Neil Boister

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor at University of Canterbury

This article explores the nature of the international drug control system, to gauge the degree of flexibility it permits States Parties to adopt approaches that appear to be in breach of the provisions of the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. It does so through a review of John Collins’ Legalising the Drug Wars: A Regulatory History of UN Drug C...

This article sets out the history of double criminality in the law of extradition. It shows how that it only emerged as a legal requirement in the ‘Jay Treaty’, the 1794 treaty between theUSand UK. The article explores how the ‘Jay proviso’, a procedural requirement that the requesting state produce sufficient evidence to satisfy the requested stat...

The criminalization of the unlawful use of force in international relations is not usually linked to conscription of an army to fight such a war. However, historical precedent in the Nuremberg and Tokyo International Military Tribunals established that conscription was part of the common plan to wage a war of aggression. After a brief history of co...

This article examines the law and practice of extradition in the small island nations of the South Pacific, the Pacific Island Countries (PICs). The PICs’ extradition laws make for an interesting subject because of the increased threat of transnational organized crime in the region, the possibility that the PICs may serve as venues of convenience f...

The book provides an in-depth account of the history of key developments in transnational criminal law. With contributions from a range of acknowledged experts, Histories of Transnational Criminal Law traverses a range of topics, beginning with the normative, intellectual and institutional histories of transnational criminal law, then moving to the...

The African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples' Rights in Context - edited by Charles C. Jalloh May 2019

The African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples' Rights in Context - edited by Charles C. Jalloh May 2019

Cambridge Core - Human Rights - The African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples' Rights in Context - edited by Charles C. Jalloh

Legal tensions are growing as more jurisdictions move towards legal regulation of the cannabis market in contravention of the obligation under UN drug control treaties to limit cannabis exclusively to medical and scientific purposes. Reaching a global consensus to amend the conventions does not appear to be a viable political option in the foreseea...

This paper explores the discernible long-term trend towards the simplification of the conditions for extradition in the law of many states. The process of simplification appears to be justified by the necessity of taking more effective action against transnational crime. It appears to be taking place in three main areas: the recharacterisation of e...

Legal tensions are growing within the international drug control regime as increasing numbers of member states move towards or seriously consider legal regulation of the cannabis market for non-medical purposes. Amongst reform options not requiring consensus, inter se modification appears to be the most ‘elegant’ approach and one that provides a us...

This article explores how transnational criminal law is used as a tool to create a legal space within the state where the fugitive resides or is acting, in order in effect to re-set the border inside that jurisdiction and to make it possible, by proxy, to enforce another state’s law. It argues that transnational criminal law is used to establish a...

Philosophers of liberalism from Rousseau to Rawls have placed the good citizen at the centre of the liberal political arrangements they advocate. These good citizens bear their obligations and exercise their rights within the law of nation states. They enjoy status in their communities, communities to which they owe allegiance. Conceptions of the n...

Partly a system of moral disapprobation, partly a system of trade prohibition, the foundations of the modern international drug control system arise from China’s opium problem of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The bizarre morality play that began with the opium wars where European states fought to preserve their opium trade to China reache...

Indonesia has enacted laws which provide mandatory protection for victims of human trafficking. It also has mandatory drug laws which, in some cases, lead to the death penalty. This legislative conflict together with investigative and prosecutorial failure risks the execution of human trafficked victims who are used as drug mules in organized crime...

This article examines the tensions within the international drug control system which are putting the until now consensual position in regard to the prohibition on drugs supply and use for anything other than medical and scientific use – the Vienna Consensus – under strain. The article examines a number of areas where policy stress is leading to co...

This article examines the provisions for international cooperation in the UN Convention against Transnational Organised Crime (UNTOC) and their effectiveness in achieving the UNTOC’s goal of promoting effective cooperation in the prevention and combating of transnational organised crime. It is a response to the growing sense that the UNTOC is not a...

In an attempt to clarify the concept of transnational criminal law, this piece examines its basic elements, analysing questions about what its essential components are and whether purely national crimes and laws for criminal cooperation are part of transnational criminal law. It then turns to the difficult question of whether transnational criminal...

The Tokyo International Military Tribunal (IMT) (1946-1948) is a neglected topic in the literature on post-war international criminal law. Condemned by its critics as 'Victors' Justice' and expediently forgotten by its erstwhile supporters, it is commonly thought by those who recall it at all that it was little more (and probably less) than a footn...

Despite the recent growth of interest in international criminal law, in research and practice, the Tokyo International Military Tribunal remains largely neglected. One of the reasons for this is the absence of any readily available version of the judgments that emanated from the Tribunal. This absence has prevented informed debate about a hugely im...

And from the time [Napoleon] took up the correct fencing attitude in Moscow, and instead of his opponent's rapier saw a cudgel raised above his head, he did not cease to complain to Kutuzov and to the Emperor Alexander that the war was being carried on contrary to all the rules, as if there were rules for killing people. Tolstoy, War and Peace, Boo...

In the Belgian Arrest Warrant Case the International Court of Justice ruled on a dispute between Belgium and the Democratic Republic of the Congo about a warrant of arrest issued by Belgian authorities for the arrest of the DRC's foreign minister. The court ruled, wrongly this note suggests, first that foreign ministers have immunity from prosecuti...

The Police Foundation's Independent Inquiry into the Misuse of Drugs Act, 1971, proclaimed that the Government has room to manoeuvre in respect of the decriminalisation of the personal use of cannabis. This article explores the extent to which the UN Drug Conventions allow the Government such room. It sets out the specific international obligations...