Kevin kicked off the week of March 25th with a carefully reasoned post on the legal difficulties associated with the potential ICC investigation into the deportation of civilians from Syria to Jordan, with a particular emphasis on how they related to the divergent mentes reae of forcible transfer and deportation as crimes against humanity. In this way, Kevin distinguished the Syrian...
Jennifer Trahan and Megan Fairlie kicked off the week with an analysis of the US’s latest attack on the International Criminal Court, in which they highlighted the doctrinal and practical problems associated with US’s threat to implement, inter alia, a travel ban on ICC officials investigating mass atrocity crimes which allegedly occurred in Afghanistan. Kevin continued with an historical analysis of...
Kevin kicked off the week with a post about Jean-Pierre Bemba’s claim against the ICC for €70 million following his final acquittal. While Kevin was skeptical about the merits of Bemba’s compensation claim for €22 million based on his decade of wrongful detention, Kevin was more optimistic about the success Bemba’s spoliation claim for €42.4 million resulting from the ICC’s...
Dhruv Sharma and Utkarsh Srivastava kicked off the week with an analysis of India’s legal justification of “non-military preemptive action” for the Balakot airstrikes, which included a robust discussion on the law of self-defense. Livio Zilli, a Senior Legal Adviser and UN Representative at the International Commission of Jurists, provided a detailed analysis of the UN Human Rights Committee’s General Comment...
It was a busy week on Opinio Juris. Julian Ku kicked things off with an interesting post on the legal ramifications of the status of the “Memorandum of Understanding” (MOU) between the US and China on trade matters. Scholars and students of the law of treaties and the WTO will be especially interested in Julian’s post. Alonso Gurmendi contributed a thought-provoking piece...
A few hours ago, in the early hours of 26 February, news started trickling in of an Indian Air Force strike in Pakistani territory. There have been ominous rumblings of some form of retaliation for a suicide attack carried out on 14 February 2019, in which 40 Indian paramilitary soldiers were killed in Kashmir, and for which the Pakistani based terror...
It is not often that the U.S. President and his chief trade representative debate fine points of international law in the Oval Office in front of the world’s press and senior Chinese officials. But President Trump and the U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer did just that last Friday when they publicly debated whether the possible US-China trade deal would be...
Marcos Zunino kicked off the week with a post on the challenges of transitional justice faced by the democratic government of Argentina with respect to the retention, removal, and vetting of judges after the collapse of the military dictatorship in 1983. In particular, Marcos analyzed the relative success of the measures taken by government in this regard in light of...
Carlos Arturo Villagrán Sandoval kicked off the week with an illuminating discussion of the Comisión Internacional contra la Impunidad en Guatemalaor or CICIG affair and the consequences thereof on the new monist approach to international law in the Guatemalan domestic legal system. In response to a new report on State Responsibility for Modern Slavery at the UN, Kristen discussed the duty...
I was delighted to comment on an important new report by Rosana Garciandia and Philippa Webb on State Responsibility for Modern Slavery at the UN on January 31. Contemporary forms of slavery continue to be a major challenge in the 21st century. International law prohibits slavery, human trafficking and forced labour, and states are generally committed to eliminating these human rights abuses....
Two posts this week addressed different legal aspects of the current political crisis in Venezuela. Kevin Jon Heller kicked off the week with a post on the advantages of Venezuela adopting the aggression amendments to the ICC Statute in light of the recent saber rattling by certain states to enforce, through military means if necessary, Juan Guaidó’s claim to the...