In association with the International Commission of Jurists

General

26 Apr

[Claire Bright is a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute and a Research Fellow in Business and Human Rights at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law.] In the Vedanta case, the claimants relied on Article 4.1 (combined with Article 63) of the Brussels I Recast Regulation to establish the jurisdiction of the English courts over the parent company since Vedanta...

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25 Apr

[Lucas Roorda is a PhD candidate at Utrecht University on jurisdiction in foreign direct liability cases in EU Member States, and a policy advisor at the Netherlands Human Rights Institute. He can be found on Twitter at @lroordalaw. This blog only represents his personal view, and not those of any institution.] This month’s seminal UK Supreme Court decision in Vedanta v. Lungowe, [2019] UKSC 20 has...

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24 Apr

[Gabrielle Holly is a business and human rights specialist and an experienced commercial disputes practitioner with Omnia Strategy LLP, who acted for the International Commission of Jurists and the CORE Coalition in this case. You can find her on twitter at @Gabriellellell.] With the rise in power of multinational groups and the intricacies of global supply chains, the question of where a company should...

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23 Apr

[Dov Jacobs is an Assistant Professor of International Law at Leiden University and a Legal Assistant at the ICC.] The following ideas come as a follow-up to Kevin Jon Heller’s recent post on possible appeal strategies that the OTP could consider following the decision by the PTC to not authorise the opening of a formal investigation in Afghanistan. I will therefore...

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23 Apr

[Anil Yilmaz Vastardis is a Lecturer in Law at the Essex School of Law and Human Rights Centre. You can find her on Twitter @anil_yv.] In this post, I will focus on the implications of one of the central questions that the UK Supreme Court (‘UKSC’) addressed in its much-awaited Vedanta Resources PLC and anor v Lungowe and orsjudgment: whether the claimants’ pleaded a...

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23 Apr

[Chiara Redaelli is Visiting Research Fellow at Harvard Law School and Research Fellow at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.] Over the past months, while international legal scholars have been engaging in passionate debates as to whether Nicolás Maduro is still the de jure president of Venezuela or whether Juan Guaidó should be considered the new interim representative of the country, Venezuelan lawyers...

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19 Apr

[Doug Cassel is an Emeritus Professor of Law at Notre Dame Law School.] The unanimous jurisdictional ruling of the United Kingdom Supreme Court in Vedanta Resources PLC and another v Lungowe and others, issued April 10, is the most important judicial decision in the field of business and human rights since the jurisdictional ruling of the United States Supreme Court in Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum in 2013. ...

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18 Apr

[Robert McCorquodale is a Professor of International Law and Human Rights at the University of Nottingham UK, a barrister at Brick Court Chambers in London, and is the founder and principal of Inclusive Law, a consultancy which aims to bring together business, law and human rights. He was part of the legal team which represented the International Commission of Jurists...

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17 Apr

Yesterday I participated in the launch of a new report at the International Peace Institute, entitled 'A Necessary Voice: Small States, International Law and the UN Security Council.'   A link to the report and the webcast is available here.   The conversation emphasized how the history of international law is replete with instances of how small states (defined as countries with...

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15 Apr

It was another busy week on Opinio Juris. Victor Kattan kicked things off with a systematic analysis of the false premises undergirding Israel’s claims to the West Bank in two parts (here and here). Alonso provided a detailed post on the interplay between human rights and investor state dispute settlement (ISDS), with a particular focus on indigenous “social license” in investment...

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09 Apr

I am very happy to welcome Opinio Juris 2.0's first guest blogger: Angela Mudukuti, a Zimbabwean international lawyer who currently works for the Wayamo Foundation. Angela focuses on enhancing the domestic capacity of African prosecutors and investigators to investigate and prosecute core international crimes. She previously worked for the superb Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC) in South Africa, where she was involved with precedent-setting...

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