Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

[Sareta Ashraph is an international criminal law barrister, specializing in international criminal, humanitarian law and human rights law – with a particular focus on the gendered commission and impact of genocide. This is the latest post in the co-hosted symposium with Armed Groups and International Law on Organizing Rebellion .] In the summer of 2014, the armed group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), razed a path of destruction through northern Iraq’s Nineveh plains, advancing southwards to within 60 kilometres of Baghdad. Their crimes – which included...

[Linda E. Carter is a Distinguished Professor of Law Emerita at University of the Pacific, McGeorge School of Law. This essay was initially prepared at the request of FIU Law Review for its micro-symposium on The Legal Legacy of the Special Court for Sierra Leone by Charles C. Jalloh (Cambridge, 2020). An edited and footnoted version is forthcoming in Volume 15.1 of the law review in spring 2021.] Professor Jalloh’s excellent book on the legal legacy of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) gives us a comprehensive view of...

My friend Chiara Redaelli has produced an impressive volume, thoroughly analysing the topic of intervention in civil wars. As others in this symposium have already pointed out, it is usually difficult to offer comments on what one mostly agrees with. In this post, therefore, apart from congratulating Chiara for a fantastic book, I wanted to add to the conversation by briefly telling the story of intervention in civil wars she explores, though Latin American eyes. Latin America is not usually a region one thinks about when dealing with issues of...

[Heike Krieger is Professor of Public Law and International Law at Freie Universitaet Berlin and Co-Chair of the Berlin Potsdam Research Group on The International Rule of Law – Rise or Decline? This is the fifth post in the Defining the Rule of Law Symposium, based on this article (free access for six months). The first is here, the second, here, the third here, the fourth here and the fifth here. ] The awareness of a crisis of international law is widespread. The multiplicity of challenges which the international order...

...(POCA, Part 5, Ch. 1, sections 241(2A) and 241A). Notably, the definition of ‘gross human rights abuses or violations’ is narrowly defined. It applies exclusively to cases involving torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment inflicted on whistleblowers or human rights activists by public officials or with their instigation, consent, or acquiescence (Criminal Finances Act, s13(3)).  This limited scope reflects the provision’s origin as a response to the death of Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, and hence it is commonly referred to as the ‘Magnitsky Clause’. The provision appears to be...

[Dr. John Heieck is a criminal defense lawyer in the US and an independent researcher of genocide and human rights studies.] Before I begin, I would like to thank Opinio Juris and the International Commission of Jurists for hosting this online symposium on my new book A Duty to Prevent Genocide: Due Diligence Obligations among the P5. I would also like to thank the preeminent scholars who agreed to not only read my book but also provide their respective analyses of what is an admittedly controversial position on the possible...

can also undertake to locate the remains of victims’ so that they will be returned to their relatives. Finally, in their dialogue with UN treaty bodies, States have regularly referred to trainings provided by the ICRC (see for example responses by Niger and Mexico), as well as of the role of the Red Cross in setting up missing persons databases (see for example responses by Bosnia and Hercegovina and Mexico). Also, relevant here is the fact that several states have reported that protocols and procedures adopted by them have been...

[This post is part of our New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace Symposium .] Technology advances through synergy. Breakthroughs in one area of technology spurs developments in others. Advances in materials science led to the miniaturization of electronic components. Miniaturization led to a revolution in the architecture of computers. From ENIAC to iPhones. The computer revolution led to a revolution in, well, just about every other area of technology. Advances in electronics, robotics, and computerization each affects space tech. And so on, across a complex web of...

[Martin Scheinin is a Professor of International Law and Human Rights at European University Institute and a former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-terrorism.] Professor Monica Hakimi’s article ’Making sense of customary international law’ is both rewarding and thought-provoking. It fully merits this Symposium. She makes a convincing case that most if not all mainstream doctrinal writing on the topic has serious flaws. She rightly criticizes what she calls the “rulebook conception” of customary international law and convincingly demonstrates that in everyday practice it does not really work like...

Starting this coming Tuesday, Opinio Juris is pleased to host a joint symposium with the Yale Law Journal on a new article by Oona Hathaway and Scott Shapiro, Outcasting: Enforcement in Domestic and International Law. Here’s the abstract: This Article offers a new way to understand the enforcement of domestic and international law that we call “outcasting.” Unlike the distinctive method that modern states use to enforce their law, outcasting is nonviolent: it does not rely on bureaucratic organizations, such as police or militia, that employ physical force to maintain...

[Lisa Reinsberg is the founding executive director of the International Justice Resource Center, a PhD candidate with the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies at Leiden University, and a Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law] Human rights oversight bodies have rejected an unknown number of complaints because individual complainants used language that was insulting or offensive to the human rights body that received them, or to the State against which they were presented. These individuals were pursuing accountability for alleged violations of their rights – by...

[Sonja B. Starr is an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School.] This post is part of the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics Vol. 45, No. 1 symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. In Policing International Prosecutors, Jenia Iontcheva Turner offers a rich account of the competing interests at stake in cases involving international prosecutors’ misconduct, and advances a strong case that remedial doctrines should squarely acknowledge those competing interests. Because international law has often struggled...