Leiden Journal of International Law (2011) (peer reviewed) , 74 pages.

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This article presents a theoretical criticism of the international law of complicity and the domestic criminal principles upon which it is based. It argues for a unitary theory of perpetration, ending the long-endured fixation on modes of liability within the discipline. On this account, complicity becomes a subset of a more capacious notion of perpetration along with all other forms of responsibility. The Appeals Chambers of the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the International Criminal Court have both cited the article in judgements.

For criticisms and responses to this article on Opinio Juris, see:

• Professor Thomas Weigend (Cologne), and My Response to Weigend;
• Professor Darryl Robinson (Queens), and My Response to Robinson;
• Professor Jens Ohlin (Cornell), and My Response to Ohlin.

For longer, thoughtful criticisms of my piece, see:

• Cassandra Steer (McGill)
• Gerhard Werle & Boris Burghardt (Berlin & Hamburg)
• Miles Jackson (Oxford)

For the sequel to my article, which plots the history of the unitary theory of perpetration in five different countries, see:

• The Strangely Familiar History of the Unitary Theory of Perpetration.

Journal of International Criminal Justice, Vol. 4(1) 2007 (peer reviewed).

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The article criticizes various aspects of the Military Commissions Act 2006, which governed the trial of Guantánamo detainees. The piece forms part of an expert symposium on the Military Commissions Act, which also included George Fletcher and Michael Dorf. The article is cited with approval in the amicus brief of the French Minister of Justice, which was joined by various international law experts, in the Omar Kadr case before US Military Commissions.

Journal of International Criminal Justice, Vol. 4(1) 2006 (peer reviewed).

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This article was awarded the La Pira Prize in 2006 for best article by a scholar under the age of 35 years. The paper concludes that there is a striking resemblance between allegations made of detention practices at Guantánamo and many of the scenarios that gave rise to individual criminal responsibility for unlawful confinement as a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions in other contexts. As such, I gently emphasize the need to rethink the legal basis for detention at Guantánamo and point to the troubling risks of individual criminal responsibility for purporting to develop international humanitarian law through unilateral changes in policy rather than formal international law-making processes.

The International Criminal Law Review Vol. 3(3) 2003 (peer reviewed).

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This article was cited with approval by the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in the decision to take judicial notice of the Rwandan Genocide. It argues for great use of judicial notice in international criminal justice as a means of overcoming the need to prove background contextual elements of international crimes, such as the existence of an armed conflict, especially when they are common knowledge and previously adjudicated.

The International Review of the Red Cross, June 2003, Vol. 85 No 850, 313 (peer reviewed).

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This article argues for the abolition of the distinction between international and non-international armed conflict in the laws of armed conflict, by highlighting the current dichotomy’s failure to cope with conflicts that contain both elements, namely, internationalized armed conflicts. The article was cited within the International Criminal Court’s first judgment, was listed as one of four documents of interest on the ICRC’s main international humanitarian law webpage, and is translated into Arabic, Spanish and Russian.

• For a reiteration of these arguments in light of contemporary events in Syria, see How Would War Crimes Prosecutors Classify the Syrian Conflict(s)?