Another week has gone by at Opinio Juris with much to say about current events in international law and international relations. In fact, this week, we hosted an online symposium on the recent book by Jeffrey Dunoff and Mark Pollock, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on International Law and International Relations. In other coverage this week, Julian argued on how the UN Charter does not...
Recent commentary on Bashir’s request for a US visa to attend the 68th General Assembly has focused on US obligations to grant Bashir a visa under Section 11 of the UN – US Headquarters Agreement. See Julian's post here. Pursuant to this agreement, there is little doubt that the US must permit his transit to the UN despite the fact that...
One possible silver lining in Russia and China's invocation of the UN Charter to block U.S. action in Syria is that both nations have bound themselves (at least in part) to the same norm. But at least with respect to China, it is probably not bothered by the UN Charter's limitations on the use of force because any of the...
[Ruti Teitel is Ernst C. Stiefel Professor of Comparative Law at New York Law School and a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics. She is the author of Humanity’s Law (OUP 2012).] Dunoff and Pollack conclude that interdisciplinary engagement between international law and international relations scholars has contributed to the understanding of international law in a number of areas. They mention the rise...
Saif al-Islam Gaddafi will join 37 former regime members in a pre-trial session in Tripoli over charges of murder and crimes allegedly committed during 2011 civil war. Despite Russia's claims that the UN report on chemical weapons in Syria is biased, the UN claims the evidence that rockets were used containing sarin gas is indisputable. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has pledged to...
An ICC chamber, at the request of the ICC Prosecutor, has issued a decision "remind[ing]" U.S. authorities of the two Arrest Warrants issued by the ICC, and "invit[ing]" U.S. authorities to apprehend Bashir and turn him over to the ICC. This is not exactly surprising. Still, it is worth noting that the ICC chamber reviews the legal landscape and it concludes (rightly...
Supporters of Bangladesh's largest Islamic party have clashed with police amid a nationwide strike called to protest against the death sentence awarded to one of its senior leaders for war crimes. A nun working with survivors of displacement and abuse by the Lord’s Resistance Army in a remote corner of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been awarded the world’s...
UN investigators found "clear and convincing evidence'' that chemical weapons were used on a relatively large scale in an attack last month in Syria that killed hundreds of people though the report did not say who launched the attack in rebel-held Damascus suburbs. Kenya is canvassing support for a possible walk-out by African states from the ICC, whose prosecution of elected Kenyan leaders has revived accusations on the...
UN chemical weapons inspectors have handed their report into an alleged gas attack in Syria to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Secretary Ban stated in a UN meeting that an expert team's report will likely confirm the use of chemical weapons in the August 21 attack on Damascus. At PhD Studies in Human Rights, a post discusses Secretary Ban's comments and the...
In From Apology to Utopia, Martti Koskenniemi mapped how international legal rhetoric can be used to “apologize” for power—to provide a fig leaf over the rude exposure of realpolitik—and how it can be utopian—making rules for a world that does not actually exist. This week we have had two examples of international law and high politics: President Obama’s speech on Tuesday and Vladimir Putin’s...
On September 30, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, sitting en banc, will hear oral argument in the case of Guantanamo detainee and alleged al Qaeda propagandist, Ali Hamza Ahmad Suliman al Bahlul. Earlier this year, a D.C. Circuit panel invalidated al Bahlul’s conviction by a military commission for conspiracy and related charges because those offenses did not violate the international law of war when committed. The ruling in Al Bahlul followed logically from the D.C. Circuit’s previous ruling in Hamdan v. United States (Hamdan II), reversing the defendant’s conviction and holding that jurisdiction under the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (2006 MCA) is limited to violations of international law for conduct that pre-dates the statute.
Al Bahlul presents the important question of whether the U.S. may try in a military commission offenses such as conspiracy and material support for terrorism (MST) that do not violate international law. The U.S. government’s argument is predicated on the assumption that the jurisdiction of military commissions extends also to violations of a separate (domestic) U.S. common law of war. The principal focus in Al Bahlul will be on statutory and constitutional issues—more specifically, whether the 2006 MCA authorizes the prosecution of pre-2006 conduct that does not violate international law and, if so, whether the statute violates the Ex Post Facto Clause, the Define and Punish Clause, and/or the civilian criminal jury trial guarantee under Article III and the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.It is important, however, to consider some other implications of the U.S. government’s argument for commission jurisdiction based on a domestic common law of war.
