The Role of a Special Adviser to the Prosecutor at the Embattled ICC

Description

Please join Prof. Kevin Jon Heller for a discussion of his work as Special Adviser on War Crimes to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Prof. Heller will discuss the three main projects he has worked on since being appointed in 2021: the groundbreaking crimes charges against the Supreme Leader and Chief Justice of the Taliban government, which focus on the crime against humanity of persecution on the basis of gender; the Office of the Prosecutor’s recently launched Policy on Addressing Environmental Damage Through the Rome Statute; and the Office’s investigation in the situation in Palestine, which led to controversial arrest warrants against high-ranking Hamas and Israeli officials. Prof. Heller will then discuss the impact of recent attacks on the ICC – by Russia, Israel, and the United States – on individuals who work at the ICC and on the institution itself.

Bio

Kevin Jon Heller is Professor of International Law and Security at the University of Copenhagen’s Centre for Military Studies, the Editor-in-Chief of the international-law blog Opinio Juris, and an Academic Member of Doughty Street Chambers in London. His books include The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and the Origins of International Criminal Law (OUP, 2011) and four co-edited volumes: The Handbook of Comparative Criminal Law (2nd ed. forthcoming OUP, 2026), The Hidden Histories of War Crimes Trials (OUP, 2013), the Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law (OUP, 2018), and Contingency in International Law: On the Possibility of Different Legal Histories (OUP, 2021). Later this year Cambridge University Press will publish his short book The Vietnam War, Environmental Destruction, and International Law.

Prof. Heller was one of Radovan Karadzic's formally-appointed legal associates at the ICTY; served as the plaintiffs’ sole expert witness in Salim v Mitchell, a successful Alien Tort Statute case against the psychologists who designed the CIA’s torture program; and acted as legal advisor to and expert witness for Ramzi bin al-Shibh, one of the defendants in the 9/11 trial at Guantanamo Bay.

Registration

SCILJ appreciates your registration at scilj@juridicum.su.se