In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Symposia

06 Sep

[Sondre Torp Helmersen teaches at the University of Oslo and is an LLM candidate at the University of Cambridge.] Stephanie Carvin recently contributed to the Syria Insta-Symposium with a post titled “A Legal Debate Devoid of Consequences (or Bringing Practical Judgment Back In)”. Her call for a practical perspective is timely. The decision of whether or not to attack must be necessarily be a political decision, on which political scientists such as herself may offer sound advice. However, she apparently does not take full account of the fact that international law is (at least supposed to be) law. She “crudely paraphrases” her position as follows: “if 15 men sitting around a table in New York say it is okay to strike, then somehow it is fine. If 15 men do not, then it’s not okay. This seems to be an incredibly poor way to decide how to respond to the attack.” This line of reasoning is applicable to any legal regulation, domestic or international. Try replacing “attack” with any other matter regulated by domestic or international law,
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31 Aug

We have invited several academic luminaries to post here at Opinio Juris over the next few days about the ongoing situation in Syria. We also are going to follow in our own footsteps from our Kiobel symposium, by inviting young academics and practitioners to submit guests posts for possible publication. We can’t guarantee we will publish every post submitted, but we...

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30 Aug

Good thing nothing much happened while I was away on summer vacation… So as I wrote here last spring, there’s no clear basis under international law for a U.S. use of force in Syria – no UN Security Council resolution, and no apparent claim at this stage that the United States is acting in self-defense. The only theory of legality in play seems to be the one put forward by the British government, right before Parliament voted to reject the use of force in Syria. Namely, that force may be justified as part of an emergent customary norm permitting humanitarian intervention (see, e.g., NATO intervention in Kosovo). The statement from the UK Prime Minister’s Office says a state may take “exceptional measures in order to alleviate the scale of the overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe in Syria by deterring and disrupting the further use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime. Such a legal basis is available, under the doctrine of humanitarian intervention, provided” a set of conditions hold. Those conditions: (1) “convincing evidence, generally accepted by the international community as a whole, of extreme humanitarian distress on a large scale, requiring immediate and urgent relief;” (2) it is “objectively clear that there is no practicable alternative to the use of force if lives are to be saved;” (3) the force used is “necessary and proportionate to the aim of relief of humanitarian need…” But it just can’t support U.S. action here. Here’s why.
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30 Aug

[Efrat Bouganim-Shaag, LL.B, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2012); Yael Naggan, LL.B and B.A. in International Relations graduate from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2013)] Last February, a report by the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea concluded that there are “nine patterns of violation” of rights, which "may amount to crimes...

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29 Aug

[David L. Attanasio is a professor of international law at the Jorge Tadeo Lozano University in Bogotá, Colombia] The last few years have seen a rapidly changing landscape for serious human rights violations in the Americas.  Instead of government abuses committed in the alleged fight against left-wing guerilla groups, militarized criminal organizations now perpetrate many, if not most, serious human rights violations...

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27 Aug

[Matiangai Sirleaf  is a Sharswood Fellow, University of Pennsylvania Law School. B.A. New York University; M.A. University of Ghana-Legon; J.D. Yale Law School] The knee-jerk reaction to institute formal transitional institutions like trials or truth commissions following massive violence needs to be seriously rethought.  For one, it is not evident that societies recovering from mass atrocity will undoubtedly want to pursue...

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26 Aug

[Drew F. Cohen is a law clerk to the Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.  He is also a contributing columnist for US News and World Report where he writes about comparative constitutional law, international human rights and global legal affairs.] Recently, Botswana called on the South African Development Community (SADC) to open an investigation into voting irregularities in the recent Presidential election in Zimbabwe...

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22 Aug

[Dr. HJ van der Merwe is a Lecturer in Public Law Studies at the Law Faculty of the University of the Western Cape, South Africa] The degree to which states are able and willing to dynamically reflect international criminal norms within their domestic legal systems is crucial to the success of the project of international criminal justice. This is exemplified by...

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21 Aug

[Sven Pfeiffer is an Associate Expert at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The views expressed in this post are those of the author, writing in his personal capacity, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations.] National authorities are increasingly involved in the fight against impunity for perpetrators of genocide, war crimes and crimes against...

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20 Aug

[Laura Salvadego is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Law, University of Ferrara. This work has been developed during a research stay at the New York University School of Law - Center for Research in Crime and Justice, funded by Unicredit bank and by 5 per thousand contributions given to the University of Ferrara in 2010] The need to ensure...

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