Events

This lecture is part of the International Law Association (British Branch) Lecture Series

Speaker: Professor Lavanya Rajamani (University of Oxford)

Chair: Dr Ralph Wilde (UCL Laws)

About the lecture

This talk will explore and illustrate the ways in which international environmental law has evolved over the last decade. It will discuss how the field has adapted to a changing geo-political context, as well as to the possibilities and limits of global regulation in addressing the complex, polycentric and intractable nature of global environmental harms. It will also explore the increasing activity at the intersections of international environmental law with other fields of law and policy, thus expanding the sites at which international environmental law is made, applied and implemented. It will conclude with reflections on the future of international environmental law in the context of the emerging understanding of the fundamental limits posed by the nature and operation of environmental law within the current architecture of international law and politics.

For fruther information visit the event's website.

Speakers: Olufemi Elias (UN), Chin Leng Lim (CUHK)
Chair: Martins Paparinskis (UCL)

About the talk
In 1998, Elias and Lim published The Paradox of Consensualism in International Law. In it, they explored the nature of the international legal order at a time when the arch of history seemed to be inexorably bending towards greater international judicialization. Building on their wealth of experience in academia and practice of international law in the intervening two decades, Elias and Lim propose to reflect upon the same foundational questions in the opening month of the new decade, at a time that is very different from the 1990s but no less interesting for international courts and tribunals.

About the speakers
Olufemi Elias is United Nations Assistant Secretary-General and Registrar of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals. Prior to that, he was the the Legal Adviser and a Director at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague, and has served as Executive Secretary of the World Bank Administrative Tribunal. He is an Associate Member of the Institut de Droit International. He has served as the Secretary-General of the African Association of International Law and a member of the Executive Council of the American Society of International Law. He is a Visiting Professor in international law at Queen Mary University of London.

Chin Leng Lim is the Choh-ming Li Professor of Law at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and practises from Keating Chambers, London. He is an Honorary Senior Fellow of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, and a Visiting Professor at King’s College London. Chin was for many years Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong and served on both Court and Senate. He was also recently the Lionel Astor Sheridan Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore. His latest books include Lim, Ho and Paparinskis, International Investment Law & Arbitration (Cambridge, 2018), with a Foreword by Gaillard, and the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to International Arbitration, with a Foreword by Lord Neuberger.

This lecture is part of the ILA (British Branch) Lecture Series.

Speaker: Judge Liesbeth Lijnzaad (ITLOS International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea)

Chair: Dr. Danae Azaria 

About the Lecture: 

The presentation will provide some informal observations of a junior judge at ITLOS on the basis of experiences in her very first year on the bench. This will include some comments on transitioning from the role of Legal Adviser to the position of judge, as well as some observations on life in the deliberations’ room at the Tribunal.

For further information visit the event's website.

Regulation and its discontents: A changing landscape for international investment law?

With Hugo Perezcano Díaz, Deputy Director of International Economic Law with the International Law Research Program (ILRP), Centre for International Governance Innovation

Chaired by Professor Philippe Sands QC (UCL Laws / Matrix Chambers)

About the speaker
Hugo Perezcano Díaz is the deputy director of International Economic Law with the International Law Research Program (ILRP), and was previously a CIGI senior fellow with the ILRP. Prior to joining CIGI, he was an attorney and international trade consultant in private practice. Hugo worked for the Mexican government’s Ministry of Economy for nearly 20 years, serving as head of the trade remedy authority, and formerly as general counsel for international trade negotiations. Hugo was lead counsel for Mexico in investor-state dispute settlement cases under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and other international investment agreements. He also worked on dispute settlement cases between states, conducted under trade agreements that include NAFTA and the World Trade Organization agreement.
Hugo’s expertise is in international law, economic law, international trade law and negotiations, and international investment law. He has taught in those fields throughout his career and is a graduate of Mexico’s Autonomous Institute of Technology.

For further information visit the event's website.

An International Law Association (British Branch) Lecture

Speaker: Prof. Photini Pazartzis, Professor of Public International Law and Director of the Athens Public International Law Center of the Faculty of Law of the National & Kapodistrian University of Athens

Chair: Dr Danai Azaria, UCL Laws

About this talk:

There has been great attention in international human rights law and jurisprudence on remedies to victims of human rights violations. International human rights courts have greatly contributed to the development of the right to reparation, applying and adjusting the general principle of reparation in the law of State responsibility -as well as the various forms of reparation-, within the specific context of human rights treaties violations. This presentation will discuss the remedial practice of the UN Human Rights Committee, in the framework of its quasi-adjudicatory function of the examination of individual communications.

For further information visit the event's website.

19 October 2016, 6:00 pm–7:00 pm

INTERNATIONAL LAW ASSOCIATION (British Branch) Lecture: 

Identifying Customary International Law:
From the International Law Association’s Principles of 2000 to the International Law Commission’s 2016 draft

Speaker: Professor Maurice Mendelson QC, Blackstone Chambers

Chair: Professor Roger O’Keefe (UCL Laws)

About the lecture

In 2000 the International Law Association adopted the London Principles on the Formation of Customary International Law and commended it to governments, international organisations etc. The International Law Commission of the United Nations subsequently took up the subject with a view to possible codification, and in 2016 adopted a draft, on first reading, which has been transmitted to governments for their comments. The speaker, who chaired the International Committee which drafted the ILA Principles, will consider the challenges of codification and make some brief comparisons between the two documents.

For further information visit the event's website.

Speaker: Dr Lorand Bartels (University of Cambridge)

Chair: Professor Piet Eckhout (UCL)

About this event

WTO law provides an excellent case study for anyone interested in the phenomenon of overlapping and conflicting treaties. WTO law is comprised of a constitutional agreement (usually called the ‘Marrakesh Agreement’) and four Annexes. Annex 1 is subdivided into three separate annexes, and one of these, Annex 1A, is further subdivided into another twelve self-standing agreements. It frequently happens that more than one agreement has a bearing on a particular factual issue, and it is necessary to determine which of these provisions is applicable. For various reasons, this question is usually determined from the perspective of the principle of lex specialis. This presentation will examine the way that WTO law treats this principle, and what this might mean for international law more generally.

For further information visit the event's website.

9
December
2015

Speaker: Professor Janina Dill (London School of Economics)

Chair: Dr Kimberley Trapp (UCL)

About this event:
International Humanitarian Law permits killing civilians as an unintended side effect of attacks if the expected deaths are proportionate to the military advantage anticipated. But what does it look like when loss of human life and military advantage are ‘in balance’? Proportionality is a common concept in law, but the values at stake in war can be neither expressed in terms of each other nor translated into a common metric. This talk will discuss the results of an empirical study of Afghan civilians' and military experts' attitudes towards collateral damage addressing the question to what extent their assessments are consistent with the legal definition of proportionality and exploring a common standard of proportionate collateral damage.

For further information visit the event's website.

Organised by UCL Centre for International Course and Tribunals with the British Institute of International and Comparative Law

Speakers

• Tom Blackmore (grandson of Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, Prosecutor at Nuremberg)
• Niklas Frank (son of Hans Frank, defendant at Nuremberg)
• Lord Justice Fulford (Deputy Senior Presiding Judge for England and Wales, and former judge International Criminal Court 2003-2012)
• Dr Fabricio Guariglia (Director of the Prosecutions Division, International Criminal Court)
• Patrick Lawrence QC (4 New Square and grandson of Sir Geoffrey Lawrence, Presiding Judge, Nuremberg)
• Professor Philippe Sands QC (Professor of Law and Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals, UCL Faculty of Laws and Matrix Chambers)
• Ann Tusa and Sir John Tusa (Authors of ‘The Nuremberg Trial’)

An event to mark the 70th anniversary of the Nuremberg trials. The event will provide an opportunity to hear leading experts and relatives of those participating in the trial reflect on this important moment for the rule of law and international justice. This event will offer a historical perspective and comment on the legacy
of the Tribunal and its influence on the development of international criminal law. It will provide an assessment of the Nuremberg trial, consider the Tribunal’s place in the evolution of modern international criminal law, and explore prospects for the future.

For further information visit the event's website.

Speaker: Professor Robert Howse(NYU Law School / LSE)

Chair: Dr Martins Paparinskis (UCL)

About this event:
States often pursue commercial or other policies through entities that have some formal distance or independence from organs of the state, such as state trading enterprises, commodities boards, independent regulators and industry self-regulatory bodies, and sovereign wealth funds. The conduct of such entities may have a considerable impact on foreign investors. This talk will explore the question of the extent and circumstances of state liability for such conduct under international investment law, and particularly the application by investor-state arbitral tribunals of the ILC Articles on State Responsibility in answering this question.

For further information visit the event's website.

Speaker: Sir Michael Wood (20 Essex Street)

Chair: Professor Roger O'Keefe (UCL)

About this event:
The International Law Commission is a subsidiary organ of the UN General Assembly mandated with the codification and progressive development of international law. Among the important topics currently on its work programme are ‘Immunity of State officials from foreign criminal jurisdiction’ and ‘Identification of customary international law’. Michael Wood’s lecture will cover these and other topics, as well as the structure and working methods of the Commission, and its relationship with the UN General Assembly.

For further information visit the event's website.

Speaker: Professor Malgosia Fitzmaurice, Queen Mary University of London

Chair: Dr Martins Paparinskis (UCL)

About the lecture:
The legal and ethical questions concerning whaling are one of the most complex in contemporary world and lacking an immediate resolution. The contentious approaches in the area of whaling extend to all types of whaling: commercial; aboriginal; and scientific. The 2014 Whaling in the Antarctic case exemplified the complexity of whaling, and it only concerned one type: the scientific whaling. This case touched upon many legal aspects relating to the interpretation of the Convention on the Regulation of Whaling, as well as issues directly concerning scientific whaling, such as the standard of review and the use of experts. Cultural diversity of indigenous peoples is accommodated by quotas allocated the International Whaling Commission (aboriginal whaling). However, non-indigenous population in States, such as Norway; Iceland; and Japan claim a contentious right to whaling based on cultural diversity. Is there such a right? These are some of the questions to which there is no answer at present.

For further information visit the event's website.

Speaker: Dr Martins Paparinskis, University College London

Chair: Philippe Sands QC (UCL)

Discussants:
Andrew Lang (LSE)
Kate Miles (Cambridge)
Samuel Wordsworth QC (Essex Court Chambers)

About the lecture:
In 1996, Judge Rosalyn Higgins noted that ‘fair and equitable treatment’ was a legal term of art well known in the field of overseas investment protection. In 2015, fair and equitable treatment has emerged as a rule of considerable practical importance in dispute settlement on the basis of investment treaties. According to the most recent review of investment arbitrations conducted by UNCTAD, ‘[o]f the seven decisions finding States liable [that were rendered in 2013], five found a violation of the fair and equitable treatment (FET) provision and two of the expropriation provision’ (UNCTAD, ‘Recent Developments in Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS)’ (IIA Issues Note no 1/2014) 10). Similarly, in 2012, ‘[o]f the twelve decisions finding State’s liability, six found a violation of the FET provision, five of the expropriation provision, two of the umbrella clause and one of the prohibition of certain performance requirements’, (UNCTAD, ‘Recent Developments in Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS)’ (IIA Issues Note no 1/2013) 5). Debates about the best approach to interpretation and application of fair and equitable treatment therefore touch upon the most important aspects of contemporary international investment law. The launch of the paperback edition of M Paparinskis, The International Minimum Standard and Fair and Equitable Treatment (OUP 2014) provides an opportunity for a reflection upon these issues. 

For further information visit the event's website.

Speaker: Dr Gleider Hernandez
Senior Lecturer, Durham Law School

About the lecture:
Assuming that international law is to be understood as a legal system, the role that judicial institutions play in maintaining the coherence of that system plays an outsize role. Using the International Court of Justice as the primary point of reference, given its jurisdiction over international law as a whole and its place as principal judicial organ of the United Nations, this lecture will consider the manner in which the Court understands its judicial function within the international legal order through reference to its judgments and other publicly-available materials. The claim being made is that the Court has, over the decades, made a claim to normative authority in the development of international law: that its institutional practice, its deliberative procedure and the justificatory reasoning it deploys have been designed with a specific regard to sustaining that authority. In this regard, the Court has made a number of pronouncements on the nature of international law, and specifically the political community which is served by international law, which merit heightened scrutiny. This lecture is based on the author’s recently published monograph.

For further information visit the event's website.

Speaker: Dr Irini Papanicolopulu
Senior Lecturer, University of Glasgow School of Law

About the lecture:
Marine spaces, be they the waters close to the coast or the vast oceans, are increasingly used by humankind as a transport route, an economic resource, a door towards safety and a major area for recreation, as well as for uses that do not fall into our intuitive notion of the 'maritime'. All sea uses presuppose the presence of people and their increase may only result in a corresponding increase in the number of people at sea. Starting from the axiom that these people need to be protected against many threats, the presentation will examine whether international law, as currently understood, ensures adequate protection. The presentation will draw upon the results of the research project 'HUMANS AT SEA' funded by the European Commission under FP7. 

Speaker: Professor Catherine Redgwell, Chichele Professor of Public International Law, University of Oxford

About the lecture:
The allocation of shared responsibilities among multiple state and/or other actors is relatively unexplored in international law. The possibility was not excluded by the ILC in its work on the responsibility of States and of International Organisations, but it provided only limited guidance on the allocation of responsibility or of reparation in such cases. This lecture will consider the practice of shared responsibility in the specific context of international energy activities. In what circumstances might shared responsibility arise, and with what consequences? Is the concept a helpful tool in the energy resources context? The lecture reflects research contributing to the Research Project on Shared Responsibility in International Law (SHARES) of the Amsterdam Centre for International Law (see http://www.sharesproject.nl).

Speaker: Roger O'Keefe ,Professor of International Law, UCL

About the lecture:
There is a detailed body of international humanitarian law that seeks to protect cultural property, both movable and immovable, from destruction and plunder in time of armed conflict. But as recent events in Syria and Mali show, the means for the enforcement of this law are few and weak. Partially in response to this and partially independently, a greater emphasis has been placed in recent years on other bodies of international law of relevance to the protection of cultural property in armed conflict - both bodies that provide for obligations akin to those of IHL but that bolster them with compliance mechanisms and bodies that come at the problem from a wholly different angle. The lecture examines and assesses these developments 

Judge Abdulqawi Yusuf
International Court of Justice 
About the speaker: Judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf is Juris Doctor from Somali National University and holds a PhD from the Graduate Institute (1980). Prior to his doctorate, he completed post-graduate studies in international law at the University of Florence (Italy). From 1975 to 1980, Dr Yusuf served as Somalia’s delegate to the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea.

He was Lecturer at the Somali National University from 1974 to 1981 and at the University of Geneva from 1981 to 1983. He has also been guest professor and lecturer at a number of universities and institutes in Switzerland, Italy, Greece and France. From 1987 to 1992, Dr Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf was Chief of the Legal Policies Service of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) before becoming its Representative and Head of its New York Office from 1992 to 1994.

From 1994 to 2001, he served as Legal Advisor (up to 1998), then Assistant Director for African Affairs to United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in Vienna. From March 2001 to January 2009, Dr Yusuf was Legal Adviser and Director of the Office of International Standards and Legal Affairs for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

As of February 6, 2009, he had been a judge at the International Court of Justice. In 2011, Judge Yusuf gained a seat in the advisory council of The Hague Institute for Global Justice. Dr Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf is Founder and General Editor of the African Yearbook of International Law and a member of the Institut de droit international (Geneva). He is also one of the founders of the African Foundation for International Law and Chairman of its Executive Committee.

In addition, Judge Yusuf has authored several books and numerous articles on various aspects of international law as well as articles and op-ed pieces in newspapers on current Northeast African and Somali affairs. He is a member of the editorial advisory board of the Asian Yearbook of International Law, and a member of the Thessaloniki Institute of Public International Law and International Relations curatorium. Dr Yusuf is fluent in Somali, English, French, Arabic, and Italian.

Speaker: Kevin Jon Heller, Professor of Criminal Law, SOAS University of London

About the lecture:
Nearly all ICL scholars accept the idea that an international crime is an act that is directly criminalized by international law. Professor Heller will challenge that definition, what he calls the “direct-criminalization thesis,” in this lecture. More specifically, he argue that the thesis can only be defended on the basis of an unconvincing and illegitimate naturalist understanding of the creation of international law -- and that any attempt to defend the direct-criminalization thesis on positivist grounds collapses it into what he calls the "national-criminalization thesis," the idea that an international crime is an act that all states are obligated to domestically criminalize. 

Speaker: Dr Alex Mills, UCL

About the lecture:
Jurisdiction has traditionally been considered in international law as purely a question of the rights and powers of states. Conceived in this way, the rules on jurisdiction serve the function of delimiting (while accepting some overlap of) state regulatory authority – the question of when a person or event may be subject to national regulation – a function which is shared with the cognate discipline of private international law. This paper suggests that the idea and consequently the rules of jurisdiction in international law require reconceptualisation in light of three developments. The first is the growing recognition that in some circumstances the exercise of national jurisdiction may, under international law, be a question of duty or obligation rather than right. The second development is the increased acceptance that such jurisdictional duties may in some circumstances be owed not only to other states but also to private parties. The third development is the widely recognised phenomenon that private parties have the power to confer jurisdiction on national courts and to determine themselves which law governs their relationships. In combination, these developments suggest the necessity of rethinking the concept of jurisdiction in international law, to reflect the more complex realities of a modern international legal order under which states possess both jurisdictional rights and obligations, and are no longer the exclusive actors.

Speaker: Professor Dan Sarooshi, University of Oxford

This talk will evaluate and compare a number of key elements of WTO and ICSID dispute settlement in order to gauge the extent to which broader values can, or indeed should, play a role in these two leading fora for the settlement of international economic disputes.

Speaker: Professor Dan Saxon, Leiden University College, The Hague

About the talk:
The late American historian William Manchester once wrote that ‘ … no man is really a robot’. The great challenge for military professionals and legal scholars for the remainder of this century will be to ensure that autonomous robots used in armed conflict will display sufficient human qualities to fulfill the duties of international law, and to develop appropriate standards of responsibility when they do not. “Responsibility,” however, can mean more than holding a person or entity accountable for mistakes or misdeeds. “Responsibility” includes other values and may also refer to a status and level of power and authority; similar to the concept of “command.” Dan Saxon will explore the levels of responsibility, if any, that humans may lawfully delegate to autonomous weapons systems, and will describe the possibilities available under international law for holding persons, states and other entities accountable when autonomous weapons commit serious violations of international law.

On 18 and 19 March 2011, the ACIL, in cooperation with the Project on International Courts and Tribunals (PICT), will organize a two-day seminar on the International Judicial Function. The seminar will discuss the goals of different international courts and the role of judges in fulfilling these goals. Separate panels will focus on the dispute settlement role of international courts, international courts as law-interpreters/developers, international courts as ‘law enforcers’, international courts as fact-finders and the international judicial function of national courts.

A key question will be the degree in which the judicial functions converge or vary across different international (and national) courts. Speakers include judges of the International Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights, the Court of Justice of the EU, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, and the UK Supreme Court, and leading academics.

The seminar is a closed meeting.

"THE DOMAC PROJECT"is hosting a Conference on the Impact of International Criminal Procedures on Domestic Criminal Procedures in Mass Atrocity Cases at the University of Amsterdam. The Conference is organized by DOMAC, in cooperation with the Project on International Courts and Tribunals (PICT) and the Amsterdam Center for International Law (ACIL). The Conference is free and open to academics and practitioners in various fields, including international law and international relations. 

For more information on DOMAC, please visit www.domac.is 

ICC Prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, will give the keynote address at a symposium organised by the DOMAC project to be held in Reykjavik on 16 May 2009.  The symposium is entitled Prosecuting Serious International Crimes: The joint role of national and international courts. The keynote address will be followed by two panel discussions featuring DOMAC researchers and Justice Shireen Fisher, Judge in the Appeals Chamber of the Special Court for Sierra Leone and former judge in the War Crimes Chamber of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

Details of the symposium are available here: 

domac_symposium.pdf

domac_symposium.pdf

Speaker: Silvana Turner, Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team
Venue: Keeton Room, UCL Laws
Time: 1pm, bring your own lunch

About the event: 

The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, (Equipo Argentino de Anthropologia Forense, EAAF), established in 1984, is a nongovernmental, nonprofit scientific organization that applies forensic sciences, mainly forensic anthropology, archaeology, and genetics, to the investigation of human rights violations in Argentina and around the world. The team was founded in response to the need to investigate the disappearances of at least 9,000 people by the military regime that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. Applying forensic anthropology and related sciences, and working closely with victims and their relatives, the team seek to shed light on human rights violations, contributing to the search for truth, justice, reparation, and prevention of future abuses.

Silvana Turner has been a forensic anthropologist, investigator and researcher for EAAF since 1989. In addition to participating in investigations in Argentina, she has worked at the request of national and international NGOs, governmental and intergovernmental organisations, national and international commissions in Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia, Colombia, Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Ethiopia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and the Philippines.

The number of international courts is increasing and international courts are exerting ever greater influence on political, social, economic and environmental issues. These developments raise an important question: how are the international judges that sit on these courts selected?

For the past two years, the Centre for International Courts and Tribunals (CICT) at University College London has been conducting a project entitled Process and Legitimacy in the Nomination, Election and Appointment of International Judges funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (United Kingdom). The project has focussed on nominations and elections to the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, with broader comparative reference to other international courts, and has asked:

(a) How do states nominate candidates for the ICJ and ICC?
(b) How do the election procedures for those courts operate in practice?
(c) What changes, if any, are needed to the nomination and election procedures?

The research team has interviewed over 100 individuals involved in the nomination and election of international judges. Interviewees have included diplomats, government legal advisors, members of the Permanent Court of Arbitration national groups, international and domestic judges, lawyers and academics.

This seminar, which has been jointly organised by the Centre for International Courts and Tribunals (CICT) and the Institute for International Law and Justice (IILJ), NYU Law School, will present the preliminary findings of the project for discussion and comment. Those taking part will include diplomats dealing with these issues, personnel of international organizations, academics, and judges. 

A limited number of additional places are available. If you would like attend this seminar, please contact Ms. Kate Barber on email kate.barber@ucl.ac.uk. If you are based at NYU, please contact iilj@juris.law.nyu.edu.

Venue: Greenberg Lounge at the New York University (NYU) School of Law

Related documents: 

ucl_nyu_seminar.pdf

ucl_nyu_seminar.pdf

selecting_int_judges.pdf

selecting_int_judges.pdf

On 30 November and 1 December 2007, the Centre for International Courts and Tribunals (CICT) organised a conference at the Peace Palace in The Hague entitled International Courts and Tribunals in the 21st Century: the future of international justice. The event marked the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the  
The conference addressed a number of key themes in the light of practice and research over the last ten years, including: the proper relationship between the various international and regional courts that now exist; factors that influence choices among international dispute settlement procedures; the relationship between international and national courts; the achievements, limitations and prospects of international criminal tribunals; and the function of ‘the international judge’. In a keynote session of the conference, the President of the International Court of Justice, Judge Rosalyn Higgins, responded to questions on various aspects of the conference themes. In the closing session, participants proposed priority issues for inclusion in a future research agenda on international courts and tribunals.
 
The participants included academics and practitioners, as well as representatives of twelve international courts and tribunals, including the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the World Trade Organization Appellate Body, the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights and the Court of Justice of the Andean Community. Philippe Sands QC, Ruth Mackenzie and Kate Barber of CICT participated in the meeting, and 22 UCL LL.M students and one PhD student also attended. The conference saw the launch of three new titles in the Oxford University Press International Courts and Tribunals series.