Recently, US President Joe Biden gave a press conference where he was asked about the US’ approach to Latin America. In an I-can’t-believe-he-actually-said-this moment, Biden responded as follows: “We used to talk about, when I was a kid, in college, about ‘America’s Backyard’. It’s not America’s backyard. Everything south of the Mexican border is ‘America’s Front Yard’. And we’re equal...
[David J. Scheffer is a former US diplomat, an international law professor, and a Senior Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is author of The Sit Room: In the Theater of War and Peace.] Legal principles matter as two major democracies—Taiwan and Ukraine—are threatened by superpower neighbors. Whether one argues about Taiwan’s status as a country or a province...
[Alexander Hinton (@AlexLHinton) is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University. He is author or editor of sixteen books, including It Can Happen Here (NYU, 2021), The Justice Facade (Oxford, 2018), and the forthcoming Anthropological Witness: Lessons from the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (Cornell, 2022)] On 17 August 1946, as the Nuremberg trials were underway, Hannah...
[Marnie Lloydd is Lecturer and Associate-Director of the New Zealand Centre for Public Law at Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington, with extensive experience in the international humanitarian sector.] Can there be ongoing duties to protect civilians once a state is no longer party to an armed conflict? A November 2021 decision of the High Court of New Zealand raised the possibility of ongoing legal, or at...
Call for Papers Call for Papers - South Asian Postgraduate Law Conference 2022: The first SAPLawC’22, to be held virtually on 25th and 26th November 2022 aims to bring together research scholars working in the area of legal issues that are of concern within the South Asian countries. The purpose of the Conference is to encourage the young research scholars to present their research before...
In December 2021, I was asked to review evidence gathered by the Washington Post for a report on atrocities in Chin State, Myanmar – “Burn it all down” – and provided my analysis for the piece. This blogpost provides additional detail and a legal assessment of what has been occurring in Chin state, Myanmar. Much of the evidence on which...
When Telford Taylor was planning the trial programme for the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMTs), he was faced with a dilemma concerning the Nazis' pre-war mistreatment -- legal and physical -- of Jews and members of other despised groups. Unlike the London Charter, Control Council Law No. 10, the NMTs' enabling statute, did not require crimes against humanity to be committed...
[Álvaro Rueda Rodríguez-Vila is a graduate in law (Bachelor, UNED) and in human rights (LL.M., Maastricht University).] On 15 September, the Spanish Constitutional Court (Tribunal Constitucional, or TC) barred a case from investigating and prosecuting crimes committed during the Franco dictatorship (a period of time known as franquismo, or Francoism). This decision, Auto 80/2021, refers to a complaint alleging tortures committed...
Call for Papers Call for Proposals - The 2022 Multidisciplinary Forum on Law and Longtermism: The University of Hamburg and The Legal Priorities Project invites paper proposals on the topic of ‘Longtermism and the Law’, for a multidisciplinary forum that will take place on 9-11 June 2022. The guiding theme of this Forum is the role of law in sustaining and improving life hundreds...
[Carola Lingaas is an associate professor of law at VID Specialized University in Oslo (Norway).] Introduction Around the same time in October 2021, 10,000 kilometers apart, two cases were litigated before domestic courts that dealt with indigenous rights to use of land: one before the Kenyan Environment and Land Court in Meru, the other one before the Supreme Court of Norway. Both...
[Dr. Natalie Alkiviadou is a Senior Research Fellow at Justitia, a Danish judicial think tank focusing on human rights. She works on the Future of Free Speech project.] Introduction This short piece has been inspired by the case of Sanchez v France which was decided by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) this year and which I argue, hereinafter, is yet...
[Marion Carrin is an Attorney from the Paris Bar and Legal Consultant before international courts and tribunals.] When it first aired on Spanish television in 2017, “La Casa de Papel” instantly became an outstanding success. When Netflix decided to broadcast it, under the English title “Money Heist,” the triumph grew worldwide to a point where it became the most popular non-English...