Strategic Litigation in Wartime: Judging the Russian Invasion of Ukraine through the Genocide Convention

Ukraine\u27s recent initiation of legal proceedings against Russia under the Genocide Convention is a prominent example of what has been termed strategic litigation, denoting the bringing of a case with a goal to produce a wider impact beyond the courtroom. In Allegations of Genocide (Ukraine v. Russia), Ukraine sought a series of declarations from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Russia\u27s decision to use force in Ukraine, and its ongoing operation, was unlawful, insofar as such a decision rested on the prevention of genocide. Given that the ICJ does not have the jurisdiction to determine whether Russia has committed aggression, Ukraine creatively argued that Russia has abused its rights under the Genocide Convention as a pretext for its unlawful use of force. It also sought and obtained provisional measures obliging Russia to suspend its military operations. The purpose of this Article is to evaluate the efficacy of this strategic litigation through an examination of the participants\u27goals, the court\u27s strategic choices, and the discernible impact of the provisional measures\u27 decision so far. In turn, this Article contributes to the scholarly literature on strategic litigation impact, the role of judicial institutions in ongoing armed conflicts. It also provides a basic structure for future researchers to consider the longer-term impact of this case in the resolution of the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Uniting for Peace and Humanitarian Intervention: The Authorising Function of the U.N. General Assembly

Although the end of the Cold War has seen the functional expansion of the United Nations Security Council, concerns still remain over its legitimacy, driven in part by its failure to address serious and persistent human rights abuses. While this has resurrected arguments in favour of the doctrine of humanitarian intervention outside the U.N. Charter framework, little attention has been paid to how the U.N. General Assembly may authorise such enforcement action under a U.N. mandate through the invocation of the Uniting for Peace mechanism. Some dismiss Uniting for Peace as little more than a relic of the Cold War, but, if properly conceived, the General Assembly may authorise a humanitarian intervention where the Security Council is deadlocked and has failed to accomplish its primary responsibility of maintaining international peace and security. This article will consider the constitutional foundations of the Uniting for Peace resolution and the scope for the General Assembly to assume analogous functions to that of the Security Council in authorising enforcement action

The Dialogic Function of I.C.J. Provisional Measures Decisions in the U.N. Political Organs: Assessing the Evidence

The aim of this article is to consider the degree to which provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice (I.C.J.) have influenced United Nations (U.N.) diplomacy and the exercise of functions by its political organs in the areas of international peace, security, and human rights. This article evaluates this influence by examining decisions in which the I.C.J. indicated provisional measures, denoting the remedy available to the Court, on an interim basis, to restrain or instruct the parties to take certain measures to preserve either or both parties’ rights pending the outcome of the case. In doing so, this article builds on scholarly literature about the function of I.C.J. provisional measures as part of a broader litigation strategy to influence negotiations and political settlements. Although the formal purpose of provisional measures is to preserve existing legal rights pending an outcome on the merits of a dispute, scholars have also noted parties’ use of provisional measures to advance a broader strategic purpose beyond the confines of the interim remedy proceedings

The Politicisation of Hybrid Courts:Observations from the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia

The use of ‘hybrid’ tribunals as a means to secure accountability for international crimes seeks to combine national ownership over the trials whilst providing a framework for the inclusion of international standards and personnel in the proceedings. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) represents one such hybrid experiment. Yet the ECCC has faced recurring allegations of political interference. These allegations are substantial and even if not always verifiable at least create an appearance of impropriety. The failure of the ECCC and United Nations to adequately address these allegations derived from a hybrid model that failed to provide sufficient safeguards against interference. The international community agreed on a solution to secure accountability with awareness that the trials were likely to be politically tainted. As such, the experiment in Cambodia provides a cautionary tale for the future design of hybrid tribunals.</jats:p

Addition of phenylisocyanate to 3,5-diphenyl-1,2-dithiolium-4-olate gives a thioketone

The Type B mesoionic heterocycle, 3,5-diphenyl-1,2-dithiolium-4-olate, reacts with phenylisocyanate producing a thioketone derivative rather than a pseudo-semi-conjugated heterocyclic mesomeric betaine. The structure of the thioketone product was confirmed by an X-ray crystallographic investigation

Preparation of pyridine-stretched 2’-deoxyhypoxanthosine phosphoramidite

Pyridine-stretched 2!-deoxyhypoxanthosine (strH) phosphoramidite was prepared in eight steps from Hoffer’s sugar (2!-deoxy-3,5-di-O-(p-toluoyl)-α-D-erythro-pentofuranosyl chloride). Improved synthesis of the Hoffer sugar was achieved without need for distillation or chromatographic separation of intermediates, or use of gaseous HCl. Conditions were optimised to provide a key nitrile intermediate for the preparation of strH whereby the cesium salt of 4(5)-nitroimidazole was glycosylated using Hoffer’s sugar. The nitrile intermediate was also used to prepare pyridine-stretched 2!-deoxyadenosine (strA) and pyridine-stretched 2!-deoxy-diaminopurine (strD). Preliminary studies indicate that strH forms a stronger, size-expanded base pair with adenine compared with the Watson-Crick thymine-adenine base pair

Rescue of the MERTK phagocytic defect in a human iPSC disease model using translational read-through inducing drugs.

Inherited retinal dystrophies are an important cause of blindness, for which currently there are no effective treatments. In order to study this heterogeneous group of diseases, adequate disease models are required in order to better understand pathology and to test potential therapies. Induced pluripotent stem cells offer a new way to recapitulate patient specific diseases in vitro, providing an almost limitless amount of material to study. We used fibroblast-derived induced pluripotent stem cells to generate retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) from an individual suffering from retinitis pigmentosa associated with biallelic variants in MERTK. MERTK has an essential role in phagocytosis, one of the major functions of the RPE. The MERTK deficiency in this individual results from a nonsense variant and so the MERTK-RPE cells were subsequently treated with two translational readthrough inducing drugs (G418 &amp; PTC124) to investigate potential restoration of expression of the affected gene and production of a full-length protein. The data show that PTC124 was able to reinstate phagocytosis of labeled photoreceptor outer segments at a reduced, but significant level. These findings represent a confirmation of the usefulness of iPSC derived disease specific models in investigating the pathogenesis and screening potential treatments for these rare blinding disorders