In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Organizations

09 Aug

Kirsty Brimelow QC, the chair of the Bar Human Rights Committee (BHRC) -- and a colleague of mine at Doughty Street Chambers -- has responded to my position on the 2009 Declaration, as recounted by Joshua Rozenberg in this Guardian article. Here is the relevant paragraph: Neither Rozenberg's opinion piece nor academic he relies upon, Kevin Heller, cite the text of the 2012 decision in support...

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05 Aug

The ICC Office of the Prosecutor has just released the following statement: Palestine is not a State Party to the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the ICC; neither has the Court received any official document from Palestine indicating acceptance of ICC jurisdiction or requesting the Prosecutor to open an investigation into any alleged crimes following the November 2012 United Nations...

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05 Aug

The request is supported by a number of leading QCs and professors in Britain. (Full disclosure: three of the signatories are barrister members and one is an academic member of Doughty Street Chambers, with which I'm associated.) Here is the Bar Human Rights Committee's summary: Public international law and criminal law Q.C.s and Professors based in Britain join with the Bar Human...

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04 Aug

As Eugene notes in today's guest post, the Palestinian Authority (PA) appears to have decided to ratify the Rome Statute. I'll believe it when I see it: the PA has threatened to ratify before, only to back down at the last moment. But could it? Most observers have assumed it could, but Eugene disagrees. I think his bottom line may well be...

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26 Jul

That's the question at the heart of a complicated debate between a variety of IHL scholars. The debate began with a legal opinion that Avi Bell submitted to the Knesset, in which he argued that nothing in international law prohibits Israel from cutting off the water and power it provides to Gaza. Although the opinion is dense -- and has been updated...

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17 Jul

That's the question asked by the blog of Oxford University Press. All of the short answers, provided by scholars ranging from Ruti Teitel to Bill Schabas, are worth a read. Here's mine: In my view, it is time to begin to question whether the International Criminal Court will ever play a major role in the fight against impunity. This is not...

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10 Jul

I've been swamped with various projects and distractions here in Taiwan (mostly food-related), so I didn't notice until today this very interesting Zachary Keck post about how Japan's recent decision to re-interpret its constitutional provision to allow expanded overseas military activities would enable Japan to help defend Taiwan against an attack from China.  It's a fascinating post, but it also made...

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25 Jun

Jamie Orr has responded to my previous post on the drone memo, in which I argue that the OLC fails to adequately defend its conclusion that the CIA is just as entitled to the public-authority justification (PAJ) as the DoD. It's a thoughtful response, and I appreciate Dean Orr taking the time to write it. But I don't find his arguments convincing. Orr begins by citing Art. 43 of the...

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23 Jun

As everyone on Twitter knows by now, the US government has released the notorious memorandum in which the OLC provides the supposed legal justification for killing Anwar al-Awlaki. I'm a bit disappointed not to get a mention in the memo; people in the know have suggested that a post I wrote in April 2010 led the OLC to substantially rewrite it. Vanity aside, though, I'm...

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