WCL’s War Crimes Research office has released a new report this week which “examines means of avoiding delays in proceedings before the ICC.” The report is available here. The executive summary is pasted below:

 
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In its less than one decade of existence, the International Criminal 
Court (ICC) has achieved a great deal, opening formal investigations 
into six situations involving some of the most serious atrocities that 
have occurred since the birth of the Court in 2002 and commencing 
cases against a number of the individuals believed to bear the greatest 
responsibility for those atrocities. However, nearly ten years after 
coming into being, the ICC has yet to complete a single trial, raising 
concerns among States Parties to the Rome Statute and others 
regarding the effective functioning of the Court. Hence, while 
recognizing that the ICC is still a very young institution faced with a 
variety of novel substantive and procedural challenges, the aim of this 
report is to identify areas of unnecessary delays in proceedings 
currently before the Court that are likely to arise again, and to suggest 
ways in which such delays may be avoided in the future. 
The structure of the report is as follows: first, we address delays 
arising at the pre-trial stage of proceedings, referring to proceedings 
conducted before the Court‟s Pre-Trial Chambers; second, we address 
delays arising after a case has been transferred to the Trial Chamber; 
finally, we address issues that are relevant both at the pre-trial and trial 
level.

Last Wednesday ASIL’s  Lieber Society and the American Red Cross sponsored an event with a very distinguished panel taking a historical look at the application of the laws of war during the American Civil War. Here is the event info:

ASIL’s Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict and the American Red Cross are sponsoring a historical panel discussion on the application of the law of war in the American Civil War, in remembrance of the 150th anniversary of that conflict.  Military historians and law of war experts Gary Solis, Isabelle Daoust, and Richard Jackson will be presenting historical vignettes, describing the application of the law of war (often referred to as international humanitarian law) to the Civil War.  The panelists will discuss the contributions of Francis Lieber to the development of the law, the application of this law to detention operations and guerrilla warfare, and the historical antecedents of military commissions. —-Refreshments will be provided.

Panelists:

• Richard Jackson, Co-Chair, Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict
• Gary D. Solis, Adjunct Professor of Law, Georgtown University Law Center
• Isabelle Daoust, Manager, International Humanitarian Law Dissemination Program, American Red Cross
• John Fabian Witt, Allen H. Duffy Class of 1960 Professor of Law at Yale Law School

The current president of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Judge Sang Hyun Song, recently delivered a lecture at at the Universidad de los Andes during his visit to Colombia. I have inserted the video above.