Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response
14 Jul Reaction to “Can Coastal States Interrupt Foreign Passage in Their Territorial Seas in Response to Non-Compliance with Human Rights Obligations? A Response to the ASCOMARE Legal Opinion”
...on Opinio Juris on 1 May 2025—entitled “ Can Coastal States Interrupt Foreign Passage in Their Territorial Seas in Response to Non-Compliance with Human Rights Obligations? A Response to the ASCOMARE Legal Opinion ” (‘the Response’)—warrant clarification. In particular, several interpretations drawn from the Opinion appear to oversimplify complex legal arguments and to assess specific points in isolation from the broader legal and factual context that justified the issuance of the Opinion. This appears already from the response’s introductory remarks, which question the Opinion’s conclusion that the passage of vessels...
07 Mar Seychelles, the United States, and Transitional Justice: Big Lessons from Little Countries
states with experience deploying transitional justice processes to address the repressive policies and practices of the past. The United States is not a complete stranger to transitional justice, although these mechanisms have been more often employed at the local level or to address discrete incidents and injustices. A quick look at history points to the various circumstances in which transitional justice mechanisms have already been employed in the U.S.: the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission sought to address the separation of Native children from their families as...08 Jun Guest Post: International Criminal Justice and Reconciliation: Beyond the Retributive vs. Restorative Divide (Part 1 of 2)
approaches are per se better suited to achieve reconciliation than retributive mechanisms. I will then explore certain means to improve the connection between international criminal justice and reconciliation. 1. Links between Reconciliation and Retributive Justice Retributive justice mechanisms, such as international criminal courts and tribunals, are often criticized for their limitations, namely their emphasis on perpetrators, their individualization of guilt and focus on the past, and their risks. This includes detachment from local context and emphasis on universal justice models and standards. Restorative mechanisms of justice, including victim-centred and less...02 Aug Why the Failure to Provide Saif with Due Process Is Relevant to Libya’s Admissibility Challenge
...the way justice is used in Arts. 53 and 55) as context, object and purpose that informs the ordinary meaning to be accorded to "justice" in 17(2)(c). If it goes that route, then justice must mean a kind of justice that will guarantee the rights of the accused and foster lasting respect for international justice. In other words, it could use it to permit the ICC to proceed with the Saif Gaddafi case if it finds that the Libyan prosecution is a kangaroo court that does not comply with minimum...
25 Aug Symposium on The Sentimental Life of International Law: Reviewing the Reviews
blowing up the pipeline, someone reading Thomas Bernhard, someone madly theorizing. The book inhabits a few of these personae (or the personae inhabit the book) and both Isobel and Zina get to the nub of it when they say that the book is about the “life lived” or the lived lives of international lawyers. [The other nub is there in Simon Stern’s disentangling of my foray into 18th century sentimental literature where he describes my book as “an incitement to think more seriously about the formal aspects of international law’s...
11 Aug Doing Justice to History Symposium: On Plurality and Ideology
to judge a book by its cover, I 100% pre-emptively decide I like a book if it has (what I consider) a good title and Sander’s book has a very good title. It links justice and history in a way that makes the book’s subject clear, but which also makes it clear that justice and history are co-constitutive. Second, the book is ambitious. Sander works with both primary and secondary materials. He analyses pre-trial and trial documents, and judgments from six different ICCTs (IMT, IMTFE, ICTY, ICTR, SCSL and the...
10 Oct Rethinking International Law After Gaza Symposium: Containing Liberation – The Transitional Justice Industrial Complex in Palestine
...practitioner interest in TJ, I have remained sceptical. In previous articles, and a recent book, I argued that if it truly wishes to address justice issues that are at the heart of the ‘conflict’ being waged on Palestine, TJ work must speak without obfuscation. Its aim must be to spotlight zionism’s ongoing western sponsored settler colonial aim, a process that has reached its brutal genocidal zenith, rather than call for limited ‘justice’ interventions that are devoid of context. In retaining some hope, and avoiding throwing the baby out with the...
27 May Futureproofing Human Rights Symposium: Learning from the Nasa Indigenous Justice System to Rethink Accountability
during fieldwork conducted in Colombia in August 2023. Eight research participants were interviewed, including Nasa experts in Indigenous justice and members of the ordinary justice system. Nasa Indigenous Justice Unlike other examples of TGJMs around the world (see, for example, South Africa in Penal Reform International 2001: 21-37), the Indigenous jurisdiction in Colombia stands out as an institutionally recognised, permanent, and autonomous system. A core component of the pluralistic arrangements of the 1991 Constitution, systems of Indigenous justice offer an alternative framework for accountability for serious human rights violations in...
17 Dec Justice as Message Symposium: A Powerhouse Platform for Expressivism in International Criminal Law
itself as the processes of norm formation, symbolization and attributed meaning – all of which require an interdisciplinary perspective, helpfully adopted by Justice as Message. My further query is whether the theory of justice seen through the lens of symbolic expression can explain even more fundamental categories that operate within the field of international criminal justice. Is it possible to identify a pattern informing norm creation and procedural expression in international criminal justice that captures our imagination? How can one approach the underlying assumptions informing the evolution of international justice?...
20 Aug States of Justice Symposium: International Justice as Political Strategy
[Dr Sithembile Mbete is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political Science, University of Pretoria.] In his book States of Justice: The Politics of the International Criminal Court, Oumar Ba masterfully engages the politics of international justice by examining how weaker states have used the International Criminal Court (ICC) to advance their security and political interests in a manner that belies the ‘justice cascade’ argument made in the international law and international relations literature. In an international system in which states remain the main actors, pursuing justice for atrocity...