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The Removal of the ICC Prosecutor and the Edge of the ICC’s Political Universe

August 17, 2026

“…I understood that I had collided with the edge of the political universe in which the Tribunal was allowed to function” (Carla Del Ponte, Madame Prosecutor: Confrontations with Humanity’s Worst Criminals and the Culture of Impunity (2009), p. 60) The process culminating in the 24 July 2026 decision by the ICC Assembly of States Parties (ASP) to remove from office the Court’s Chief Prosecutor, Karim Khan, has generated much legal controversy. The unprecedented nature of the allegations raised against the former Prosecutor by Court employees, and the failure of the Court’s internal investigative process – the Independent Oversight Mechanism (IOM) – to effectively deal with the initial sexual offence complaint, have resulted in a partly improvised disciplinary process (centred around the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS)) which raised many questions of first impression. These included – as usefully surveyed by Rebecca Hamilton and Nema Milaninia – questions regarding the precise division of labour between the ASP Bureau and plenary, the voting…

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Eurovision, Non-Recognition and Bangaranga?!

June 2, 2026

Bulgaria won the 70th Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna with Dara’s “Bangaranga”; Israel finished second; and five countries, Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Iceland, stayed away in protest at Israel’s participation. That combination, spectacle, boycott and contested belonging, is a useful entry point into a wider legal problem. Eurovision is not the United…

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Thirty years from Dayton: Has the Bosnian Constitution found its legitimacy?

December 10, 2025

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Known as the Dayton Constitution, after the city in Ohio where the final rounds of peace negotiations involving representatives from Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Serbia, and Croatia took place, the Constitution was annexed to the Dayton Peace Accords (DPA) negotiated in that city and signed…

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Justice Recoded? Why It Matters that the International Criminal Court Embraced Open-Source Software and Ditched Microsoft

November 20, 2025

On 31 October 2025, the International Criminal Court (Court) confirmed reports that it is replacing its Microsoft Office Suite with openDesk– open-source software (OSS) developed by Germany’s ZenDiS (Center for Digital Sovereignty). That development is hardly surprising – and, for some, “about time”. Nevertheless, it bears important implications for the Court’s daily ability to fulfill its mandate, and…

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Remodel the World Trade Organization: A Comparative Institutional Perspective

November 19, 2025

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is under a prolonged stress test, as its Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala termed recently in a Financial Times article. This stress test is not unique; it is happening also to other international economic organizations (IEOs), as globalization shrinks and unilateralism spreads. An international organization seems much too vulnerable, facing the ongoing, tumultuous…

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