In association with the International Commission of Jurists

North America

30 Jun

Along with 187 other American lawyers and legal scholars, I have signed a statement condemning the Trump administration's Executive Order permitting the US to sanction individuals involved with the ICC's investigation into the situation in Afghanistan. It's quite a list of signatories, including three former US war-crimes ambassadors and a number of former judges and prosecutors at various international criminal...

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15 Jun

[Jennifer Trahan is Clinical Professor, NYU Center for Global Affairs and Megan Fairlie is Professor of Law, Florida International University College of Law.] On June 11, Donald Trump issued an Executive Order that exponentially intensifies the United States’ ongoing attack on the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its staff.  Disturbingly, the Order also targets foreign nationals and, seemingly, US nationals.  Regrettably (although predictably), the US is again using...

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08 Jun

[Yusra Suedi is a PhD Candidate in Public International Law at the University of Geneva, where she teaches a course on United Nations diplomacy. Twitter: @Yusra_Suedi.] The killing of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man, on 25 May 2020 in Minneapolis by the police while in custody, has triggered solidarity protests all over the world. While protesting, electing different leaders, and national measures...

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18 May

[Jennifer Trahan is Clinical Professor, NYU Center for Global Affairs and Megan Fairlie is Professor of Law, Florida International University College of Law.] This past week, certain members of the US House and Senate released two letters (here and (here) that demonstrate, at best, a woeful lack of comprehension of the International Criminal Court.  The letters suggest that the ICC’s preliminary...

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15 May

Last week, The Huffington Post published an article with the provocative title, Epidemiologist Slams U.S. Coronavirus Response: ‘Close To Genocide By Default’. The epidemiologist in question was Prof. Dr. Gregg Gonsalves, PhD (Public Health, Yale University), who, according to his online curriculum vitae, is an Assistant Professor in Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at the Yale School of Public Health, as well as an Associate...

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12 May

On May 3rd, a group of 60 Venezuelan expatriates and two American former Green Berets launched an operation to topple the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro, in Venezuela. The operation looked more like something out of a bad streaming series than an actual military mission. Their plan was to arrive by boat at a fishing town north of the Capital, Caracas, somehow storm the heavily fortified...

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03 Apr

[León Castellanos-Jankiewicz is Researcher in International Law at the Asser Institute for International and European Law in The Hague and Academic Coordinator of the Netherlands Network for Human Rights Research.] As nearly half the world goes under lockdown to contain the spread of COVID-19, migrants have been especially helpless in the face of governmental measures restricting the movement of persons. Recent...

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10 Mar

[Jennifer Trahan is a Professor at the NYU Center for Global Affairs.] On March 5, 2020, the International Criminal Court’s Appeals Chamber issued an extremely significant ruling authorizing the opening of the Afghanistan investigation.  The decision is important in that it confirms the Prosecutor’s discretion in evaluating whether or not to proceed “in the interests of justice” under Article 53(1)(c) of the Rome Statute, thereby allowing the Afghanistan...

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04 Mar

[Siddharth S. Aatreya is an LLM Candidate in International Law at the University of Cambridge  and a General Editor of the Cambridge International Law Journal.] The Canadian Supreme Court’s decision in Nevsun Resources v. Araya has shone new light on the debate around the horizontal application of international law, particularly international human rights norms. With a 5-4 majority, the court held that Nevsun, a Vancouver-based...

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17 Feb

Most readers will be familiar with the Caroline Affair. A group of Canadian rebels seized an American vessel and used it to transport ammunitions from the US to Canada. British forces raided the ship, burned it, killed two men, and sent its wreckage over the Niagara Falls. The incident gave rise to perhaps one of the most frequently quoted maxims in the law of use...

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14 Jan

[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...

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