Reading the Rome Statute as an Organic Instrument

This event is co-hosted by the Public International Law (PIL) group.

Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji, Judge of the International Criminal Court and President of the Trial Division

Reading the Rome Statute – As an Organic Instrument

Practitioners, academics and students from within and outside the University of Oxford are all welcome. No RSVP is necessary.

Abstract:

Discussion on the proper role of the ICC judges in the interpretation of the Rome Statute – especially in those circumstances where it is felt or evident that the words of the Statute offer no ready guidance.

Biography:

Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji (1962) is a Judge of the Trial Division. He came to the ICC from his post as the Legal Advisor to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Dr Navi Pillay (a former Judge of the ICC), with cross-appointment as Principal Appeals Counsel for the Prosecution in theCharles Taylor Case at the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL).

He had previously worked in various other capacities at the SCSL and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR): among them, as Senior Prosecution Appeals Counsel at the SCSL in the AFRC Case and the CDF Case, Lead Prosecution Trial Counsel at the ICTR, the Head of Chambers at the ICTR, Senior Legal Officer in Chambers at the ICTR, and Head Legal Officer in the Appeals Chamber of the ICTR. As the Legal Advisor to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, he led the writing of submissions filed on behalf of the High Commissioner in her interventions as amicus curiae before the European Court of Human Rights (in the El Masri Case and the Hirsi Case) and the United States Supreme Court (in the Kiobel Case).

He had also taught international criminal law as adjunct professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ottawa, Canada, and has an extensive record of legal scholarship and publications. He is the founding editor-in-chief of the Nigerian Yearbook of International Law.

He served as legal expert to Nigeria's delegation to the ICC-ASP Special Working Group on the Definition of the Crime of Aggression.

He has also practised law as a barrister: appearing in many criminal, civil and constitutional cases before national courts in Nigeria and Canada. He was called to the Nigerian Bar in 1986, and to the Bars of the Canadian provinces of Ontario and British Columbia in 1993. He served as articled student-at-law to Chief Mike Ahamba SAN and Mr David W Scott QC—of Nigeria and Canada, respectively.

He holds an LLB from the University of Calabar, Nigeria, an LLM from McGill University, Canada, and an LLD in international criminal law from the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Judge Eboe-Osuji is a son of the late Chief M V Eboe-Osuji and Mrs Clara Nnenze Eboe-Osuji of Añara, Imo, Nigeria.