Wartime Constitutionalism and the Politics of Constitutional Review in Ukraine
On 18 July 2024, Ukraine’s Constitutional Court issued a decision concerning the rights of the accused in criminal proceedings under martial law. The extension of detention, the Court ruled, can only be issued based on a reasoned court decision—this applies even in times of war. In this blogpost, we examine how the war has influenced the ways in which various actors engage with constitutional complaints, before discussing the Constitutional Court's recent decision on Article 615.6 of the Criminal Procedure Code. We argue that this ruling exemplifies how the Constitutional Court can maintain the relevance and practical significance of its decision-making in wartime.
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Accountability for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine
Two years have passed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine – an act of aggression which 141 states of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) condemned as such shortly after. This crime of aggression has brought unimaginable suffering to the people of Ukraine. As this blog will highlight in the following, a reform of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) concerning the crime of aggression is necessary and long overdue. The current jurisdictional regime leaves accountability gaps, which have become painfully visible in the past two years. Plausible suggestions for the reform are already out there – it ultimately “all depends on the political will” of the 124 ICC state parties.
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