The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) has described the preliminary examination as one of its “three core activities,” alongside investigating and prosecuting crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute). Honing in on this once-mysterious “core activity,” this article contributes to the recently expanding literature on preliminary examinations at the ICC by providing a much needed comprehensive picture of all preliminary examinations conducted to date. The twentieth anniversary of the court’s founding treaty, the Rome Statute, provides a timely opportunity for this review as part of the broader effort to take stock of the ICC’s achievements, failures, and future. The article demonstrates that, despite not having full investigatory powers at the preliminary examination stage, the OTP is very active during this phase. It interacts with a wide range of domestic and international actors and makes decisions on important legal issues that go to the heart of the ICC’s work. Paying close attention to preliminary examinations is therefore critical to understanding the OTP’s work, to understanding which actors engage with, and seek to “use,” the ICC, and to understanding important debates about the ICC’s legitimacy.

L’article considère l’interdiction des expulsions collectives dans la jurisprudence de la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme. La Cour adopte un point de vue réaliste qui permet d’inclure dans cette interdiction les expulsions au sens strict et les actes de non-admission, exigeant aux États d’agir toujours de bonne foi. Or, elle n’y inclut pas les expulsions implicites, et rabaisse significativement la protection conventionnelle par l’exclusion de l’exigence d’un entretien individuel. La possibilité de son application extraterritoriale et l’impossibilité d’écarter la responsabilité étatique sur la base d’accords avec des États tiers montrent cependant la portée large accordée à l’interdiction.

With 2018 marking the twentieth anniversary of Canada’s Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act, an opportunity presents itself to take stock of both developments and challenges for the legislative scheme. As demonstrated by a review of the parliamentary record, the desire to enact legislation to criminalize the offering of an inducement to a foreign public official to secure a business advantage was decidedly international in nature, with Canada aiming to bolster the efforts of others to create a level playing field for companies operating abroad. Yet, despite good intentions, as well as amendments to strengthen the Act in 2013 and the passage of additional transparency obligations in 2014, Canada’s legislative scheme has not kept pace with the international and multi-jurisdictional realities of the problem to be addressed. Renewed interest needs to be paid to the demand side of a foreign bribery transaction. In addition, the confiscation or forfeiture of any ill-gotten gains must become a priority, with the touting of success in securing the voluntary payment of sizeable fines failing to provide for a sufficient accounting for the wrongs done, particularly if the victims of corruption, even as a class that needs clearer definition, are to be made a true concern of the Act. The challenges posed by matters of immunity and the need to improve matters of multi-jurisdictional cooperation also need further attention.

Since the Second World War, there has been a constant decrease of inter-state conflicts. In sharp contrast, the level of intra-state violence has not declined and has even reached unprecedented peaks. This points to a striking discrepancy between the rejection of violence at the inter-state level and the wide leeway that is still afforded to the use of violence at the intra-state level and to external interferences fueling it. This article takes stock of the main features (and serious flaws) of the existing legal framework on aid to governments or insurgents in internal conflict situations. On the basis of a combined legal and conflict-management analysis, the author proposes a radically different approach and formulates a number of legal and policy recommendations on how to tackle the complex phenomenon of foreign intervention in civil wars, where enormous human, economic, and social implications are at stake.

Entities seeking to establish statehood have used participation in sport to bolster their claims. Kosovo is the latest entity to use this strategy. Kosovo’s quest to join the Union of European Football Associations led to a 2017 Court of Arbitration for Sport decision examining whether Kosovo was sufficiently an “independent state.” This article considers how participation in sport plays a role in establishing a broader, contextual conceptualization of statehood. This article then applies this concept to case studies, with particular attention paid to Kosovo. Finally, the article examines sport’s gradual acceptance that it must work within the broader international political and legal world.

Partant du constat de l’absence de littérature sur les processus de codification du “droit interaméricain de la drogue,” la présente étude ambitionne de combler cette lacune en vérifiant par ailleurs l’existence même de ce droit, essentiellement au moyen d’une analyse comparative des prescriptions du droit onusien de la drogue avec celles du droit en vigueur dans les Amériques. Ce faisant, l’auteur en arrive à la conclusion que le droit interaméricain de la drogue est le produit d’un jeu d’influence réciproque entre le droit onusien, les lois-modèles de la Commission interaméricaine de contrôle de l’abus des drogues (CICAD) et les droits nationaux. Ce jeu d’influence, par effet de renvoi, particulièrement entre les lois-modèles de la CICAD et les droits nationaux, traduit bien l’influence des conditions structurelles, métajuridiques et extrajuridiques dans la codification et l’institutionnalisation du droit interaméricain de la drogue.

The United Nations (UN) human rights treaty bodies play an important role in defining the scope and the nature of non-citizens’ rights. This article offers a critical overview of the UN human rights case law from 2008 to 2018 pertaining to non-citizens — notably undocumented migrants, refused asylum seekers, and permanent residents ordered deported — in Canada. It examines the jurisprudence of the three UN human rights treaty bodies recognized by Canada as having competence to receive and consider individual complaints — namely, the UN Human Rights Committee, the Committee against Torture, and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. The purpose of this examination is two-fold. First, it intends to foster a better understanding of the cases lodged by non-citizens before the UN human rights treaty bodies. The second aim is to explore the substantive issues that the UN committees’ jurisprudence on non-citizens reveals about Canada’s immigration decision-making and enforcement. It is argued that some groups of non-citizens in Canada are at risk of being deported to persecution or hardship in violation of the non-refoulement principle and Canada’s international human rights obligations. The article illuminates several loopholes identified by the UN treaty bodies in Canada’s immigration and refugee protection system that heighten the risk of refoulement.

International courts and tribunals so far have shown reluctance to delimit the normative scope of the essential security and necessity exceptions in international economic law. Legal scholars have also refrained from identifying the point of equilibrium between maintaining the core protections of international law and allowing for necessary flexibility in its application. This article argues that such stances are now untenable. The unilateral US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, and the reintroduction of sanctions, has challenged the multilateral order. Although the sanctions resemble earlier measures, violation of the deal and of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231(2015) has altered the normative context. The threat to the stability of the post-war multilateral order by a permanent member of the Security Council is unique. The author shows why Iran’s recourse to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in this context should become a landmark case for international economic law and how it traps the ICJ in a gilded cage.