Jurisdiction

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The ICC, Arrest Warrants, and Peace Negotiations

Introduction On 9 June 2026, Pre-Trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Court issued a decision in response to a request by a State for consultations under Article 97 of the Rome Statute. Article 97 provides an avenue for State Parties to consult the Court where it ‘identifies problems which may impede or prevent the execution of the request’ for cooperation, including arrest and surrender. The decision itself frames the issue at stake: a State, whose identity is not disclosed, requested consultations relating to ‘the avenues available to States Parties to allow the organisation of peace talks on their territory involving a person subject to a warrant of arrest issued by the Court’ (para 4). The person concerned is Vladimir Putin; the cooperation request relates to the issuance of an arrest warrant in 2023 for the war crime of unlawful deportation and transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia.  In short, the Court accepted that there may be circumstances which justify non-execution of a…

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Location, Location, Location: The UK Supreme Court’s Judgment in Shehabi v. Bahrain

In August 2022, I co-authored a post on the English case of Al-Masarir v. Saudi Arabia [2022] EWHC 2199, where Knowles J held that Saudi Arabia had no immunity under Section 5 of the UK State Immunity Act 1978 (‘UK SIA’) for its use of Pegasus spyware to hack the devices of Mr Al-Masarir,…

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Functional Immunity and “Covert Violent Acts”: The BGH’s Progressive Development of CIL in the Nord Stream Case

On 10 December 2025, the German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, BGH) delivered its order (StB 60/25, English press release available here) in the criminal case against Serhiy K., accused of participating in the destruction of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in September 2022. K.'s defence raised functional immunity as a procedural bar, arguing…

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Once Again in Belgium: Prosecuting a Colonial Crime – The Assassination of Patrice Lumumba

In December 2024, a Belgian Court of Appeal recognised the civil liability of the Belgian State for a colonial crime committed in the Belgian Congo between 1948 and 1953. In the Métis case, as already addressed by scholars, the Court held that the Belgian policy of systematically removing children born to a Black mother and a…

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The Court That Built the Advisory Opinion It Refused to Complete: OC-30/25 on Arms Trafficking, Corporate Immunity, and the Reach of Advisory Jurisdiction

Mexico’s effort to hold the gun industry to account has now encountered an institutional setback in San José. Its request for an advisory opinion raised six questions before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR). This post examines, against a more expansive account of OC-30/25 offered here, whether laws granting public or private arms-industry companies…

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