In association with the International Commission of Jurists

International Criminal Law

15 Dec

Last week, the ICTY Appeals Chamber reversed the acquittals of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic, the former head and deputy head of the Serbian secret police under Milosevic, and ordered them retried. One of the two grounds for reversal was the Trial Chamber's adoption of the specific-direction requirement; in the majority's view (the vote was 3-2), specific direction is not an element...

|
10 Dec

Here is Moreno-Ocampo's latest doozy, concerning the possibility of Israelis being prosecuted for war crimes related to Israel's illegal settlements in the West Bank: Where the Israeli High Court of Justice has approved specific settlements as legal, this could provide a complete defense to any allegations that they are war crimes, former International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told the Jerusalem...

|
06 Dec

[Jennifer Trahan is Associate Clinical Professor, The Center for Global Affairs, NYU-SPS. She attended ICC ASP 14 on behalf of the American NGO Coalition for the ICC and the American Branch of the International Law Association International Criminal Court Committee. The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of AMICC or the ABILA.] From November 18-27, delegates of states that are parties...

|
24 Nov

Only a “truther” who denies that al-Qaeda was responsible for 9/11 could doubt the international law basis for holding al Bahlul accountable for his role in this completed war crime. So Peter Margulies argues in his latest attempt to defend the indefensible: al-Bahlul's conviction for the non-existent war crime of conspiracy as an inchoate offence. To describe the accusation as offensive...

|
18 Nov

A couple of years ago, I praised the winning design for the ICC's permanent home but acknowledged that I preferred a different one. I'm happy to report that I was wrong, at least aesthetically: the Court's new headquarters are absolutely beautiful. Here are a few photos: You can tell the Court's staff is eager to move into their new home, because there is...

|
17 Nov

As I was researching a new essay on complementarity, I stumbled across a fantastic article in the Chinese Journal of International Law by Paidrag McAuliffe, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Liverpool School of Law. Here is the abstract of the article, which is entitled "From Watchdog to Workhorse: Explaining the Emergence of the ICC's Burden-sharing Policy as an Example of...

|
13 Nov

It was only a matter of time before the far right began to attack Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) for being in league with the Taliban -- and thus implicitly (nudge nudge, wink wink) the actual party responsible for the US's notorious assault on its hospital in Kunduz. And the attack has now begun. Here is a snippet from an article today in the Daily Caller: International...

|
06 Nov

In my post on biological and chemical weapons yesterday, I rejected the idea that Art. 8(2)(b)(xviii) "squarely appl[ies]" (Ralf Trapp) or "plainly applies" (Alex Whiting) to chemical and biological weapons by arguing that the drafters of the Rome Statute intended Art. 8(2)(b)(xviii), the war crime of “[e]mploying asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases,” to have precisely the kind of "special meaning" that Art. 31(4) of...

|
28 Oct

I'm delighted to announce that -- at long last -- Oxford Bibliographies Online has finally published an annotated bibliography on the Nuremberg Trials that I co-authored with Catherine Gascoigne, an utterly brilliant young PhD student in law at Cambridge. The bibliography covers both the IMT and my beloved NMTs; here is the introduction: The “Nuremberg trials” generally refers to a series of...

|
27 Oct

I  have finally made my way through the OTP's 162-page request to open an investigation into the situation in Georgia. I hope to write a few posts in the coming days on various aspects of the request; in this post I simply want to note my surprise that the OTP has not alleged that Georgia is responsible for two interrelated war crimes:...

|