Collective Reparations as a Partial Remedy for State-Perpetrated Blanket Violations of the Rights of Targeted Child Asylum Seeker Groups

This article argues for the entitlement of discrete refugee groups to collective reparations for targeted state-perpetrated blanket grievous human rights violations against their group whether by the home, transit or prospective asylum state. A review of selected international law and international principles of justice are discussed as a grounding for the applicability of collective reparations in such a refugee context. The example is discussed of children from Central America who accompanied their parent or parents to the US-Mexican border in search of refugee asylum most of whom, but not all, crossed the US border irregularly and then were separated from their parents as a result of President Trump’s so-called ‘zero-tolerance’ migration policy and held in US custody. Over 500 of these children are still, at the time of writing, separated from their parents and for a significant number of those, their parents have been deported without them.

Demilitarizing Palestine

In principle, at least, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made his country’s acceptance of Palestinian statehood contingent upon prior Palestinian “demilitarization.” This expressed contingency, however, is potentially contrary to pertinent international law, especially those norms regarding any sovereign state’s peremptory rights to self-defense. It follows, as this article will clarify, that potentially a new Palestinian state could permissibly abrogate any pre-independence commitments it had once made to remain demilitarized, and that reciprocally Israel ought never base its related security expectations upon any such mutable diplomatic promises. Ultimately most important, as the article concludes, is that national leaders all over the world finally begin to take seriously the organic “oneness” of our world legal order, and accordingly look toward identifying some promisingly coherent replacements for our time-dishonored Realpolitik or “Westphalian” world system.

Legal Maxims: Summaries and Extracts from Selected Case Law

1. SITUATION IN CÔTE D’IVOIRE The Prosecutor v. Laurent Gbagbo And Charles Blé Goudé, Case No. ICC-02/11-01/15, Trial Chamber I, Judgment, 19 July 2017 2. SITUATION IN DARFUR The Prosecutor v. Omar Hassan Ahmad Al-Bashir, Case No. ICC-02/05-01/09, Pre-Trial Chamber II, Decision, 6 July 2017...

Legal Maxims: Summaries and Extracts from Selected Case Law

Dispute Concerning Delimitation of the Maritime Boundaries Between Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire in the Atlantic Ocean (Ghana/Côte d’Ivoire), Judgment, 23 September 2017 Contents ** I. PROCEDURAL AND FACTUAL BACKGROUND II. JURISDICTION OF SPECIAL CHAMBER AND APPLICABLE LAW III. THE EXISTENCE OF A TACIT AGREEMENT A....

The ICC Appeals Chamber’s Judgment in The Prosecutor v. Bemba et al.— A Reminder of the Often Overlooked Value of International Jurisprudence Concerning Offences Against the Administration of Justice

On March 8, 2018, the ICC Appeals Chamber issued its first judgment dealing with offences against the administration of justice under Article 70 of its Statute. Unsurprisingly, the Appeals Chamber made a number of important findings on the elements of various offences falling into this category, but also made a number of interesting, controversial and far-reaching findings concerning the ICC’s procedural framework, and in particular the collection and admission of evidence at trial. In doing so, the Appeals Chamber also touched on fundamental legal issues, such as the application of international human rights and its power to consider domestic law. The commentary will consider the most interesting and significant findings made by the Appeals Chamber, and will seek to show that the lack of attention traditionally given to judgments dealing with offences other than the “core” crimes is misguided, given the wealth of important and generally applicable findings they can contain.

The Continuity of Jurisprudential Cross-Fertilization in the Case-Law of International Tribunals in their Common Mission of Realization of Justice

The continuity of jurisprudential cross-fertilization by some contemporary international tribunals evidences that, despite their distinct jurisdictions, their work is essentially complementary, in their common mission of imparting justice, in distinct domains of international law. Jurisprudential cross-fertilization fosters cohesion and the unity of law, in the endeavours of contemporary international tribunals to contribute to the progressive development of international law.

Under Construction

Although compelled by both political and trade necessities, negotiations for the Euro-Mediterranean Free Trade Area (EMFTA) have been problematic and lengthy. This free trade area is to encompass the countries around the Mediterranean, including non-EU member countries, and it was foreseen in the 1995 Barcelona Declaration as one of the key elements of the Euro Mediterranean Partnership (EMP). After over fifteen years of negotiations and the creation of closer commercial relations between EU Member States and the states of the southern side of the Mediterranean through the conclusion of several Euro-Mediterranean Association Agreements (AAs) and Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreements (DCFTAs) between 1998 and 2012‏, there is a lot at stake for the EU and the MPCs in the results of these deliberations. This work aims to examine these issues, with particular reference to the most recent progress, if any, made in the decade long negotiation process of EMFTA, and seeks to identify the best way forward.

Statehood and Recognition in International Law: A Post-Colonial Invention

This article seeks to lay bare some of the main conceptual, theoretical, and normative constructions that have informed the rise of the doctrine of statehood into one of the fundamental doctrines of international law and allowed it to continue to prove most influential in contemporary international legal discourses. In doing so, this article will make the point that the doctrine of statehood has been shaped by both modern and post-colonial heritages. It will be shown that the main components of the doctrine of statehood are very modern in that they are directly inherited from liberal legal thought. It will simultaneously be demonstrated that it is only in the second half of the twentieth century, and more precisely in the wake of the start of the decolonisation process, that all these modern components were assembled and organised in order to compose what is known today as the doctrine of statehood.

“External Stakeholder Benevolence”

The debate about concerns surrounding the efficiency and legitimacy of international (criminal) courts has been joined by a new voice, judicial declarations on how proceedings can be expedited and the legitimacy deficit resolved, in particular the Paris Declaration of 2017 and the Oslo Recommendations of 2018, which deal with “enhancing their institutions’ legitimacy in the eyes of diverse stakeholders.” This article queries in detail whether either document manages to do that, as well as the emerging lens of “external stakeholder benevolence.” It argues that a traditional stakeholder theory approach must break down when the decision about the interest (fair trial) against which other stakeholders’ interests are to be balanced has been assigned exclusively to one stakeholder (judges), barring other stakeholders from encroaching on that stakeholder’s position (judicial independence). The judicial perspective on stakeholder-theory-based attempts at defining the parameters of the judicial core environment will thus always be one of intrusion.

The Citizen and the State: A Paradoxical Relation

This article argues that modern states and modern societies were formed through the construction of citizenship as a pattern of social attachment, membership and legal norm formation. Citizenship originally developed as a principle that removed feudal legal orders from society, and it underpinned the processes of territorial unification, institution building, centralized integration and democratic participation that characterize modern nation states and national societies. However, the article argues that, both at the functional level and at the normative level, the trajectories contained in national citizenship were not fully realized within national societies, defined by national legal orders. It was only as a system of global legal norms emerged outside national societies, shaping inner-societal patterns of and institutional construction and norm formation, that the basic potentials of national citizenship were fully realized.