Will the Supreme Court start citing the ICJ?

Yes, if we are to believe David Andrews, former legal advisor to the US state department and member of the US national group at the Permanent Court of Arbitration. If you want to see more on this, check out this weeks Clip of the Week, which is taken from an ASIL reception honoring Joan E. [...]

Book Review: Solon Solomon, The Justiciability of International Disputes – The Advisory Opinion of Israel’s Security Fence as a Case Study

Solon Solomon, The Justiciability of International Disputes – The Advisory Opinion of Israel’s Security Fence as a Case Study (Jerusalem: Wolf Legal Publishers, 2009) ISBN: 978-90-5850-437-1 By Dr. Fozia Nazir Lone Assistant Professor, City University of Hong Kong, fnlone@cityu.edu.hk Solon Solomon, in this book presents a comprehensive legal description on the justiciability of international disputes. [...]

Joan Donoghue to replace Judge Buergenthal at the ICJ

Our friends over at Opinio Juris report that Joan Donoghue, Principle Deputy Legal Advisor of the State Department, has been nominated by the US national group of the PCA to replace Judge Buergenthal on the ICJ. If this report is true, and Opinio Juris refers to “reliable sources”, the nomination would be somewhat of a [...]

It’s official: Judge Thomas Buergenthal will resign from the ICJ

We have heard it before but today the ICJ confirmed that Judge Buergenthal will resign from the ICJ. Judge Buergenthal has been a member of the ICJ since March 2000 and was re-elected to serve a nine-year term beginning in February 2006. He was at the time of his election the first judge of US [...]

ICC’s Review Conference: Will Two Weeks Be Enough?

Dominik’s earlier post calls attention to a very important event, the ICC’s Review Conference which starts today in Kampala, Uganda. The agenda for the conference includes a stocktaking exercise, including discussion of the impact of the Rome Statute system on victims and affected communities; and, issues of peace and justice, including managing the challenges of integrating [...]

Is there a need to establish new international courts?

New initiatives have been aired recently in high political circles about creating two new courts to deal respectively with piracy off the Horn of Africa (stemming from Somalia), which continues to make headlines, and nuclear security issues. Not long ago, there was a Dutch proposal that the UN should support the establishment of a tribunal [...]

The Case for an International Piracy Court

We have at several occasions here on International Law Observer raised the question of whether or not an international (ad hoc) court (could/) should be established to try pirates (see for example here, here, here and here). On Tuesday (27. April) the UNSC unanimously adopted a resolution in which a next and important step in this [...]

Conference on jurisdictional objections in international investment disputes

The British Institute of International and Comparative Law is organising the fourteenth Investment Treaty Forum conference which will take place on Friday 7 May 2010 in London.  The aim of the conference is to review and analyse important developments in recent cases on jurisdiction by international investment tribunals. A large number of prominent speakers from [...]

Zyberi on Self-Determination through the Lens of the ICJ

Our own Gentian Zyberi’s recent paper, ‘Self-Determination through the Lens of the International Court of Justice’, has now been published in the Netherlands International Law Review (2009) No. 56 pp. 429-453. Full abstract: This article focuses on the role and contribution of the International Court of Justice to developing and interpreting the right of peoples [...]

New UK Supreme Court

And so it finally happened. After a lengthy period of preparation, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom starts proceedings today. The new UK Supreme Court, which has come about as a result of the 2005 Constitutional Reform Act, will hear its first cases this week in newly refurbished rooms in the former Middlesex Guildhall, [...]

New issue of the Equality of Arms Review

Below you will find a short notice regarding the new issue of the International Bar Association’s EQ: Equality of Arms Review. Should the ICC investigate the situation in Gaza? Is the ICC Appeals Chamber properly constituted? What is the future for the ICC? These and many other questions are addressed in the latest issue of the [...]

PCA to render its Award in the ‘Abyei Arbitration case’

Today at 10 o’clock the Permanent Court of Arbitration will render its decision in the ‘Abyei Arbitration case‘. The case concerns a dispute between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army. The issue to be decided are the boundaries of the oil-rich Abyei region in southern Sudan, which has threatened to disrupt [...]

Chile has ratified the Rome Statute

Yesterday the government of Chile deposited its instrument of ratification to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The Statute will enter into force for Chile on 1 September 2009, bringing the total number of States Parties to the Rome Statute to 109. The government of Chile had proposed constitutional reforms as a prerequisite to [...]

Another voice supporting a ‘pirate court’

I just today stumbled across this month-old article reporting on the Dutch foreign minister’s demand for a UN backed tribunal for the trial of pirates in the East African countries. We have reported earlier on the apparent desire among certain (European) States to establish such an international court (inter alia to avoid any pirates being [...]

Perpetual Conflict between Human Rights and Politics in the Development of International Criminal Justice

The existence and development of humankind on this planet has never been an egalitarian process. This partly explains the birth and development of law and legal institutions to regulate the conduct and behaviour of mankind in its intercourse with one another. Admittedly the existence of law and legal institutions does not attest to the quality [...]

The ICTY Trial Chamber finds that Karadžić can read and understand English

The ICTY Trial Chamber delivered on 26 March Decision on Prosecution Motion Seeking Determination that the Accused understands English for the Purposes of the Statute and the Rules of Procedure and Evidence in Prosecutor v Radovan Karadžić. This decision inter alia concerns whether statements made on Opinio Juris by one of Karadžić’s legal advisers can serve as [...]

Antonio Cassese elected president of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon

According to a press release of the UN, Antonio Cassese, the former (and first) president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has been elected president of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL). Pursuant to Art. 8(2) of the Statute of the STL (annexed to UN Security Council resolution 1757) this makes judge [...]

Systematic failure to enforce the law against Israeli occupation forces in the Palestinian territories

Ben-Naftali and Zamir have recently published an article in the Journal of International Criminal Justice titled ‘Whose ‘conduct unbecoming’? The shooting of a Handcuffed, Blindfolded Palestinian Demonstrator’. The work considers the case of HCJ 7195/08 Abu Rhama et al. v Military Advocate General – the petition in the case is available in English. The case [...]

Sudanese President’s Indictment: Justice or Neo-Colonialism?

On the 4th of March 2009, after seven months of deliberation, the International Criminal Court charged President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan with war crimes and crimes against humanity in the violence that has engulfed the Darfur region in recent years. But he escaped the charge on genocide at least for now, as the ICC [...]

ICC asks the Prosecutor to amend the charges against Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo

Last week much attention at the ICC has been devoted to the confirmation of arrest warrant against Omar al-Bashir, while less attention has been paid to the important decision of the Pre-trial Chamber III to adjourn the confirmation of charges hearing in the case of The Prosecutor v. Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo and to ask the [...]

ITLOS Election

A Special Meeting of States Parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea was convened on Friday 6 March in order to elect a judge to fill the vacancy created by the sad death of Judge Choon-Ho Park in November last year. In accordance with the practice of the States Parties, [...]

Prosecutor v Omar al Bashir

As reported, the Pretrial Chamber of International Criminal Court has earlier today confirmed an arrest warrant for Omar al Bashir, the incumbent president of Sudan, for crimes against humanity and war crimes but not for crime of genocide against the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethinc groups. Albeit a number of practitioners and experts of international [...]

ICC Issue Arrest Warrant for Bashir

The Pre-Trial Chamber of the ICC today partly approved the request for an arrest order for President Al Bashir of Sudan. The warrant, requested by the Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, relate to charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes but not genocide as requested by the prosecutor. In a press conference held today, the Registrar [...]

Arctic ownership and the US approach to the law of the sea

Could the question of “Arctic ownership” push the US to sign the United Nations Law of the Sea Convention? As we have reported earlier, and as frequently reported in the media (see e.g. this latest article at tampabay.com), the support for the ratification of UNCLOS is growing by the day. Not only are prominent members [...]