Join us on Thursday, January 16, at 12 p.m. EST,  for a seminar and discussion on The Crisis of Public International Law: The Case of Palestine and Impunity for Genocide, featuring Center for Constitutional Rights Deputy Legal Director Maria LaHood. This seminar will consider what meaningful utility remains for international law and legal institutions in a time of genocide and impunity, and is part of the People’s Academy of International Law.

Fifteen months of Israel’s accelerated genocide against the Palestinian people, unrestrained by effective legal prophylaxes or accountability, has exposed to the world a terrible crisis in international law. The International Court of Justice has ordered preliminary measures, declaring that South Africa's case against Israel for genocide is plausible, while the International Criminal Court Office has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The International Court of Justice, in a July 2024 Advisory Opinion, determined that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian Territory, including Gaza, West Bank and East Jerusalem, continues, is illegal, and must stop. Against this backdrop of legal decisions and incontrovertible evidence of genocide, the U.S., Germany, and other states have continued to provide Israel with billions of dollars in weaponry, and the U.S. invited Netanyahu and other Israeli politicians to be honoured at the U.S. Congress. The illegality of Israel’s war against Palestinians is at the same time obscured by claims advanced by the U.S. and other states that the Israeli war, determined as “plausible genocide,” is just part of a so-called "rules-based international order." Domestic and international institutions and legal systems have appeared largely co-opted by the U.S.. 

Speakers: 

• Raji Sourani, Director of Palestinian Centre for Human Rights 
• Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories 
• Maria LaHood, Deputy Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights
• Shahd Hammouri, Lecturer in Law at Kent Law School 
• Dean Marjorie Cohn (moderator)

This virtual event is free, but registration is required.

The People’s Academy of International Law, sponsored by the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the Center for Constitutional Rights, seeks to help progressive and anti-imperialist lawyers and human rights defenders to marshal the tools of international law to support people’s struggles around the world. It features a free, online continuing legal education curriculum that provides intensive lessons on different facets of international law as it relates to human rights, from civil and political rights to economic, social, and cultural rights.