In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Themes

18 May

[Chris Carpenter is a lawyer and researcher in international law. She holds a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a master’s from the University of Cambridge.] This piece is about imposter syndrome, which I encountered in beginning my master’s at the University of Cambridge. When I submitted an abstract for this symposium, countless memories spanning almost a decade...

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18 May

[Mary Hansel is an international human rights attorney and the former Acting Director of the International Justice Clinic at University of California, Irvine School of Law (UCI Law). Ashleigh Hayden is a recent graduate of UCI Law. This post benefitted from the input of numerous UCI Law students and faculty.] Introduction Law schools across the globe have declared their commitment to confronting and addressing...

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17 May

[Dr Talita de Souza Dias is the Shaw Foundation Junior Research Fellow in Law at Jesus College, University of Oxford.] 1. Introduction In this post, I discuss the findings of a short statistical survey into the gender and nationality/regional representation of authors published by two mainstream academic publishers in their main international law monograph series: Oxford University Press (OUP) and Cambridge University...

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16 May

Legal academia is a contact sport. Students, faculty, and managers brutalise one another with gusto. Personifying the adversarial character of the dominant legal systems, they wrestle over course design and assessment, procedures and promotions, not to mention teaching allocation and the inevitable inequities that ensue. And I’ve only scratched the surface. To improve win rates (or survival chances), participants in...

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06 May

[Dr Plesch is Professor of Diplomacy and Strategy at SOAS University of London and a member (door tenant) of the chambers of Stephen Kay QC at 9 Bedford Row. He is the author of Human Rights After Hitler.] The Russian aggression against Ukraine has created fresh interest in international criminal justice. Vital support for this next phase in the application and development of international criminal law is...

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06 May

[Dr Amina Adanan is an Assistant Professor in Law at Maynooth University, National University of Ireland.] The UNWCC is the name of the formal multilateral organisation that facilitated a network of tribunals in which war criminals were tried for international crimes committed during WWII. It was a UN agency that operated from 1943-48 to support localised prosecutions of international crimes by the war Victors and...

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05 May

[Michael Fleming is a Professor at the Polish University Abroad, London.] During the Second World War, the Polish Government in Exile, based in London from the summer of 1940, pursued a twin-track policy to ensure German crimes taking place in occupied Poland were brought to the attention of the international community and that those responsible would face justice. In the first instance, the Polish Government highlighted German...

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05 May

[Megan Donaldson is a Lecturer in Public International Law at University College London.] [This post draws on a draft entry for the Max Planck Encyclopedia of International Procedural Law (Donaldson 2022), available on request.] Although Ethiopia had been deliberately excluded from membership of the UN War Crimes Commission (UNWCC), Ethiopia sought to submit cases against figures responsible for atrocities during the Italian invasion and occupation (1935–41). The...

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05 May

[Dr Dawn Sedman is a Senior Lecturer at Nottingham Law School, Nottingham Trent University.] How widely were defences deployed at the UN War Crimes Commission (UNWCC)? Using the 15-volume Official Reports as a preliminary indicator, around one quarter of the cases reported had defences raised and discussed. Only one of these defences was successful: the case of Weiss & Mundo [vol 13], who were accused of the...

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04 May

Dr Amina Adanan initiated a conference on the 1943-1948 United Nations War Crimes Commission (UNWCC)  involving both her own, Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology, and the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy in SOAS. The online conference included presentations from scholars in a range of disciplines, including law, history, international relations and political science and was organised by Dr Adanan and SOAS’s Prof. Dan Plesch,...

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04 May

[Danya Chaikel is currently consulting with FIDH's International Justice Desk and is the Co-Vice Chair of the IBA’s War Crimes Committee.] This amicus curiae brief was submitted by: Louise Arimatsu, Adejoké Babington-Ashaye, Danya Chaikel, Christine Chinkin, Carolyn Edgerton, Angela Mudukuti, and Cynthia T. Tai.* Following the Ongwen Appeals Chamber’s (AC) invitation to scholars and legal practitioners we submitted an amicus brief contending that duress and sexual violence...

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03 May

[Matt Cannock is the Head of Amnesty International’s Centre for International Justice. Dr. Rosemary Grey is a Lecturer at Sydney Law School and a Sydney Southeast Asia Centre DECRA Fellow. Akila Radhakrishnan is the President of the Global Justice Center, where she directs GJC’s work to establish legal precedents protecting human rights and ensuring gender equality. Alix Vuillem is the Senior Advocacy Adviser / Program Manager...

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