[Jutta Brunnée is Professor of Law and Metcalf Chair in Environmental Law, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto. This essay is based on a keynote presentation given at the annual conference of the Canadian Council on International Law in Ottawa, on November 2, 2018. It draws in part on Jutta Brunnée, “Multilateralism in Crisis,” forthcoming in American Society of International...
Dear Readers: we are delighted to announce that we will be publishing Jutta Brunnée's keynote speech, entitled Challenging International Law: What's New? given at the Canadian Council on International Law's annual meeting in Ottawa on November 2, 2018. The speech will be divided into 3 posts, and comments in response will be offered by Christian Marxsen of the Max Planck Institute,...
[Vivek Divan is an Indian lawyer and longtime queer activist.] I have recoiled from writing about this, but do so given that it may resonate with the constituency that the International Commission of Jurists engages with. Those who know me are well aware that I don’t like to namedrop. Yet, I did at a meeting of the ICJ in New Delhi...
[Kunal Ambasta is an Assistant Professor at the National Law School of India University.] “Can a right to privacy be read into the Indian Constitution and deployed to protect homosexual sexual acts?” This is one of the questions posed right at the start of the AIDS Bhedbhav Virodhi Andolan (ABVA) Report on homosexuality in India published in 1991. In 2018, the...
[Siddharth Narrain is a lawyer and legal researcher based in Delhi.] Earlier this year, a five-judge Constitutional Bench of the Indian Supreme Court, in a path-breaking judgment in Navtej Singh Johar declared the colonial sodomy statute (Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code) unconstitutional, and no longer applicable to consenting sexual acts between adults, effectively decriminalizing homosexuality, and legally recognizing LGBTI...
[Victor Kattan is Senior Research Fellow of the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore where he heads the Transsystemic Law Cluster. He is also an Associate Fellow of NUS Law and an associate (non-resident) member of Temple Garden Chambers in London.] Palestine’s Application Instituting Proceedings against the United States of America (U.S.) at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 28 September has produced much commentary in a short...
[Sam Zarifi is the Secretary General of the International Commission of Jurists.] Prof Harold Hongju Koh in his new book, Trump vs. International Law, has issued an explicit call to arms to American lawyers and bureaucrats to resist Donald Trump’s egregious attempts at dismantling the ‘postwar system of global governance’ and replacing it with ‘a far nastier, more brutish world, less respectful...
In 2004, three friends and legal scholars – Peggy McGuiness, Chris Borgen, and Julian Ku – started Opinio Juris, the first blog dedicated to the informed discussion of international law. In 2006, the blog took on its first two non-founding members, Roger Alford and Kevin Jon Heller. Over the past 14 years new voices came and (to a much lesser...
The start of a new school year is a time for transitions and it is no different for Opinio Juris. Since founding the website fourteen years ago with Peggy and Julian, Opinio Juris has surpassed all of our original hopes with the additions of Roger, Kevin, Duncan, Peter, Ken, Deborah, Kristen and Jens. Each new member brought a unique perspective...
[Kate Vigneswaran is Senior Legal Advisor for Middle East and North Africa for the International Commission of Jurists and Sam Zarifi is the Secretary General of the International Commission of Jurists.] Can the International Criminal Court now exercise jurisdiction over the deportation of Syrians into Jordan? This question was raised by a Syrian lawyer last week at a discussion on the sidelines...
[Michail Vagias is a Senior Lecturer in Law and the Program Manager of ProCuria 2017-2018 at The Hague University of Applied Sciences.] The problem: Discussing Sudan’s immunities in the absence of Sudan On 29 March 2017, Sudanese President Al-Bashir made an official visit to Jordan for the 28th Arab League Summit. Jordan neither arrested nor surrendered him to the International Criminal Court, pursuant to the arrest...
The International Justice and Human Rights Clinic at the Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia (“Allard IJHR Clinic”) is seeking a full-time junior supervising attorney to work with the Clinic Director and law student clinicians from Sept 1, 2018 to July 31, 2019, with possible extension. The Allard IJHR Clinic works on pressing human rights and global...