In my previous post, I defended the right of the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) to review the OTP's assessment of whether there were, to quote Art. 53(1)(c) of the Rome Statute, "substantial reasons to believe that an investigation would not serve the interests of justice." In this post, I want to explain why I think the PTC got that review completely,...
[Katayoun Hosseinnejad is a PhD graduate from Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies and a university lecturer of international law in Iran and Pouria Askary is an assistant professor of international law at Allameh Tabataba’i University.] This post highlights some of the inconsistencies in the ICJ’s recent judgment on preliminary objections in the case of Certain Iranian Assets, which resulted in rejecting the...
[Rishi Gulati is a LSE Fellow in Law at the London School of Economics and a Barrister at the Victorian Bar.] The US Supreme Court has delivered its much awaited judgment in Jam v. International Finance Corporation, No. 17-1011, 27 February 2019 (‘Jam’ or the ‘Decision’. Two detailed posts by the author containing an analysis of the decisions of the courts...
Nearly 100 employees recently released an open letter to Microsoft demanding that the company cancel its nearly $500 million contract with the Army to develop an Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS). I will let the employees explain why: The contract's stated objective is to "rapidly develop, test, and manufacture a single platform that Soldiers can use to Fight, Rehearse, and Train that...
It is not often that the U.S. President and his chief trade representative debate fine points of international law in the Oval Office in front of the world’s press and senior Chinese officials. But President Trump and the U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer did just that last Friday when they publicly debated whether the possible US-China trade deal would be...
[Victor Kattan is Senior Research Fellow of the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore where he heads the Transsystemic Law Cluster. He is also an Associate Fellow of NUS Law and an associate (non-resident) member of Temple Garden Chambers in London.] Palestine’s Application Instituting Proceedings against the United States of America (U.S.) at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 28 September has produced much commentary in a short...
[Katayoun Hosseinnejad is a university lecturer of international law and attorney at law in Iran and Pouria Askary is an assistant professor of international law at law school of ATU and a visiting professor of law at Islamic Azad University and Tarbiat Modarres University.] On May 10, two days after the US President pulled his country out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of...
[Matt Pollard is a Senior Legal Adviser for the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) in Geneva, Switzerland.] The Canadian Parliament is currently considering Bill C-262, “An Act to ensure that the laws of Canada are in harmony with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples”. The draft legislation is a “private member’s bill” introduced by an individual Member...
You go to war with the President you have, not the President you wish you had. We should keep that basic truth in mind as the US inches ever closer to war with Syria -- and potentially with Russia, a far more terrifying possibility. Donald Trump does not care about civilians in Syria. He does not care about containing the spread...
Very significant news out of the ICC today: after a decade-long preliminary examination, the OTP has finally decided to ask the Pre-Trial Chamber to authorize a formal investigation into the situation in Afghanistan. Here is a snippet from Fatou Bensouda's announcement: For decades, the people of Afghanistan have endured the scourge of armed conflict. Following a meticulous preliminary examination of the...
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...
The estimable professor-pundit Daniel Drezner has a typically smart blogpost on President Trump's refusal to affirm the U.S. commitment to Article 5's collective defense provision of the North Atlantic Treaty. I don't have a problem with his views here, but I can't help jumping in to correct this paragraph from his post: So why is this such a big deal of a story? The United...