Chapter 4: Between consolidation and innovation: The international criminal court's trial chamber judgment in the lubanga case

The judgment delivered by Trial Chamber I of the International Criminal Court on 14 March 2012 in the case of The Prosecutor v. Thomas Lubanga Dyilo was welcomed by a number of experts as a landmark decision. Not only was the judgment the first ever adopted by the Court, thus marking a new step in the operationalization of the Rome Statute, but it also provided an opportunity for addressing a number of procedural and substantive issues that are essential to the progressive development of both international criminal and humanitarian law. This chapter does not seek to provide a comprehensive analysis of all these issues. It focuses instead on the core of the judgment, i.e., the definitions of the war crimes for which Thomas Lubanga Dyilo was convicted (Sect. 4.3). The Trial Chamber found that the accused was guilty of conscripting and enlisting children under 15 into an armed group, namely the Forces Patriotiques Pour la Libération du Congo (UPC/FPLC), and of using them to participate actively in hostilities. These crimes occurred in the Ituri region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from September 2002 to August 2003. This article also examines how the Trial Chamber addressed the preliminary question of the characterization of the situation during the relevant period (Sect. 4.2). The judgment provides essential insight into the Trial Chamber's understanding of the notion of armed conflict within the framework of the Rome Statute. Copyright © T.M.C. Asser Instituut and the Authors 2012

The Multicultural Classroom as a Comparative Law Site: A United Kingdom Perspective

This chapter studies the impact of the recent multicultural approach to comparative legal studies on comparative law teaching, with a focus on British debates and literature. I will argue that the multicultural turn of (comparative) legal teaching, reflected for example in a greater diversity of teaching techniques, a greater emphasis on minority issues and law &… disciplines, responds to a multiplicity of motivations. Pedagogically, it is a response to the increasingly diverse backgrounds of students and their differing intellectual starting-points. Pragmatically, it is a means to boost students’ employability and intellectual versality in a job market that now values “cultural awareness skills”. Finally, conceptually, it is a tool designed to unravel the pluralistic nature of law. From these diverse drivers to the multicultural turn in (comparative) legal teaching, it is possible to identify similarities with other recent trends of globalisation and internationalisation of legal education. However, this article will submit that differences remain. Having analysed these differences, I will go on to argue and reveal that in them lie the core features of a multicultural approach to legal teaching and its intrinsic connections to comparative law, as the multicultural classroom itself becomes a comparative law site

The epigenetic landscape of renal cancer

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Nature in Nature Reviews: Nephrology on 28/11/2016, available online: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrneph.2016.168 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.The majority of kidney cancers are associated with mutations in the von Hippel-Lindau gene and a small proportion are associated with infrequent mutations in other well characterized tumour-suppressor genes. In the past 15 years, efforts to uncover other key genes involved in renal cancer have identified many genes that are dysregulated or silenced via epigenetic mechanisms, mainly through methylation of promoter CpG islands or dysregulation of specific microRNAs. In addition, the advent of next-generation sequencing has led to the identification of several novel genes that are mutated in renal cancer, such as PBRM1, BAP1 and SETD2, which are all involved in histone modification and nucleosome and chromatin remodelling. In this Review, we discuss how altered DNA methylation, microRNA dysregulation and mutations in histone-modifying enzymes disrupt cellular pathways in renal cancers