Alex Whiting

As Alex Whiting told "PirWeli", because of the fact that Russia is not a State Party of the Rome Statute, the investigation will likely take time, probably a few years. The former Prosecution Coordinator in the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, who has published numerous articles on the August war-related topic and who is actively observing the progress of the investigation, hopes that despite the difficulties, the investigation will be successfully completed. "The ICC's investigation into the August 2008 war will be extremely challenging because many years have passed and because one of the countries involved, Russia, is not a State Party of the Rome Statute and is not cooperating with the investigation. For these reasons, the investigation will likely take time, probably a few years. However there are also reasons to hope for a successful outcome. First, although the ICC investigation is just beginning now, there have been many investigations in the intervening years and so there is substantial evidence that has been preserved. Second, it can also happen that the passage of time allows for new evidence to emerge. At the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, some of the most significant pieces of evidence emerged only years after the events. Third, international criminal tribunals have succeeded in the past even without full state cooperation, so the fact that Russia is not cooperating will not necessarily be an impediment to a successful investigation," - Alex Whiting told "PirWeli".

Kenya risks being isolated among other nations if it fails to co-operate with the ICC, lawyers have warned in criticism of President Uhuru Kenyatta. International law experts yesterday told the Star Kenya remains a State Party to the Rome Statute and failure to co-operate with the International Criminal Court would be a violation of Kenya’s own constitution...Alex Whiting, a professor of international law at Harvard University in the United States, said Uhuru is now openly saying he will not abide by the law. “Kenya signed and ratified the Rome Statute, and therefore it has a legal obligation to co-operate with the court,” Whiting told the Star. He said the international community will also have to take a position on Kenya.

The battle over replacing Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court reminds us yet again of how divided we are...But anger and cynicism is where most voters are stuck, uncertain of what needs to be done, and deeply skeptical that a solution even exists. A solution grounded in simple, constitutional, common-sense principles and actions exists, and a brilliant communicator who has spent most of a decade refining and promoting it also happens to be eminently qualified to serve on the Supreme Court. President Obama must nominate him. His name is Lawrence Lessig and he is an author, Harvard Law School professor, married father of three and tireless advocate for citizen equality...Another friend, professor Alex Whiting, said of Lessig’s work ethic: “There’s normal working hard, and then there’s the kind of working hard that he does, which is sustained and comprehensive and driven in a way that I have just never seen in somebody else.”

While Russia and Western states square off over Syria, Ukraine and Crimea, the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into alleged war crimes in Georgia in 2008 also risks being caught up in a new Cold War. And even though ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda was praised for finally removing what appeared to be her office’s Africa-only blinders, those who know the strategy discussions as they run deep in The Hague’s dunes, believe she has ventured into the Caucasus with extreme reluctance. “After seven years [Bensouda] had to make a decision about moving forward,” Alex Whiting, a former member of her inner circle and now professor at Harvard Law School, told IJT.

The scale of the destruction in Timbuktu has led to the International Criminal Court in the Hague taking on a case of war crimes against cultural and religious heritage. To discuss the importance of this case, our guests are Tim Insoll, Professor of African and Islamic Archaeology, University of Manchester and Alex Whiting, Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School.

An op-ed by Alex Whiting and Amanda Chen: The Harvard International Review sat down to talk about recent dissent regarding decisions of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its evolving role in international justice. What do you think the current most important functions of the ICC are? There’s lot of discussion of the political effect of the court, but the court’s work is judicial and legal and that is what it has to focus on. The ICC is a legal institution, constrained by a statute adopted by treaty. There are 123 countries that have now signed onto the treaty. The most important function is for the court to investigate and prosecute allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide that fall under the jurisdiction of the court. There’s lot of discussion of the political effect of the court, but the court’s work is judicial and legal and that is what it has to focus on.

A new program at Harvard Law School (HLS) aims to help reform the nation’s criminal justice system, with assistance from Harvard students and faculty. The program’s executive director is Larry Schwartztol, who has been a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union. Schwartztol has worked on issues including racial justice, policing in schools, educational equality, and economic justice concerns involving the home foreclosure crisis and discriminatory lending practices. When he decided to attend Yale Law School Schwartztol said, “I wanted to find ways to use the law as a vehicle for social justice.”...Our mission is to help advance criminal justice reform by bringing rigorous and creative legal thinking to bear on hard, cutting-edge policy problems. The program builds on an incredible infrastructure already at the Law School. I work with the two faculty directors, Carol Steiker and Alex Whiting, and we are excited about bringing together our own mix of backgrounds in doing this type of work.

Citing "grave concern" for the pending "crisis," more than three dozen prominent legal community members today asked Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch to launch a formal investigation into "compelling evidence of pervasive police and prosecutorial misconduct" in Orange County. ... Others joining in the sentiment of the communication include Harvard legal theorist Charles Ogletree, criminal justice professor Angela Davis, former Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti, former Chief Assistant United States Attorney Richard Drooyan and Alex Whiting, a Harvard professor and former prosecutor of international crimes at the Hague as well as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Constitution Project.

More than seven years after Georgia’s war with Russia, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague has asked judges to authorise an investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the conflict....Alex Whiting, a Harvard law professor, previously worked in the Office of the Prosecutor at the ICC and also acted as an external expert for the August Ruins report. He explained to IWPR why the ICC prosecutor was taking action now. “I think that the ICC could have demonstrated earlier that there would be no domestic prosecutions and that therefore the investigation would be admissible at the ICC, but two factors made the court take its time. First, the court is extremely busy and stretched for resources, so there is a backlog of cases to be investigated. Second, it was clear that neither Russia nor Georgia was eager to have an investigation – although Georgia is a state party to the Rome Statute, it never asked the ICC to investigate crimes from the war – and therefore the Court knew that the investigation would be difficult and the chances of success diminished,” he said.

The phrase is often used but what we call “war crimes” are hardly ever prosecuted. Monocle’s Steve Bloomfield chairs a powerful discussion on what is a war crime and why the outrage rarely leads to an investigation. Featuring Kevin Jon Heller, Alex Whiting and Gary D Solis.

He is a luminary in the world of cyberlaw, a star Harvard professor with a résumé a hundred pages thick, and a sensation on the thought leader circuit. But even though he has raised more than $1 million for his presidential bid, Lawrence Lessig, who is mounting a quixotic campaign for the Democratic nomination, is struggling to get noticed...“Larry’s a terrific guy, but I don’t think that because you have a very important project, that therefore you should be in charge of all the millions of things the president is in charge of, including foreign policy,” said Charles Fried, a conservative Harvard Law School professor who gave Mr. Lessig $100 anyway. Alex Whiting, a Harvard Law professor who was best man at Mr. Lessig’s wedding, was surprised last summer when they sat on a boat in New Hampshire and his old friend revealed his plans to run for president. While highly intelligent, he said, Mr. Lessig does not have the chatty demeanor of a regular politician, and Mr. Whiting said he worried about the toll the campaign could take. “I think it’s been frustrating for him,” Mr. Whiting said. “He’s brilliant and offers new ways of thinking about familiar problems, but ideas don’t always carry the day.”

As New Delhi gears up for its biggest ever diplomatic jamboree with African nations, the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor has said that India should “contribute” towards the goal of accountability for the “world’s worst crimes” by arresting the visiting Sudanese President, Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, who has been indicted for 10 counts as a 'war criminal...Harvard Law School's Professor Alex Whiting, who had been attorney in ICC Prosecutor's office from 2010 to 2013, agreed that India "does not have legal obligation" to enforce warrant for Al Bashir as UNSC resolution 1593 "does not obligate non-State parties to cooperate with the ICC but only urges them to do so". "However, India is a signatory to the Genocide Convention which states that "that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which [the contracting parties] undertake to prevent and to punish," Whiting told Express. India became a party to the 1948 Genocide Convention in 1959. Whiting felt that "this obligation would cause India to think twice about hosting someone who has been charged by an international tribunal with genocide".

Long ago, Larry Lessig relished the private world of an academic. That was another life, though, before a cartoon version of his face—grey hair, tiny round glasses—cropped up all over the internet, before he discussed his books and joked around on TV shows like "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." That was before he decided to run for President of the United States...“It was almost like he was another professor in the classroom,” remembers Alex Whiting, now a professor of the practice at Harvard Law School who attended Yale with Lessig. “You had the professor in the front of the classroom, the professor in the back,” he adds, cracking a grin...“He is, in many ways, an elegant man,” says Charles R. Nesson, a Law School professor who helped recruit Lessig for the Berkman Center for Internet and Society during his first stint at Harvard. “Elegant in the forcefulness of his ideas and mode of his presentation.”

Whereas Kenya feels that it was duped to support amendment to Rule 68 of the International Criminal Court Rules of Procedure and Evidence on the basis that it would not apply 'retrospectively' an international law expert says there was no agreement that it cannot be used in ongoing cases. Harvard University law professor Alex Whiting says if the Assembly of State Parties (ASP) wanted it not to be applied on ongoing cases, it could have stated so. "When the ASP adopted the new Rule 68, it did not say that the new rule would not apply to ongoing cases (and it could have said this). Instead, all it said is that under the Statute, new rules cannot be applied "retroactively to the detriment of the person who is being ... prosecuted," he says basing his argument on Article 51(4) of the Rome Statute.

A ruling by the ICC judges that admits testimony by hostile witnesses against Deputy President William Ruto could complicate his case. ... Alex Whiting, a professor of international law at Harvard University, summed up the ruling as "a very significant decision for the case". "First, it confirms something that the prosecution has been saying for years, that witnesses were improperly interfered with in the Ruto case," Whiting told the Star yesterday.In Parliament, some 40 Jubilee lawmakers yesterday tore into the ICC, accusing The Hague-based court of sabotaging the administration's efforts to unite local communities. They said the decision by the ICC trial judges to admit recanted witness statements as evidence against Deputy President Ruto was part of a plot to break up the Jubilee Alliance ahead of the 2017 polls.

Eighteen years ago, Vitomir Spiric, his wife and young daughter arrived in Phoenix to start over. They're Bosnian Serbs who were displaced by the Balkan wars in the 1990s. The US government awarded them refugee status...Spiric and his family settled into their new life in Phoenix. Then, about a decade ago, US immigration officials discovered his name on the militia’s rosters. That’s when Spiric’s American dream came crashing down. The US government prosecuted Spiric for making a false statement on his immigration form and initiated deportation proceedings...Harvard Law School professor Alex Whiting says these deportation cases are necessary to uphold the integrity of the US refugee system. “People do not have a right to come into the country and fail to disclose relevant pertinent information that is required of them,” Whiting says.