A few months ago, I was invited by the Polish Ministry of Justice to participate in a one-day conference on the responsibility of lawyers for judicial crimes, part of Poland's Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Stalinism and Nazism. The Ministry asked me to discuss American prosecutions of Nazi lawyers at the Nuremberg Military Tribunals -- something I wrote...
[This piece was translated and published by BBC India (Hindi) on 22 August. It is for a non-legal audience mainly, and is only focussed on the potential International Court of Justice case on Kashmir.] Pakistan has indicated publicly that it plans to approach the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in relation to Kashmir. The news of a potential ICJ case on Kashmir arises...
[Demetra Loizou is a Lecturer in International Law and Legal Skills at the University of Central Lancashire, Cyprus.] Article 8 of the Rome Statute, which sets out the war crimes within the ICC’s jurisdiction, is inextricably linked to the general IHL regime. Paragraph 2(a) refers to the grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions (international armed conflicts). Paragraph 2(c) is concerned with the serious violations of Common Article 3 (CA3)...
[Nina Mileva and Marina Fortuna are doctoral candidates at the University of Groningen, performing research within the TRICI-Law Project. This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (Grant Agreement No. 759728).] In international law interpretation is the process through which the interpreter attempts to determine the true...
[Caroline Omari Lichuma is a PhD Candidate at the Georg-August Universität Faculty of Law (at the Chair of Public and International Law) and a Lecturer from Riara Law School in Nairobi, Kenya.] Material inequality or (extreme) economic inequality has been touted as one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century. Wealth is hemorrhaging upwards rather than trickling down. In a world where the rich get richer,...
[Camila Teran is a lawyer with a LLB in Law and a LLM in International Criminal Law, both from the University of Sussex.] The ICC’s current crisis bears witness to the contentious relationship between the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC (OTP) and States. The OTP’s progress is further frustrated by the small window triggering the admissibility phase that would allow the Prosecutor to formally investigate Colombia....
I have uploaded a new article on the crime of aggression to SSRN. Here is the abstract: Immediately after the historic adoption of the aggression amendments on 14 December 2017, a number of participants in the negotiations expressed their belief that activating the crime of aggression would help deter states from engaging in the illegal use of force. Unfortunately, the version...
Tetevi Davi is future pupil barrister at 25 Bedford Row in London and a Nicolas Bratza, Tancred and Hardwicke Scholar of Lincoln’s Inn. He writes regularly on international human rights law, international criminal law and transitional justice, primarily with a focus on Africa. He is a rapporteur for Oxford International Organizations where his research focuses on African treaties. Introduction On 28 March 2019, The First Instance Division...
[Mark Chadwick is a Lecturer in Law at Nottingham Law School, Nottingham Trent University.] Universal jurisdiction remains a contested area of international law. By permitting domestic legislatures and courts to exercise jurisdiction over heinous international crimes, regardless of “where the crime was committed, the nationality of the alleged or convicted perpetrator, the nationality of the victim, or any other connection to...
I want to call readers attention to an important case coming out of Brazil. This week, the 2nd Regional Federal Tribunal (TRF2), based in Rio de Janeiro decided a case against Antônio Waneir Pinheiro Lima, a retired army sergeant, accused of raping and torturing Inês Etienne Romeu, the sole survivor of a clandestine torture center known as the “House of Death”. The case is relevant because,...
[Catherine Savard is a LL.M. student at Université Laval and assistant coordinator of the Canadian Partnership for International Justice. While she collaborated to the legal analysis on genocide of Canada's National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, the present post is written in a personal capacity and entirely independent of the Inquiry’s works.] Canada’s National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) delivered its Final Report...
[Anji Manivannan is the Legal Director at People for Equality and Relief in Lanka (PEARL) and a Senior Programs Officer at the World Federalist Movement - Institute for Global Policy (WFM-IGP).] Introduction May 18th marked the tenth anniversary of the end of the 26-year-long armed conflict between the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The GoSL’s victory came with the deaths of 70,000–140,000...