[Sergey Sayapin LLB, LLM, Dr. iur. is an Assistant Professor in International and Criminal Law at KIMEP University’s School of Law, Almaty, Kazakhstan, since 2014, and Director of the LLB in International Law Programme.] Introduction On 25 November 2018, Russia attacked and seized three Ukrainian navy vessels, which were on their way from Odessa to Mariupol. Russia´s Federal Security Service...
[Mona Ali Khalil is an internationally recognized public international lawyer with 25 years of UN and other experience dealing with the rule of law and international peace and security efforts including peacekeeping, sanctions, disarmament and counterterrorism.] In the face of a veto by any permanent member of the UN Security Council blocking enforcement action against the mass atrocities in Palestine, Myanmar,...
[Christian Marxsen is head of the Max Planck Research Group “Shades of Illegality in International Peace and Security Law” at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, Germany.] Jutta Brunnée has offered us a very sharp analysis of the current challenges to international law. While I largely subscribe to her argument, I would like to...
[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...
As evidenced in Part I, Latin American states have not been keen to allow expansive interpretations of the rules for use force in foreign soil. Latin America is a region historically subjected to foreign intervention, and as such, the rules it designed, especially in the pre-Charter era, were always very much thought out from a perspective of protecting “the invaded”,...
Ever since its very first articulations, the “unwilling or unable test” has relied heavily in the time-tested legitimacy of the 1837 Caroline Affair, where British forces sunk a vessel manned by Canadian rebels in American territory. Dressing such a visible and well-known case in the cloth of “unwilling or unable” allows its proponents to argue that its underlying principles have...
Two weeks ago, the International Law Association released its long awaited and very interesting report on use of force. It is a very thorough document that is a must-read for anyone interested in jus ad bellum. Some parts of the report have generated some interesting discussions that I think are worth expanding in a post here. Particularly, the main point of...
[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...
[Rita Siemion is International Legal Counsel at Human Rights First.] In his new book, The Trump Administration and International Law, former State Department Legal Advisor and Yale law professor Harold Hongju Koh tackles, among other issues, how to finally end America’s post-9/11 wars. In offering a blueprint for the Trump Administration, Koh hits some important nails right on the head. Most...
[Daphne Eviatar is the Director of Amnesty International USA's Security with Human Rights Program.] Harold Hongju Koh has written an impressive and disturbing account of many of the ways the Trump administration has undermined global institutions and subverted the international rule of law. He also offers some hope for those of us watching with horror as the current administration regularly upends...
[Laurie R. Blank is a Clinical Professor of Law, Director of the Center for International and Comparative Law and Director of the International Humanitarian Law Clinic at Emory University School of Law.] I want to thank Opinio Juris for the invitation to participate in this online symposium and congratulate Dean Harold Hongju Koh on his new book. In January 2018, then-U.S. Secretary...
[Dire Tladi is a Professor of International Law at the University of Pretoria.] Introduction I first met Harold Hongju Koh in 2009 at a retreat on the definition of the crime of aggression for the purposes of the Rome Statute just outside New York. From my first engagement with him, I immediately knew two things about the man. First, our approaches to...