The international scholarly community lost a shining star with the untimely passing of Megan Fairlie, at age 52, a few days ago. Megan was a Professor of Law at Florida International University College of Law where she specialized in Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure & Litigation, International Human Rights, International Law, and Professional Responsibility. Megan joined FIU in 2007. She graduated with...
Believe it or not, 2022 is ending. It has been a busy year for Opinio Juris. Our team has grown, incorporating Vivek Bhat and Sarah Zarmsky, as Contributing Editor and Deputy Managing Editor, respectively. We have also organised symposia on difficult subjects that make us think about our profession in often ignored ways; how classism, systemic racism, and the challenges of the academic profession shape the content...
[Ralph Wilde is a member of the Faculty of Laws, University College London, University of London, the 2022 Peace Fellow, Ålands fredsinstitut (Åland Islands Peace Institute), and the 2022 Research Fellow, British Academy Council for British Research on the Levant Kenyon Institute, Al-Quds/Jerusalem. Photograph by the Author.] Advisory Opinion Request On 30 December 2022, the United Nations General Assembly voted to request...
[Dimitrios A. Kourtis (@DAKourtis) has a PhD from Aristotle University and is an Adjunct Lecturer at the Hellenic Police Academy] Introduction When Oscar Schachter wrote his iconic article on the ‘invisible college’ in 1977, the scholars and practitioners of international law were, more or less, a bunch of white male academics situated in what we now call the Global North, well-versed in both English and French and the diplomatic niceties...
[Shahab Saqib (@sufi_shahab) is a Visiting Lecturer at the SOAS University of London and a PhD Scholar of law at King’s College London] Introduction In a bizarre conversation with an established colleague on international law, I was told, ‘you should run away from being a critic of international law as I did. It won’t earn you a dime’. The discussion was long and covered various other issues,...
[Sanam Amin (@cardboardsky) is a PhD student at Melbourne Law School and a member of several international feminist advocacy networks] To self-describe as an international lawyer (at a party, say) is to call up an image of a person who travels a lot doing law, someone perhaps involved in the mercantile world, a trans-nationalist. This person carries a briefcase and a small piece of...
[Marie Badarne is Coordinator of the Critical Legal Training at the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR). Claire Tixeire is Senior Legal Advisor at ECCHR. Both have co-led ECCHR’s Critical Legal Training since its founding in 2012, now a part of ECCHR’s Institute for Legal Intervention.] Over the past decade, the co-authors have led the Critical...
[Anne-Marie Coleman is an assistant professor in UK higher education. She is writing under a pseudonym] This is not so much a working-class story as a broken class story, such were the social and personal consequences of my family implosion in a conservative, rural society in the late 1980s. We were pariahs to a community that doled out stigma and shame—I...
[Artur Simonyan is a PhD candidate at the University of Tartu, School of Law.] Introduction Laws that derive from Human Institution are different in different places. Visioned critically, international law likewise shares the same ontology. Both assertions sound equally logical and normatively valid within the dictum ‘all law is law in particular locations’. Nevertheless, supposing that laws’ differences ultimately relate to the...
[Dr Anna Dolidze (Twitter: @dolidze_anna) is Research Lead at Rabdan Academy, UAE] Introduction ‘My good friend Roosevelt I don’t know very English, but I know as much as write to you’, wrote a fourteen-year-old Fidel Castro to the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt. The note carries the degree of cute naiveté, simplicity, and directness that characterize the writings...
[Dr. Tonny Raymond Kirabira is a Ugandan lawyer and lecturer in international relations at University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom. Ruwadzano Patience Makumbe is a Zimbabwean lawyer and PhD researcher at the Human Rights Centre, Ghent University, Belgium.] Introduction On 1 July 2022, the International Criminal Court (ICC) celebrated its 20th anniversary, giving the institution and its partners an opportunity to take stock of...
[Radhika Kapoor (Twitter: @Radhikaaah) is a Fellow at the Harvard Law School Program on International Law and Armed Conflict.] This piece has been written in the author's personal capacity and does not reflect the views of the author's institution. The author thanks Professor Naz Modirzadeh, Sapan Parekh, and Ashrutha Rai for helpful comments, and Shashankaa Tewari for research assistance. The terrain of...