In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Public International Law

01 Nov

[Jonathan Hafetz is Professor of Law at Seton Hall Law School. He is also the creator and host of the podcast, LawOnFilm.] Portraying criminal trials for mass atrocities on screen is an inherently challenging task. Filmmakers must tackle the competing demands of historical accuracy and dramatic effect. And for the film to endure, it must somehow speak both to its specific...

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31 Oct

[Jens Iverson is an Assistant Professor at Leiden University and a Visiting Professor/Lecturer at Vermont Law School, Santa Clara University School of Law, and University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.] Dr. Stephen Strange is one of the most intelligent characters in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  He was able to switch fields, learn languages, and master the mystic arts...

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31 Oct

[Cláudio Cerqueira B. Netto is a PhD candidate at Université de Lausanne. The author thanks Evelyne Schmid, Andrea Longo and Ralph Loren-Eisendecher for their comments on previous versions of this blog post. Any mistakes are obviously solely attributed to the author.] Introduction Samba is a popular musical rhythm from Brazil. In 1971, musician João Nogueira composed a samba song titled Das 200...

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31 Oct

[Joris van de Riet is a PhD candidate in jurisprudence at Leiden Law School. He holds LLM degrees in Public International Law and in Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law from Leiden University. An earlier version of this post was presented at Gikii in Utrecht, 8 September 2023.] When Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace was released in 1999, viewers...

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31 Oct

[Keri van Douwen is a PhD Candidate in Public International Law at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam.] Introduction  In February 2014, the exhibition The Crimea – Gold and Secrets of the Black Sea opened at the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam. Not long after, the Russian Federation illegally annexed the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. The events prompted archeologist and curator Valentina Mordvinseva to...

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30 Oct

[Ruth Houghton is a Senior Lecturer at Newcastle Law School (UK). Aoife O’Donoghue is a Professor in the School of Law at Queen’s University Belfast.] Given the disdain with which international legal scholarship holds utopian thinking, it is perhaps surprising that international law has its own utopian literature, its own genre of utopias. And we’re not just talking about Philip Allott’s...

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30 Oct

[Carla Ferstman is a Professor of Law at Essex Law School, United Kingdom.] The Wizard of Oz, a bestselling American children’s novel released in 1900 which spawned several movie and theatre adaptations, is a classic allegorical tale about overcoming adversity and the search for the idylls of home.  The Stuff of Fairy Tales Young Dorothy and her pet terrier, Toto, are on the...

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30 Oct

[Alonso Gurmendi is a Lecturer in International Relations at King’s College London Department of War Studies and a Contributing Editor at Opinio Juris.]  [Sarah Zarmsky is an Assistant Lecturer and PhD Candidate at the University of Essex Human Rights Centre with a focus on the intersections between new and emerging technologies, human rights, and international criminal law. She was also a...

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23 Oct

[Chuka Arinze-Onyia is a practicing criminal defense lawyer with an avid interest in international justice issues. He authored this article during a recent stint as an International Justice in Africa Fellow with Amnesty International.] On 16 December 2022, the ICC Prosecutor announced that his office had concluded the investigation phase of its work in Central African Republic (CAR) and would not pursue new...

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20 Oct

[Dr Saeed Bagheri is Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in International Law at the University of Reading School of Law. He conducts research in the law on the use of force and international humanitarian law.] After three decades of being occupied by Armenia, the territories in and around Nagorno-Karabakh (NK), which make up more than 20 per cent of Azerbaijan’s territory were recaptured...

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18 Oct

[Victor S. Mariottini de Oliveira is a PhD candidate in International Law at the Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland] Introduction On September 19th 2023, Azerbaijan launched a military operation targeting separatist positions in the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway territory of Armenian majority located within Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized borders. The “anti-terror” operation orchestrated as a response to alleged infrastructure sabotage activities carried...

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17 Oct

Introduction  In March 2022, I wrote a piece for Opinio Juris in which I described the international legal community as a “visible college.” Playing on Schachter’s concept of an “invisible college” of international lawyers “dispersed throughout the world” (p 217) but united in their faith in the law’s pacifying and transformative potential, my piece celebrated international lawyers’ willingness to engage with...

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