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Home Archive for category "International Legal Profession"

Of Babies, Bathwater, and List B Judges at the International Criminal Court

Published on November 13, 2019        Author: 

 

The Open Society Justice Initiative recently released an excellent report on the selection of judges at the International Criminal Court (“Raising the Bar”). It is a detailed and thoughtful report combining often eye-opening interviews and desk scholarship. It makes a number of very important recommendations about improving the process by which ICC judges are nominated and elected. In this post, however, I wish to take issue with one of the report’s key recommendations. It is only one recommendation, but it is an idea which is increasingly frequently put forward in various fora as a sine qua non of effective International Criminal Court reform.

This is the suggestion that the only criterion for appointment to the ICC judiciary should be excellence in the practice of criminal law. Thus, the suggestion goes, the statutory provision that judges may be elected either on the basis of expertise in criminal law and practice (the “List A” judges) or expertise in relevant areas of international law and practice (the “List B” judges) should be abolished.

The Open Society Justice Initiative report certainly lends significant credence to the view that the List B route to the ICC bench has on occasion been used to appoint lawyers who have spent their career as diplomats and not prosecutors, defenders, judges, or scholar-practitioners.

However, the idea that a significant number of the Court’s woes would be corrected if only it were properly staffed with solid criminal law judges is, I think, overstated. Let’s briefly consider a few of the decisions of the Court which have been most maligned in recent commentary. Read the rest of this entry…

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Filed under: EJIL Analysis, International Criminal Court, International Criminal Law, International Legal Profession, International Tribunals
 
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Reforming the International Criminal Court: Is it Time for the Assembly of State Parties to be the adults in the room?

Published on May 8, 2019        Author: 

The self-inflicted misfortunes of the International Criminal Court continue. The recent Pre-Trial Chamber decision not to authorise the opening of an investigation in Afghanistan has already generated considerable controversy (see here, here, here, here and here). The rather surprising news that Judge Ozaki would be allowed to continue to serve part time on the Court while becoming Japan’s ambassador to Estonia has also drawn criticism. And, of course, on Monday the Al Bashir immunity decision was handed down. Amidst the hubbub, one other development has gone relatively unremarked. The first four presidents of the ICC Assembly of States Parties (ASP) have released a joint op-ed through the Atlantic Council entitled “the International criminal court needs fixing”. For present purposes, it is enough to note several key points.

The op-ed calls for “an independent assessment of the court’s functioning by a small group of international experts”. This call appears triggered by the Afghanistan decision which they see as expressing “a lack of confidence that the Court could successfully carry out the job.” The rest of the piece pursues two central points – and a cluster of worrying claims. Read the rest of this entry…

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Filed under: Afghanistan, EJIL Analysis, International Criminal Court, International Criminal Law, International Legal Profession, International Tribunals
 
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Some Reactions to Douglas Guilfoyle’s Posts on the Troubles of the ICC

Published on April 1, 2019        Author: 

Editor’s note: This post is a response to Douglas Guilfoyle’s recent three part series: ‘This is not Fine: The ICC in Trouble‘ (Part I, Part II, Part III).

It is as if someone at the Court saw Douglas Guilfoyle’s first post here at EJIL:Talk! on the ICC’s troubles and decided that it was crucial to immediately prove him right. 

Last week, on the 22 march 2019, the Court made public a decision from the plenary of Judges allowing Judge Ozaki, who is sitting in the Ntaganda case (currently in the deliberations phase), to also commence her duties as the Japanese ambassador to the Republic of Estonia concurrently to her function as an ICC Judge. Here is not the place to analyse this decision, but it is for me symptomatic of the bubble in which the institution (here the Judges) lives where they seem blind to outside perceptions. Indeed, how can the vast majority of Judges not see that for most people the exercise of a political/diplomatic function is by its very nature incompatible with a judicial function? As noted by the three judges who dissented: 

For the minority, it was evident that the performance of an executive or political function for a State Party by an individual who remained a Judge of the Court was entirely likely to affect public confidence in judicial independence.

This decision is proof – if there was any need for more than provided in the Court’s practice in the past 15 years – of the relevance and timeliness of the 3-part blog series by Douglas explaining why the ICC is not fine and what should be improved. It is a thoughtful and detailed analysis of the Court’s woes and I agree both with its general evaluation and with most of the specific points raised. 

In this post, I would like to humbly propose not so much a response, but a reaction to some of the arguments put forward.

The Utility or Futility of the Pre-Trial Chamber

I would tend to agree with Douglas that today, one has the feeling that the confirmation of charges phase is a waste of time, for example because decisions on the confirmation of charges actually provide very little guidance on the content of the charges (including modes of liability) and relevant evidence. The process appears cumbersome and long and in need of a reform. I would not, however, be as critical as Douglas for a series of reasons. Read the rest of this entry…

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Filed under: EJIL Analysis, International Criminal Court, International Criminal Law, International Legal Profession
 
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Part III- This is not fine: The International Criminal Court in Trouble

Published on March 25, 2019        Author: 

Editor’s note: This is the final post in a three-part series. Parts I and II are available here and here.

In this final reflection I would like to offer some concluding remarks based on my previous two posts. Those posts do not break any new ground for those who follow the International Criminal Court closely. However, they represent my attempt to step back and examine some of the Court’s troubles more holistically. Indeed, they barely scratch the surface of various matters one could explore in such a series.

The basic fact remains that in 20 years and almost two complete prosecutorial terms, the Court that ostensibly exists to fight impunity and prosecute those most responsible for the crimes of greatest concern to the international community has managed only three convictions for core international crimes. Of these one was a guilty plea (Al Mahdi), one controversially involved the Court’s judges saving a collapsing case by recharacterizing the mode of liability after the presentation of argument and evidence had concluded and without hearing further argument on point (Katanga), and one took six years to result in a single conviction for the recruitment of child soldiers (Lubanga).

This is not a record of success. The argument I have put forward is first that there are real questions as to whether the Court’s job is possible to do on the present conditions. In my first post I argued that many of the defences made of the Court are simply articulations of the structural requirements for success which are not present. In my second post, I argued that even given those structural limitations it is not obvious that the Court as presently constituted is up to the task. The OTP appears unable to consistently mount successful and convincing cases. While the first Prosecutor must certainly take much of the blame, the second does not appear to have had much success righting the ship. Just as worrying, however, appears to be the breakdown in trust between the OTP and Chambers. Beyond the examples given in my second post, the Pre-Trial Chamber has attempted to circumscribe prosecutorial discretion or direct the course of investigations both in relation to the Cormoros and Bangladesh situations. Further, there are very worrying signs of a breakdown in collegiality among the ICC judges which is damaging both the formal coherence of court decisions and its wider legitimacy. This is before we even touch on the Court’s unsightly history of internal employment litigation and pay disputes, and now reports that the ICC mismanaged property in the Bemba case frozen to provide for any reparation orders. The allegation is that over 10 years Mr Bemba’s property was “left to devalue, dissipate or simply rot.” From the outside, the picture is one of dysfunction.

What is to be done? As foreshadowed, I think the answer has to be found in a guiding ethic of modesty and collegiality. I will address this in terms of institutional design, investigations and evidence, and judicial culture. The temptation will be to double down and push harder in the present direction of travel. This would be a mistake. The Court is facing a legitimacy crisis. To survive as an institution, the court is going to need to start making some compromises with reality.

Institutional design

In retrospect, elements of the Court’s design were from the outset overambitious or over-complicated. 

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Filed under: EJIL Analysis, International Criminal Court, International Criminal Law, International Legal Profession
 

Part II- This is not fine: The International Criminal Court in Trouble

Published on March 22, 2019        Author: 

Editor’s note: This is Part II of a three-part series. Part I is available here.

Part I of these reflections focused upon the structural constraints faced by the International Criminal Court as a whole. Within this framework, I wish to focus upon the role of individuals and officeholders in the courts success or failure within those constraints, with a focus on the office of the prosecutor and the judges of the court (Chambers). This post thus sets out to address questions of the Court’s internal workings, practices and culture. In relation to the OTP, I will focus on questions of strategy and management; in respect of chambers, questions of collegiality and assessment of evidence. Space precludes an evaluation of the Registry’s contribution to the court’s present woes beyond my earlier allusion to the well-known, long and expensive series of employment law cases brought against it which followed from a previous registrar’s restructuring exercise. Again, little here will seem especially new to close observers of the Court, the point is to pull together a worrying cluster of issues for a broader audience. Warning: long post ahead.

The Office of the Prosecutor (OTP)

It is worth acknowledging both the enormous power of the role of an international prosecutor, and the very great difficulties in doing the job successfully. As Stahn notes, the Prosecutor is the engine of international criminal tribunal proceedings. He or she conducts investigations, selects defendants, brings cases to trial. In doing so, it is common for prosecutors to say that they are only following the law or evidence, but in practice they have substantial discretion in case and defendant selection. In addition, obtaining defendants and evidence requires, in practice, the cooperation of States. Thus, prosecutors’ work ‘is inherently linked to politics due to the political context of crimes, the politics behind institutional engagement and their large degree of choice.’ That said, international prosecutions are hard. Gathering evidence in conflict zones is hard. Operating in the face of government obstruction is hard. And the reality of selective justice at the international level means prosecutors will always be open to criticisms of partiality or lacking independence. It’s a challenging job. Much was going to depend on the ICC Assembly of State Party’s choice of prosecutor in 2003.

The first Prosecutor

The first Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, was during his tenure an Olympian figure; though the verdict of history on his achievements looks increasingly likely to be that of Ozymandias. 

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Filed under: EJIL Analysis, International Criminal Court, International Criminal Law, International Legal Profession
 
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Trivia: International Lawyers in Senior State Positions

Published on January 4, 2019        Author: 

Many thanks to those who suggested answers to my trivia question of earlier this week. I have put my responses as a comment to that post. I now have another question which relates to international lawyers who have held the highest offices of state.

There are quite a number of international lawyers who have gone on to hold cabinet level ministerial positions in national government. In the UK, we recently had the example of Dominic Raab who was Minister for Exiting the European Union in the second half of last year. He spent the early part of his career as a lawyer in the UK Foreign and Commonwealth office, including spending some time as Legal Adviser at the UK Embassy in The Hague. I do not know of another UK cabinet member who had authored articles in international law journals (the Leiden Journal of International Law and Journal of International Criminal Justice) en route to being in the Cabinet.

Elsewhere, there have been a number of Foreign Ministers who had previously been academic or practising international lawyers. A prominent example is Hans Blix, who went on to be Director of the International Atomic Agency, had a PhD in international law from Cambridge University, was an academic international lawyer at the University of Stockholm, before he became Foreign Minister of Sweden from 1978-79. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who later became UN Secretary-General, had been Professor of International Law at Cairo University (and Visiting Professor in Paris) before becoming Acting Foreign Minister of Egypt also in the late 1970s. A couple of judges of the International Court of Justice have gone on to be Foreign Ministers of their countries. Nabil Elaraby, who had been a Judge at the ICJ (and before that member of the International Law Commission & Legal Adviser to the Egyptian Foreign Ministry) subsequently became Foreign Minister of Egypt for a brief period in 2011, before becoming Secretary-General of the Arab League that same year. Mohammed Bedjaoui, was President of the ICJ before becoming Foreign Minister of Algeria in 2005. Susana Ruiz Cerutti who was recently a candidate for election to the ICJ was briefly Foreign Minister of Argentina after (and before) spells as Legal Adviser to the Foreign Ministry.

These are all cabinet level government officials who previously had a career in international law. My question is whether there has been a head of state or head of government who before becoming such had been an academic or practising international lawyer. One has to define international lawyer though. My definition is that the person must either have published a book or article(s) on public international law; taught international law in a university; or practised public international law by holding a position that involves regularly advising on this branch of law.

To clarify, my question asks for people who were international lawyers before becoming head of state or government. I exclude those who turned to international law after holding these high offices. Sir Geoffrey Palmer QC who was Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1989 to 1990 later sat as an ad hoc Judge on the ICJ in the Request for an Examination of the Situation in Accordance with Paragraph 63 of the Court’s Judgment of 20 December 1974 in the Nuclear Tests (New Zealand v. France) Case (1995). After his political career, he wrote extensively on international law (see his SSRN page) on his return to academia, in addition to undertaking other international appointments that involved the application of international law. Though he had an academic career before going into the New Zealand Parliament, I do not think he had written on international law before his political career. One of the answers to my last set of trivia questions was Judge Mohamed Shahabuddeen who had a distinguished career in government in Guyana before embarking on his international judicial career. In addition to being Attorney General and Minister for Legal Affairs, he served as acting Foreign Minister from time to time and was also First Deputy Prime Minister and Vice-President of his country. However, as far as I can tell Judge Shahabuddeen only turned to international law after holding those senior positions in national government. So neither he nor Sir Geoffrey would be suitable answers to my question.

To repeat, the question is this:

Has there been a head of state or head of government who has been an academic or practising international lawyer before holding these high offices?

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Filed under: EJIL Trivia, International Legal Profession
 

Crimea Investment Disputes: are jurisdictional hurdles being overcome too easily?

Published on May 9, 2018        Author: 

In February-March 2014, Crimea experienced what is here neutrally referred to as a ‘change of effective sovereign’ (as conceded by Ukraine itself). Subsequent events have given rise to at least nine investment claims by Ukrainian nationals against Russia in connection with their investments in Crimea made prior to the ‘change of effective sovereign’. Substantively, all cases pivot on alleged violations of the expropriation and FET (fair & equitable treatment) clauses of the 1998 Russia-Ukraine BIT. Before getting there, however, a series of jurisdictional hurdles need to be overcome. Firstly, whether the scope of the BIT covers also de facto (as opposed to de jure) territory. Thus, whether under the BIT, Crimea may be understood as Russian territory. Secondly, the BIT’s temporal and personal ambit of application. That is to say, whether Ukrainian nationals and their businesses existing in Crimea prior to the ‘change of effective sovereign’ may qualify, respectively, as foreign Ukrainian investors and investments in Russia. It is doubtful that these questions which, are inevitably intertwined with the public international issue of the legality of the ‘change of sovereign’, can be satisfactorily answered through ‘effective interpretations’ and/or drawing analogies from human rights law. The scope and rationale of investment law differs from that of the latter; the promotion and protection of bilateral business is pursued for the benefit of economic growth, while the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms of persons is undertaken for the good of human kind.  In fact, it is reflected in the standard dispute settlement mechanism envisaged i.e. private ad hoc arbitration v standing international court.

Jurisdictional decisions in five proceedings have recently been rendered. To date, none of these have been made public. Nevertheless, important passages of their reasoning have been uncovered by trusted sources. These allow for a preliminary review of the tribunals’ assessment of the key legal issues involved. Read the rest of this entry…

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Filed under: Bilateral Investment Treaties, EJIL Analysis, Inter-State Arbitration, International Legal Profession, International Tribunal Procedure, Investor-State Arbitration Tribunals, Jurisdiction, Permanent Court of Arbitration
 
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Sir Elihu Lauterpacht: A Celebration of His Life and Work

Published on October 25, 2017        Author: 

A memorial symposium celebrating the life and work of Sir Eli Lauterpacht was held at the Faculty of Law in Cambridge on Friday, October 13, 2017, followed the next day by a memorial service in the chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge.  Both were extremely well attended, with about 200 people at the symposium and more at the memorial service.  Trinity College chapel was packed, with the congregation over-spilling into the antechapel.  It was touching to see how many people had come from all over the globe to pay their respects.  A record of both the symposium and service will be created in due course on the Squire Law Library’s Eminent Scholars Archive.

Judge Christopher Greenwood and President Steven Schwebel delivered eulogies at the memorial service. Chris told me that it was the first time in years that he had written out a speech rather than just rely on notes. Eli’s youngest child, Conan ended his eulogy with one of Eli’s favourite jokes about the priest, the vicar, and the rabbi trying to convert a bear to their religion.  This was characteristic of both the symposium and service, which were affectionate and humorous, reflecting Eli’s personality and love of jokes.          

The organisers of the academic symposium which examined Eli’s professional life were clear: no–one who had been asked to talk had refused, and acceptances had been immediate. Read the rest of this entry…

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Filed under: Announcements and Events, International Legal Profession, Study of International Law
 
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Twenty Years of the ECHR in Ukraine

Published on September 18, 2017        Author:  and

Twenty years ago, in September 1997, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) entered into force for Ukraine. By ratifying the Convention, Ukraine recognised the compulsory jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). While Ukraine had been a party to a number of the international human rights instruments, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, long before the ECHR, joining the ECHR had a special significance. It symbolised a European choice of Ukraine, a final breakaway from the Soviet past, and (at least on paper) the acceptance of the European values of democracy and respect for human rights. Making the determination to join the Council of Europe (CoE) and its fundamental legal instruments, however, was easier than to maintain Ukraine’s international obligations in practice. In fact, there had been times when the CoE seriously considered to terminate the membership of Ukraine altogether (in 1999, for example, for the failure to abolish the death penalty).

This post will not cover all the intricacies of the complex (and at times turbulent) relationship between Ukraine and the CoE. We will start with a brief review of the statistics regarding the current situation, in particular the ECtHR case law concerning Ukraine. Then, we will focus on the reasons why Ukraine is still one of the laggard states in terms of the numbers of applications and violations to the ECtHR. Further, we will discuss Read the rest of this entry…

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Filed under: EJIL Analysis, European Convention on Human Rights, European Court of Human Rights, Human Rights, International Law and Domestic Law, International Legal Profession, Sources of International Law
 
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Would a Multilateral Investment Court be Biased? Shifting to a treaty party framework of analysis

Published on April 28, 2017        Author: 

I have recently been pondering a common complaint voiced against the EU and Canada’s proposal for a multilateral investment court, which is that it would be biased against investors because all of the judges would be selected by states (see, for example, the ABA’s Report here and Judge Schwebel’s speech here). In my view, this criticism is misguided because it confuses the role of states as disputing parties and as treaty parties. States have dual roles in the investment treaty system: they are treaty parties with a legitimate interest in the interpretation and application of their treaties and they are disputing parties with a desire to avoid liability in particular cases. When it comes to questions of institutional design, I think that we need to adopt a treaty party framework of analysis, not a disputing party one.

In a particular dispute, an investor can appoint one arbitrator and a state can appoint another. Once a case is filed, it is hardly surprising that both disputing parties would seek to appoint arbitrators who are broadly sympathetic to their positions. This tends to generate polarization within the field with arbitrators often being thought of (whether accurately or not) as having either a “pro-investor” or a “pro-state” bias. This division helps to explain why, when judged from the perspective of the dispute resolution framework, investors and members of the arbitral community have raised concerns that having tribunals selected by states only would lead to biased results. This is so even though neither the claimant investor nor the respondent state would appoint the particular tribunal members tasked with hearing the case.

When it comes to institutional design, however, we need to shift our focus from the disputing party framework to the treaty party framework. Read the rest of this entry…

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Filed under: EJIL Analysis, European Union, Inter-State Arbitration, International Legal Profession, International Tribunal Procedure, International Tribunals, Investor-State Arbitration Tribunals, Study of International Law
 
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