[Matt Pollard is the Director of Center for Independence of Judges and Lawyers International Commission of Jurists.] "I was very emotional," writes Brett Kavanaugh. "I said a few things I should not have said." It is extraordinary that someone poised to be appointed to the highest court of a country should have felt it necessary to reaffirm his judicial qualities, and seek to...
[Beth Van Schaack is the Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor of Human Rights at Stanford Law School and Faculty Affiliate at the Handa Center for Human Rights & International Justice at Stanford University. Prior to returning to academia, she served as Deputy to the Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues in the Office of Global Criminal Justice of the U.S. Department of State.] Until very recently, the Trump...
[Shaheed Fatima, Q.C., is is a London-based barrister, practicing from Blackstone Chambers.] In ‘The Trump Administration and International Law’ Professor Harold Hongju Koh diagnoses the multiple threats to domestic and international institutions and norms posed by the current administration’s foreign policy approach; prescribes a ‘political counterstrategy’ based on transnational legal process which may be applied by a range of players, with the...
The International Commission of Jurists organised a fascinating side-event yesterday at the Human Rights Council. Here is the ICJ's background statement: Particularly when crimes under international law are perpetrated on a large scale in situations of crisis, there is an urgent need to preserve evidence for use in eventual criminal proceedings, whether at the International Criminal Court or other national or...
Much has been made of how relations between the ICC have improved since the second term of Bush the Younger. I think we all expected that to change in the wake of Trump's election, particularly after the OTP announced its intention to investigate detention-related abuses in Afghanistan and in CIA black sites in Eastern Europe For a while, nothing much...
A number of commentators -- including me -- have questioned whether the OTP should open an investigation into Myanmar's treatment of the Rohingya if that investigation would be limited to the crime against humanity of deportation. Here, for example, is what I wrote in April: [T]here is the question of situational gravity. Should the OTP investigate the Rohingya situation if it...
Okay, it didn't directly say that. But that is the logical consequence of the Pre-Trial Chamber's new decision upholding the Court's jurisdiction over the deportation of the Rohingya from Myanmar. According to the PTC (para. 71), the crime against humanity of deportation (unlike forcible transfer) necessarily takes place in two states, because one of the essential elements of the crime...
On Monday, the OTP filed a motion in the Bemba Witness Tampering Case entitled "Detailed Notice of Additional Sentencing Submissions." The OTP argues that, in determining the appropriate sentence for Bemba, Kilolo, and Mangenda, Trial Chamber VII should take into account the fact that the witness tampering by Bemba and his co-defendants led the Appeals Chamber to wrongly acquit Bemba in the...
A few readers have contacted me privately to note that my previous post significantly underestimated the number of ILO judgments against the ICC. I said at least three. In fact, the number is much, much higher -- the result of a series of recent judgments issued by the Administrative Tribunal since the beginning of 2017. Each of the judgments involves...
This is a major development, one that I hope does not get lost in the welter of commentary on the Bemba acquittal. If you recall, in June 2012 the Libyan government detained four ICC officials who were in Zintan on official Court business: Melinda Taylor from the Office of Public Counsel for the Defence (OPCD), who had been provisionally appointed...
Last Friday, Pre-Trial Chamber I issued an Order Convening a Status Conference to consider the OTP's request for a ruling on whether the ICC has jurisdiction over Myanmar's deportation of the Rohingya to Bangladesh -- an issue I discussed here. According to the Order, the status conference will be held "on 20 June 2018...
We have published a series of fascinating posts in recent days debating whether the permanent members of the Security Council have a legal obligation under the UN Charter not to veto resolutions calling for the investigation or prosecution of atrocity crimes. Jennifer Trahan argued yes; Mohamed Helal responded no; and Trahan replied yes again. I am not convinced by Trahan's response...