Academic

The Palmer Report on the Mavi Marmara Incident and the Legality of Israel’s Blockade of the Gaza StripOverall, the Palmer Report is of high quality and merits close attention. I would strongly urge those interested to read, at the least, the very concise summary of its findings at pages 1-6, …

How to Qualify the Armed Conflict in Libya?A colleague and I are currently working on an article on the qualification or classification of armed conflicts in modern IHL. The ongoing developments in Libya bring out a specific difficulty in the process of qualification which we see as problems of state …

Al-Skeini and Al-Jedda in StrasbourgI’ve posted on SSRN an article which will be published in the EJIL next year on Al-Skeini and Al-Jedda before the European Court of Human Rights. The pre-print draft will be available on SSRN until the article comes out in the Journal. The abstract is below, …

President Obama Creates US Atrocities Prevention BoardEarlier this month, US President Barrack Obama directed the National Security Advisor to create an Atrocities Prevention Board which will be tasked with co-ordinating the US government’s policies on the prevention of mass atrocities and genocide. In addition, the President also launced a US interagency …

Darryl Robinson on Self-Referrals: Is the International Criminal Court Really a Court of Last Resort?The Journal of International Criminal Justice has recently published a very interesting article by Darryl Robinson titled “The Controversy over Territorial State Referrals and Reflections on ICL Discourse“. In the article, Darryl takes issue with those who …

The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea Gets BusierLast summer, I wrote a piece on this blog noting that the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), which had been underutilised for some years, was finally getting some substative cases to decide. Although ITLOS had decided a number of cases …

Can Libya Sue the UK on Recognition of the National Transitional Council?Earlier this week, the UK Foreign Secretary, William Hague announced that the UK now recognises the Libyan National Transitional Council (the rebels fighting Colonel Gaddafi’s forces) as the sole governmental authority in Libya. This was an implementation of the decision …

ICJ Permits Greece to Intervene in Germany v. Italy Immunity caseOn the 4th of July, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) decided that Greece can intervene in the Jurisdictional Immunities of the State case (Germany v. Italy). The case concerns a claim by Germany that Italian courts have failed to respect …

Recent Developments with Regard to ICJ Provisional MeasuresOn Monday of this week, the International Court of Justice indicated provisional measures in the case between Cambodia and Thailand regarding the Temple of Preah Vihear. The case was filed earlier this year after confrontations between the armed forces of both States in the …

A New Deal to Help Save the EuroThe rescue package for Portugal and the recent electoral success of the populist True Finns party shows that the euro crisis is not over. Even if the current support mechanisms stabilise the markets, they will not be sufficient in the long term: growing …

Is IMF Managing Director (DSK) Entitled to Immunity from Prosecution?I intended to write a post explaining why International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK), does not have immunity under the applicable treaties dealing with the immunity of the IMF and its employees. However, Chimene Keitner has beaten me to …

Waiting for Godot: An Analysis of the ICJ Kosovo Advisory OpinionDov Jacobs and Yannick Radi are both postdoctoral researchers at the Amsterdam Center of International Law, University of AmsterdamNearly two years after the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) submitted a request to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in relation …