International criminal tribunals face an enormous task when they seek to analyse the thousands of pages of evidence that are presented in the course of their trials... Abstract International criminal tribunals face an enormous task when they seek to analyse the thousands of pages of evidence that are presented in the course of their trials, and to draw conclusions on the guilt or innocence of accused persons based on that evidence. Yet, whilst rules of admissibility have been subjected to a...

The provision of life-saving assistance to people affected by armed conflict lies at the heart of humanitarian actors’ operations... and the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 lay down rules regulating humanitarian relief operations. Despite this, until recently, this area of international humanitarian law has received limited attention, possibly because challenges in implementing relief operations tend to be operational rather than legal in nature. In 2013, in...

This paper examines issues related to the question of 'planetary defence', in the sense of responding to an asteroid - or any other type of Near-Earth Object (NEO) - were such a body to be detected as being on a collision-course with the Earth and predict The first part of the paper will be 'non-legal' in nature. It aims to set the context by outlining: 1) what risks NEOs actually pose, 2) the unprecedented global political and institutional shifts towards NEO preparedness that have occurred...

Corruption has become a hot topic in Public International Law in recent years. In particular, its prevention has been the subject of numerous treaties and soft law instruments, and it has been wielded as a defence to both investment treaty claims and commercial contract claims (which in turn raises questions of private international law). Yet the source and theoretical underpinnings of a supposed international norm prohibiting corruption remains opaque. Tribunals and commentators make...

From the early 17th to the mid-20th century (the Grotian Era), the oceans were regarded as a minimally regulated ‘free’ space. Abstract: The norms/laws that developed in that time were essentially restricted to those considered necessary to protect the notion of Mare Liberum and the free use of the oceans. Since the Second World War, however, the various dimensions of the ocean environment have been experiencing significant - even profound - change. As a consequence, we are certainly...

The UN Conference on Sustainable Development - or Rio+20 - took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on 20-22 June 2012 States decided to launch a process to develop a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which built upon the Millennium Development Goals and was designed to converge with the post 2015 development agenda. By 2015, these SDGs had been adopted in the United Nations. In the United Nations General Assembly Resolution Transforming our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable...

Dr Ziv Bohrer, assistant professor at Bar-Ilan University Faculty of Law, gives a talk for the Public International Law Discussion Group. Please note, the recording for this podcast ended before the end, we apologise for the inconvenience. What international law corpus applies to border-crossing fights between non-State and State forces (transnational conflicts): peacetime-general international law, the Law of International Armed Conflict, the Law of Non-International Armed Conflict, or a...

David Freestone gives a talk for the public international law seminar series. Please note, the recording of this podcast ended before the end. We apologise for the inconvenience. As the oceans warm and ice melts, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) now predicts a global average sea-level rise of up to one metre by 2100. AR5 also emphasizes that sea-level rise will have “a strong regional pattern, with some places experiencing significant...

Recent years have seen numerous attempts to seize State assets held outside a State's national territory to satisfy debts owed by the State to private persons. Assets targeted have included military and cultural goods (from visiting naval vessels to paintings on loan to foreign museums). But such attempts have generally been unsuccessful, even when debtors have relied on widely-worded waivers of immunity. This presentation will examine why. Matthew Happold is Professor of Public...

Professor van Aaken's main research areas are international law with a special focus on international economic law and its interaction with other areas of international law, (international) legal theory, (behavioural) law and economics.

Advocacy is the art of persuasion on behalf of a person or cause. In this presentation, the way in which lawyers advocate before the International Court of Justice, throughout each phase of a proceeding, is examined, from the different perspectives of civil (francophone) and common (anglophone) lawyers. The presentation will cover all aspects of presenting and handling a case: issues of strategy and procedure, written and oral pleadings, and the compiling and presentation of evidence,...

In 2011, the ICRC embarked on a multi-year project aimed at updating its commentaries on the Geneva Conventions (the “Pictet Commentaries”) and their Additional Protocols I and II. The initial Commentaries are referred to by military lawyers, jurists, judges and scholars around the world as an authoritative source of interpretation of the Conventions and Protocols. However, they were based primarily on the negotiating history of the treaties and on prior practice. While they remain largely...

Historic titles and historic rights have been a complicated issue in the law of the sea both conceptually and practically. The contemporary relevance of historic titles and historic rights in the law of the sea has been questioned following the adoption of the Law of the Sea Convention (LOSC), the endorsement of a significant expansion of the jurisdiction of coastal states, and the consolidation of the jurisdictional regime of maritime zones. Historic titles and historic rights have been a...

This article critically assesses the increasing cross-fertilization between international environmental law and international human rights law... Abstract .. with regard to fair and equitable benefit-sharing, as an inherent component of the human rights of indigenous peoples and local communities related to natural resources. The article aims to explore the extent to which a fully-fledged mutually supportive interpretation of benefit-sharing may contribute to a progressive shift away from...

Can we reliably predict whether the populations affected by mass atrocities will believe in the accounts of the facts and criminal responsibility that are produced by international criminal tribunals? Drawing on research in social psychology and on a seri In that regard, a negative reaction by dominant local political, media and intellectual elites becomes more likely if there is a significant degree of continuity with the elites that were dominant in the particular group when the atrocities...

In this talk, we will attempt to discuss points of interest, taking also into consideration the role offshore installations may or may not play in the determination of judicial proceedings before international courts and tribunals. The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 (“UNCLOS”) includes provisions for at least three categories of energy installations: offshore platforms used for oil and gas exploration and exploitation; offshore platforms used for the generation of energy...

Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji, Judge of the International Criminal Court and President of the Trial Division Discussion on the proper role of the ICC judges in the interpretation of the Rome Statute – especially in those circumstances where it is felt or evident that the words of the Statute offer no ready guidance. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Dr Gleider Hernandez, Reader in Public International Law, University of Durham, October 2016 Dr Gleider I Hernández is Reader in Public International Law at Durham Law School and Deputy Director of the Durham Global Policy Institute. Originally from Canada, Gleider took a D.Phil from Wadham College, Oxford, an LL.M degree from Leiden, and BCL & LL.B degrees from McGill. His DPhil, The International Court of Justice and the Judicial Function, was published by the OUP in 2014, and was...

Rob McLaughlin, Australian National University - October 2015

Professor Eyal Benvenisti, Whewell Professor of International Law, University of Cambridge The rising tide of nationalism (aka localism, nativism) has reached new peaks in 2016. According to several observers, the rise of the national reflects voters’ resentment towards neoliberal globalization served by multilateral institutions. Middle-income voters, in both developed and developing countries, regard global institutions such as the WTO, NAFTA and the EU, as responsible for diverting...

Professor Jane McAdam, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee, University of New South Wales & Asad Rehman, Friends of the Earth Climate Campaign - June 2016 Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill, University of Oxford & Blackstone Chambers - May 2016 Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Dr Markos Karavias, University of Amsterdam - May 2016

Dr Federica Padeu, University of Cambridge - April 2016 Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Professor Sarah Williams, University of New South Wales - March 2016