Some governments, including but not limited to the United States, are taking ever more draconian measures to prevent asylum seekers from gaining access to territory and status determination procedures. An unknown number die in the attempt to reach safety. Asylum seekers who are intercepted at sea and even those who succeed in reaching a land border may simply be turned back. If allowed to present a claim, they may face detention, family separation, criminal prosecution, and/or bars to eligibility for refugee status based on their lack of documentation, irregular entry, or other supposed legal fault, such as failure to apply for asylum in another country. In opposing policies that criminalize seeking asylum and in defending individual asylum seekers, attorneys have pointed to Article 31 of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which, subject to certain limitations, prohibits states from imposing penalties on refugees on account of their illegal entry or presence.

As Professor Jastram has noted, in and of itself, international refugee law is not explicit enough on the issue at hand. It is not clear enough in protecting persons who come in aid of, or show solidarity to, refugees or asylum-seekers. That does not mean, however, that no protections exist for them at all in other, if you like, sub-bodies of international law. This presentation focuses on the nature and character of those already existing international legal protections, as well as on any protection gaps that remain and recommendations on how they can be closed. It should be noted though that although the bulk of the presentation focuses on the relevant international legal protection arguments, this presentation begins with a short examination of the nature of the acts of criminalization and suppression at issue.

The United States government created and then nourished an ever-growing humanitarian aid crisis over the last twenty-five years in the borderlands of Arizona. Many thousands have perished and many thousands more have suffered unconscionable hardship and horrific abuse as a direct result of this crisis of the government's own making. Making matters excruciatingly worse, recently the Trump administration's Department of Justice escalated the crisis by prosecuting humanitarian aid workers for their life-saving actions.

Thank you to all of you for having me here. I am in very distinguished company today. What I would like to do is to provide an outline of the genesis of the Singapore Convention on Mediation (Convention), how we got here, and more importantly, how we see ourselves moving forward. It is important that, having achieved this significant milestone, we do not rest on our laurels. We need to take steps to ensure that mediation will be adopted and become mainstream in dispute resolution.

The Singapore Convention on Mediation debuted about a year ago, gaining great success and recognition in a very short time. The past year also presented a major challenge to the international community in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic. The world is finding ways to successfully meet the challenges. This was evidenced by the ASIL online annual meeting, featuring a panel on the Singapore Convention with diverse speakers from around the globe, speaking in their own time zone and from their own office or home. I had the honor to represent Israel on this panel.

The impact of the Singapore Convention might affect both state and companies’ behaviors even more than encouraging mediation. We have had for a long time the phrase “bargaining in the shadow of the law,” and then more recently, in particular when we look at international investment, it is bargaining in the shadow of international arbitration. We know that a dispute could end up in arbitration and therefore impact behaviors before that. I want us to think about what bargaining might look like in the shadow of mediation.

Hi, everyone. I am Monica Hakimi from the University of Michigan Law School, and I would like to welcome you to our panel on cyber power and its limits. The topic almost does not need an introduction. We all know just from reading the news that our collective dependence on cyberspace is also a huge vulnerability, and state and non-state actors exploit this vulnerability to do one another harm. They use cyber technologies not just to spy on one another, but also, for example, to interfere in national elections, to steal trade secrets or other valuable information, to disrupt the activities of political, military, or economic institutions, and at times to cause physical destruction or death.

Public international law norms are relevant to a wide range of the sustainable development goals. Yet there is a frequent failure to connect the two spheres and there is very limited literature on the interaction between public international law, and the policy and political frameworks that underpin development.

The rule of law and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are mutually supportive. Respect for the rule of law is indeed crucial for development issues. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development itself acknowledges, through SDG 16, that access to justice and the rule of law foster sustainable development. The latter ensures that all individuals are treated alike, that they are entitled to the respect of human rights and that the rule of law informs the satisfaction of social, economic, and cultural needs as well as the development of public policies and the governance of competent institutions.

Let me start with the goals of the Hague Rules on Business and Human Rights Arbitration. The Business and Human Rights Arbitration Project dates back to 2013. In that year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Kiobel v. Shell case that the U.S. Alien Tort Statute of 1789 has no extraterritorial effect. It denied victims of human rights abuses by companies access to U.S. courts to obtain damages for alleged violations. As a consequence, the idea arose that arbitration could be used as an alternative route for dispute resolution available to corporations and rights holders to resolve their disputes in the business and human rights field.

This panel was organized by ASIL’s “Transitional Justice and Rule of Law” Interest Group. In an Annual Meeting focused upon “the promise of international law,” the Interest Group proposed for discussion the topic of “Transitional Justice in a Hostile Climate.” To be completely frank, transitional justice always faces a hostile climate. The calls for justice for innocent people injured by war, lawless governmental authorities, and political and legal structures supporting gender, racial, ethnic, and economic discrimination must be addressed. And the climate is, if anything, increasingly hostile.

The last time there was this much carbon dioxide in our atmosphere was three and a half million years ago. While our planetary history evidences cyclical climatic shifts, this time injustice is the cause. The lifestyles of the wealthy few are sustained not only by increasing economic inequality but the systemic collapse of ecosystems. The richest 20 percent consumes 80 percent of the world's natural resources and generates over 90 percent of its pollution and waste. For most people, the poorer 80 percent, their grossly unequal access to natural resources is compounded by also bearing the brunt of the pollution generated by the rich.

Thank you very much Professor Padideh Ala'i for that very kind introduction. I would also like to thank you Dean Camille A. Nelson of the Washington College of Law and the Society for this really special honor of inviting me to give the Grotius Lecture this year. I also thank the President of the Society, Catherine Amirfar, for her leadership and stewardship. My thanks too to my friend, Fleur Johns, for accepting to be the discussant for this lecture. Like you, I look forward to her response very much.

It is an immense privilege to respond, as discussant, to James Gathii's 2020 Grotius Lecture.1 I have known and admired Professor Gathii and his work for decades. He is one of those people who manages to combine great accomplishment in international legal scholarship and practice with an unswerving commitment to teaching, collegiality, and mentoring. In these, and in other ways, James Gathii walks his talk. And his talk, as you have heard, is challenging.

Our conversation might begin by looking backward a bit. The human rights movement from 1945 onward has been one of the signature accomplishments of the field of international law, one that refocused our attention from a largely interstate system to a system where the individual moved in from the periphery to the center. Human rights champions point to numerous landmark treaties, numerous institutions, and the rise of NGOs as a critical vehicle for developing and monitoring human rights rules. Yet others look at the international human right system and still see the state as overly central, tolerating and paying lip service to human rights, but too easily discarding them when they prove to be inconvenient. The persistence of racism comes to mind. As a general matter, how would you assess the strengths and weaknesses of the system that was built essentially during your lifetime?

2020 is a significant year for the International Criminal Court (ICC). Nearly two decades have passed since the entry into force of the Rome Statute and the establishment of the ICC, and there are valid questions being asked about the efficacy and value of the court. This is impelled in part by the track-record of the ICC. There are currently nine open preliminary examinations, thirteen examinations that have been granted the authorization to proceed to the investigation stage, and four investigations that have been closed without any further proceedings. Of the few cases that have eventually gone to trial, there have been four convictions and three acquittals. There have also been allegations of bias in the selection of situations and cases, and the politicization of justice. However, the complexities that need to be navigated by the court also must not be overlooked. These include the lack of cooperation by states, difficulties in accessing information and evidence, as well as mismatched expectations from the court and what it can achieve.

If international criminal justice is to be successful, it must largely be delivered at the domestic level. This is because it is hard for a single court in The Hague, working across the world with limited investigative, prosecutorial, and judicial capacity, to try more than a handful of cases. At best, the International Criminal Court (ICC) should be expected to complete one or two major trials a year, while scores of important cases are prosecuted locally.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has come a long way since 1998 when the Rome Statute was first signed. Established as the only independent, permanent international court with jurisdiction over persons for the most serious crimes of international concern as well as a reparative mandate, the Court is a critical actor in the global fight against impunity for grave crimes. The Court's complementary jurisdiction gives primacy to states, limiting its intervention to demonstrated instances of inability or unwillingness by states to genuinely investigate and prosecute.

The IIIM is different in that it is not a judicial entity. It cannot adjudicate crimes. It is not a court or tribunal. The IIIM has been referred to as having a “quasi-prosecutorial” function. It has been mandated by the General Assembly in 2016 to assist in the investigation and prosecution of core international crimes committed in the Syrian Arab Republic since March 2011.

As a preliminary remark, our starting point must be to recognize that, up until now, international criminal law has relied on what M.C. Bassiouni called “direct enforcement” by international criminal courts and “indirect enforcement” by national courts. The middle ground between the two extremes has been the use of “hybrid” courts such as the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL). The SCSL married the domestic with the international, in an effort to combine the best of the international and national in order to advance accountability for serious international crimes.