In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Use of Force

23 Aug

[Demetra Loizou is a Lecturer in International Law and Legal Skills at the University of Central Lancashire, Cyprus.]  Article 8 of the Rome Statute, which sets out the war crimes within the ICC’s jurisdiction, is inextricably linked to the general IHL regime. Paragraph 2(a) refers to the grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions (international armed conflicts). Paragraph 2(c) is concerned with the serious violations of Common Article 3 (CA3)...

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22 Aug

[Michael W.R. Adams is a J.S.D. candidate at Columbia Law School.] Increasingly, states across Europe and in the Commonwealth of Nations have adopted laws permitting the ‘denationalization’, or stripping of citizenship, from so-called ‘foreign fighters’ in the interests of national security. Denationalization has antecedents going back to the states of the ancient world. States have historically employed denationalization as a response to...

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21 Aug

[Camila Teran is a lawyer with a LLB in Law and a LLM in International Criminal Law, both from the University of Sussex.] The ICC’s current crisis bears witness to the contentious relationship between the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC (OTP) and States. The OTP’s progress is further frustrated by the small window triggering the admissibility phase that would allow the Prosecutor to formally investigate Colombia....

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21 Aug

I have uploaded a new article on the crime of aggression to SSRN. Here is the abstract: Immediately after the historic adoption of the aggression amendments on 14 December 2017, a number of participants in the negotiations expressed their belief that activating the crime of aggression would help deter states from engaging in the illegal use of force. Unfortunately, the version...

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12 Aug

[Alexander Gilder is a PhD Researcher at The City Law School, City, University of London. From September he will be a Lecturer in Law at Royal Holloway, University of London.] In recent years UN peace operations have begun to explicitly seek so-called ‘stabilization’. In 2015 the Report of the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO) suggested the Security Council give clarification to how the UN interprets ‘stabilization’....

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09 Aug

[Victor Kattan is a 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. This is the second part of a two-part post.] Recognition of Palestine’s Statehood Since 1988, 138 states (72 per cent of UN members) have recognised a Palestinian state in the territories occupied by Israel on 4 June 1967. The...

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09 Aug

[Victor Kattan is a 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. This is the first part of a two-part post.]  The post in Opinio Juris submitted by Steven Kay QC and Joshua Kern of 9 Bedford Row based on their Article 15 Communication to the Prosecutor...

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07 Aug

Last Monday, Prof. Stephen Walt published a controversial article on his Foreign Policy blog. The title (which he did not choose and has since been changed) was regrettable: “Who Will Invade Brazil to Save the Amazon?” Written as part of the fallout from Brazil’s new (and terrible) deforestation policy, the post asks what exactly should the international community do to prevent states like Brazil from causing...

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07 Aug

[Sofia Poulopoulou is a PhD candidate at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies at Leiden University and staff member of the Kalshoven-Gieskes Forum on IHL.] This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Second Protocol to the Hague Convention of 1954 for the protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflict. The Second Protocol was adopted in 1999 in order to address the...

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22 Jul

Ernesto J. Sanchez is an attorney in Miami, Florida who concentrates his practice on appellate and international dispute resolution matters. He is also the author of The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act Deskbook, published by the American Bar Association. As tensions between Iran and the United States continue, Opinio Juris readers will most likely consult the numerous superb legal commentaries on whether the United...

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05 Jul

[Craig Martin is a Professor of Law and Co-Director of the International and Comparative Law Center, at Washburn University School of Law. He is a frequent visiting lecturer at Osaka University, Graduate School of Law and Politics.] In the wake of the recent attacks on shipping in the Persian Gulf, there has been considerable discussion about Europe’s difficult position amidst the escalating tension between the United States...

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