at Al-Haq. Ralph Wilde is a member of the Faculty of Laws, University College London.] This was delivered as a lecture to the UK Balfour Project, and is based on arguments set out in greater detail, with full citations, in an article published in the Journal of the History of International Law, both by the second...
The ICC Prosecutor, Karim Khan, is in New York this week for the annual meeting of the General Assembly. He has met with a variety of leaders from states in the Global South, including the President of Timor Leste, the Prime Minister of Cook Islands, the Vice-President of Uganda, the Foreign Minister of Chile, and the President of Sierra Leone....
[Vito Todeschini is a legal expert focusing on human rights and accountability in the context of Palestine/Israel and the wider MENA region.] Introduction In September 2022, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel (COI), and the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967...
[Ata R. Hindi is Research Fellow in International Law, Institute of Law at Birzeit University.] In 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued its advisory opinion on the Wall and its associated regime. Nearly two decades later, Palestine is back at the ICJ, where the Court will have to address another paramount issue: the (il)legality of Israel’s occupation altogether as...
[Lior Weinstein is a fourth-year student of Law and Hebrew literature (LLB and BA) and an LLM student in international law from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem and part of its international law forum.] In this blog post, I will present a new development in Israeli case law – the recognition of transitional justice (TJ) in the property law context. This exciting development...
[Leslie Johns (Twitter: @PoliticsIntlLaw) is a Professor of Political Science and Law at UCLA and author of Politics and International Law: Making, Breaking, and Upholding Global Rules (Cambridge University Press). Margaret E. Peters (Twitter: @MigrationNerd) is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Global Studies at UCLA. Her research on bilateral labor agreements was published in International Studies Quarterly and Theoretical Inquires...
[Mohibullah Taib is a Human Rights Counsellor at the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the United Nations Office and other international organizations in Geneva. Meera Nayak is a Human Rights Consultant at the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the United Nations Office and other international organizations in Geneva.] Since the Taliban’s unlawful...
[Brigitte Herremans is a Researcher at Justice Visions, Human Rights Centre, Ghent University. Habib Nassar is Director of Policy and Research at Impunity Watch.] The Syrian conflict has underscored some of the main deficiencies of the international justice system. The multifaceted and protracted conflict, paired with the political stalemate over its resolution have relegated the quest for justice to the background....