After setting out the importance of the notion of an international community in contemporary treaties, International Court of Justice judgments and opinio juris, this paper claims that we need to turn to Cicero's works in order to appreciate a sense of what an international community is. Cicero was the first jurist known to recognize and elaborate a theory of the international community and this through his concept of jus gentium. Cicero's theory of jus gentium, I argue, was neither a positivist theory nor a natural law theory. Instead, jus gentium dwelt in an intermediate position between posited state laws and the laws of nature. I find a problem, however, in that Cicero exempts certain types of society from the guidance and protection of the jus gentium. I document examples of the sort of society so exempted. In order to understand why Cicero exempts such societies from the protection of the jus gentium, I argue, Cicero's theory depends on a primordial condition where human beings, living an animal-like existence, lack a language and reason. Cicero posits that human beings must leap from such a primordial condition into a civilized world where language is shared. Cicero associates a civilized world with communication, deliberation, reason, and law, particularly the jus gentium. His theory of jus gentium thereby hierarchizes societies and begs that we ask whether such a hierarchy remains presupposed in contemporary international law and international legal theory.

This article considers the relationship of international law and the media through the prism of human rights. In the first section the international regulation of the media is examined and visions of good, bad, and new media emerge. In the second section, the enquiry is reversed and the article explores the ways in which the media is shaping international legal forms and processes in the field of human rights. This is termed the ‘mediatization of international law’. Yet despite hopes for new media and the Internet to transform international law, the theoretical work of Jodi Dean warns of the danger to democracy of commodification through the spread of ‘communicative capitalism’.

Global constitutionalism is becoming increasingly prevalent in international legal discourse. While the various contributions give the impression of a seemingly complex and diverse debate, the contributions in fact all share some significant omissions and biases. It is argued here that the limitations, to be found in the disregard for processes such as fragmentation, and the biases, to be found through such realities as hegemony in international law, give rise to the necessity of a reconceptualization of the global constitutional debate. It is suggested that global constitutionalism should be reconfigured in terms of what is called ‘organic global constitutionalism’. Organic global constitutionalism should be understood as being defined by constitutionalism as process, constitutionalism as political, constitutionalism as a ‘negative universal’, and constitutionalism as a promise for the future. These features would offer an alternative way of framing the debate and a means of redeeming the idea of global constitutionalism.

On 22 July 2009 a Tribunal of five leading international lawyers rendered their award at the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), thereby redrawing the boundaries of Abyei, a small patch of land in the centre of Sudan and source of violent conflict throughout recent years. The arbitration was initiated by the two signatories of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that in 2005 brought an end to the longest civil war in Africa. Both parties, the government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement, expressed satisfaction with the award, which conceivably saved the CPA from potential collapse. This article examines the legal oddities which accompanied the settlement of the dispute over the Abyei area. It analyses both the referral of the dispute to the PCA through the lens of the Sudanese Constitution and the legal ambiguities of the award itself.

This article critically assesses the role of provisional measures indicated by the International Court of Justice in protecting populations during armed conflict situations and the legal consequences attached to the violation of such measures. A number of relevant cases, including the most recent Georgia v. Russia case, are dealt with. Provisional measures aimed at protecting populations affected by armed conflict have been increasingly requested in the last two decades by states finding themselves at a military disadvantage. Questions remain, however, with regard to the suitability of these incidental proceedings to deal with major political controversies resulting in armed conflict between states. That notwithstanding, it is submitted that although compliance with such orders of the Court remains unsatisfactory, in the long term provisional measures can eventually strengthen state compliance with commonly agreed international human rights and humanitarian law standards.

It was recognized that it was critical to the process of national reconciliation and the maintenance of peace in Sierra Leone that the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) be a strong and credible court operating in accordance with international standards of justice, fairness, and due process of law. This article assesses the fulfilment of this mandate through an examination of the fairness of the RUF trial as illustrated through two issues: the interpretation of the accused's right to be informed of the nature and cause of the charges and the approach taken by the Trial Chamber and the Appeals Chamber in assessing the evidential links between the accused and the crimes pursuant to the joint criminal enterprise (JCE) mode of liability. First, the article discusses the decisions that led to the omission of 250 charges from the indictment and their introduction into the trial through late evidential disclosures after the commencement of the prosecution case. Second, the article examines the way in which the charges, in a majority of cases, were found to be part of a common criminal purpose without a sufficient nexus being established to the accused or any member of the alleged JCE. The article concludes that the judicial approach to these issues abandoned the safeguards contained in the jurisprudence developed at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, giving rise to a trial that failed to adhere to international standards of justice, fairness, and due process, leading to manifestly unjust convictions.

Establishing the pattern of crime is fundamental for the successful investigation of international crimes (genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity). A pattern of crime is the aggregate of multiple incidents that share common features related to the victims, the perpetrators, and the modus operandi. Pattern evidence and analysis have been used successfully, mainly in the investigation of large-scale killings, destruction, and displacement; the use for sexual violence charges has been remarkably more limited. There is a need to overcome this gap by setting proper methods of data collection and analysis. At the level of evidence collection, under-reporting should be addressed through victimization surveys or secondary analysis of data available from different sources. At the level of analysis, the available evidence needs to be subject to impartial examination beyond the pre-conceptions of the conflict parties and advocacy groups, in compliance with scientific standards for quantitative, qualitative, and GIS (Geographic Information Systems) methods. Reviewing the different investigative experiences and jurisprudence will help to set the right methodology and contribute most efficiently to putting an end to the impunity regarding sexual crimes.

Based on interviews with 23 key figures at the International Criminal Court, this study represents an effort to go beyond the text of the Rome Statute. It tries to understand the different views or interpretations of the law regarding victim participation that exist within the organization and will ultimately shape how victims’ rights are applied in the Court. Rather than being a legal study, this research is rooted in organizational psychology.

This article considers the initiative of UN Security Council Resolution 1624 (2005) in criminalizing incitement to terrorist acts, in the light of criminal and international human rights law. The analysis is informed by the specific type of terrorism with which Resolution 1624 (2005) is concerned, namely ‘modern’ terrorism. The article argues that the rationales for a prohibition on incitement to terrorist acts call for a relatively wide definition of potentially proscribed speech. This can be achieved without excessively infringing freedom of expression. However, the present interpretation of the proposed prohibition is so restrictive that the prohibition may fail to counter the phenomenon with which it grapples. The article also considers whether incitement to terrorist acts can be regarded as an international crime. It concludes that in some instances there may be an overlap between incitement to terrorist acts and certain international crimes, but classification of incitement to terrorist acts as an international crime requires a fragmented approach to terrorism, which is contrary to current trends.

Emil Cioran often likened the experience of abandoning his native Romanian for French to submitting to a straitjacket. Indeed, the language in which he would go on to secure his reputation was itself, he wrote, best understood as ‘the combination of a straitjacket and a salon’. It was only by undergoing an ‘exercise in ascesis’, suspending his commitments to what he regarded as an earthier, less regimented tradition, that he had been able to don the garb of a French author, if still only as a ‘Balkan reject’. The rigour and crispness of his adopted tongue flew in the face of his desire. The severity of its lucidity stifled his passions, or simply channelled them along directions deviating from their natural path. ‘[Y]et’, Cioran went on to observe, ‘it is precisely on account of this incompatibility that I have attached myself to this language’. So much so that what caused him the greatest grief of all was to see that ‘[t]oday, when this language is in full decline, . . . the French themselves do not seem to mind.’