In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Organizations

14 Jul

[Gregory Gordon is Associate Professor of Law, Associate Dean for Development and External Affairs and Director of the Research Postgraduates Programme at The Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law.  He was formerly a prosecutor with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Special Investigations.] I am grateful to Opinio Juris, especially organizers Chris...

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13 Jul

[David J. Simon is the Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University.] It is something of a cliché to call a newly published book an “achievement.”  I can think of no better word, however, to describe Gregory Gordon’s Atrocity Speech Law.  This is the rare book on legal doctrine that is engaging and digestible to lawyers, legal academics, and non-lawyers...

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13 Jul

[Mark A. Drumbl is the Class of 1975 Alumni Professor of Law and Director, Transnational Law Institute at Washington and Lee University.] Atrocity Speech Law is a hefty book. It is, as Professor Gordon himself describes it, a ‘tome’. Atrocity Speech Law is rigorous and ambitious: packed with information, breathtakingly detailed, brimming with integrity, and vivified by important themes of law...

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13 Jul

[Roger S. Clark is the Board of Governors Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School.] Several important themes are developed alongside one another in Gregory Gordon’s remarkable book on the activity for which he coins the term “atrocity speech law.”  They are captured largely in his sub-title “Foundation, Fragmentation and Fruition” and in his summary of the “fruition” points at pp....

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12 Jul

[Gregory Gordon is Associate Professor of Law, Associate Dean for Development and External Affairs and Director of the Research Postgraduates Programme at The Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law.  He was formerly a prosecutor with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Special Investigations.] I have always felt that great scholarship is born...

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11 Jul

Over the next three days we will have an online discussion concerning Gregory Gordon’s new book Atrocity Speech Law: Foundation, Fragmentation, Fruition (Oxford 2017). We welcome Professor Gordon (The Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law), as well as Roger Clark (Rutgers Law), Mark Drumbl (Washington and Lee School of Law), and David Simon (Yale Dept. of Political Science), who...

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15 Jun

One of the most basic assumption of ICL is that an act cannot be a war crime unless it violates a rule of international humanitarian law (IHL). Article 6(b) of the London Charter criminalised "War Crimes: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war." Article 3 of the ICTY Statute provides that "[t]he International Tribunal shall have the power to prosecute...

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02 Jun

[Daniel Bodansky is Foundation Professor of Law at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University.] As usual, in his announcement yesterday about the Paris Agreement, President Trump spoke loudly but carried a small stick.  Duncan laid out the options for withdrawal in his post earlier this week.  Rather than choosing the “nuclear option” of withdrawing from the UN Framework...

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01 Jun

President Trump has indicated that he will announce a decision on future U.S. participation in the Paris Agreement later today at 3 pm.  Reports suggest that he has already made up his mind to withdraw.  That decision is likely to receive extensive attention (not to mention criticism) on the merits.  And certainly that attention is warranted.  But I believe an...

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31 May

Last month, I blogged about the Syria War Crimes Accountability Act of 2017, a bipartisan Senate bill “[t]o require a report on, and to authorize technical assistance for, accountability for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Syria.” I praised the bill, but pointed out that Section 7(a) was drafted in such a way that it permitted the US to provide technical...

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12 May

Last month, Just Security published a long and thoughtful post by Rebecca Ingber with the provocative title "International Law is Failing Us in Syria." The international law she is talking about is the jus ad bellum -- the illegality of unilateral humanitarian intervention (UHI) in particular. In her view, the failure of the international community to use force to end the...

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11 May

AJIL Unbound has just posted the contributions to a symposium entitled "Revisiting Israel's Settlements." The contributors are all superb: Eyal Benvenisti, Pnina Sharvit Baruch, David Kretzmer, Adam Roberts, Omar M. Dajani, and Yaël Ronen. The true highlight, though, is the essay that accompanies the symposium and will be published in the next issue of the American Journal of International Law: Theodor Meron's...

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