Jörg Polakiewicz

#Ukraine becoming 125th party to #ICC Rome Statute 👏👏👏

Slovenia’s election campaign was already steeped in acrimony. Then operatives from a notable private intelligence company, founded by former members of the Israel Defense Forces, flew to Ljubljana in the depths of winter. 🔗 politico.eu/article/black-…

Clarification: the ad hoc panel did not “clear” the ICC Prosecutor. It advises the Bureau, which decides and may depart from it. The panel applied a “beyond reasonable doubt” threshold, which in our view is not appropriate. Plus the article does not engage with the OIOS findings.

French judge Nicolas Guillou who issued an ICC warrant against Netanyahu says U.S.-linked sanctions basically cut him off from daily life: Almost all means of payment… are American. Your card no longer works… only Visa or Mastercard. I can no longer order on Amazon… book an Airbnb… my transaction is cancelled. It’s like a time machine… returning to a pre-digital world. Kafkaesque situation… same blacklist as terrorists and drug traffickers. If judges are afraid to judge… then there is no more democracy. We will act exclusively out of fear.

In my final op-ed as I end my tenure as Commissioner-General, I warn about relentless efforts to destroy UNRWA, amid growing disregard for international law. Read more in The Guardian ⬇️ theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

During our hearing on threats to the @IntlCrimCourt, Judge #Guillou said: "Despite these challenges, I am convinced that Europe will stand up for its values. There can be no Europe without an independent judiciary. And there can be no rule of law in 🇪🇺 without its sovereignty."

#EUCO statement on Ukraine - supported by 25 Heads of State or Government (1/3) consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press…

After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective today. I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby. It has been an honor serving under @POTUS and @DNIGabbard and leading the professionals at NCTC. May God bless America.

The US just told the ICJ in South Africa v. Israel: "We helped write the Genocide Convention. Our interpretation should carry weight." That argument — and 21 others — are now before the Court in the most-watched case in its history. Full breakdown: simplelaw.blog/p/the-us-goes-…

The United States filed its declaration of intervention in South Africa v. Israel (the Gaza genocide case). Key points: - Genocidal intent *may* co-exist with other military aims - Efforts to mitigate civilian harm or spare group members are evidence of non-genocidal intent

🚨 BREAKING: Researchers from Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Oxford, and 12 other institutions published a paper that exposes a blind spot at the core of AI safety. It's not jailbreaks. It's not hallucinations. It's law. The paper is "Legal Alignment for Safe and Ethical AI." Published January 2026. 20+ co-authors across law, CS, and policy. No product. No hype. Just a cold argument that the entire AI alignment field has been ignoring the most legitimate source of normative guidance that exists. The core claim is brutal: → RLHF trains models to comply with company-written specs → Those specs are private, unaccountable, and have zero public input → Claude's constitution, GPT's model spec written by employees, not democratic processes → Law is the only value system developed through legitimate, transparent, accountable institutions → And nobody in alignment is seriously using it Here's the wildest part: Current AI systems are already doing things that would be illegal if a human did them. One study caught LLMs engaging in insider trading when under pressure. Another showed coding agents autonomously hacking. The models aren't being "bad" they just have no legal compass. The paper breaks legal alignment into three pathways: → Pathway 1: Align AI to the actual content of law — not company ethics docs, real legal rules → Pathway 2: Use legal methods of interpretation to handle ambiguous safety specs → Pathway 3: Use legal structures like agency law and fiduciary duty as blueprints for AI governance The numbers they cite are alarming: → 18 of 25 top MCP vulnerabilities are rated "Easy" to exploit → Fine-tuned models show 14% more deceptive marketing, 188% more harmful posts when optimizing for competition → Medical AI models pass benchmarks by exploiting shortcuts not real reasoning The deepest insight nobody's talking about: Legal rules are "automatically updated" through legislation and courts. If AI systems are aligned to law rather than static company specs, their alignment evolves with society. No retraining required. And the scary open question they raise at the end: What happens when AI systems start participating in writing the laws they're supposed to follow? Paper dropped January 2026. Link in first comment 👇

International Law, which includes the prohibition to use force to settle international disputes, is an integral, binding part of the EU Treaties. Its "expiration" cannot be decreed by anyone in a speech. Each EU institution should work in accordance to its respective competence.

Normally, when any Council member wants to block a meeting, they do so at the outset by requesting a vote on the agenda. Since, under Rule 9, adopting the agenda is the 1st order of business for an SC meeting, if there are not at least 9 votes in favour, the mtg can't go forward.

Here's our comprehensive explainer of the next steps in the appointment process for the next UN Secretary-General ⬇️ LINK: scprocedure.org/chapter-7-sect…

The strikes on Iran are blatantly illegal. I explained in June why the strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities were unlawful under US and international law. Everything I wrote then is true today, but this is a far larger assault with far graver consequences. nytimes.com/2025/06/23/opi…

Wow. The EU is undergoing Treaty change. You just weren't supposed to notice. On 12 February, a joint declaration by Commission President von der Leyen and EU Council President Antonio Costa endorsed five simultaneous reforms to the architecture of EU law-making — rewriting how laws are prepared, transposed, delegated, implemented and reviewed. No Convention. No ratification. No democratic debate, all in the name of urgency and new geopolitical circumstances. I call this the “Castle Method”: the systematic use of informal summitry to produce Treaty-level institutional effects, while carefully avoiding the visibility and safeguards that Treaty revision would require. In a new piece for @Verfassungsblog, I explain: — Why each of these reforms crosses the constitutional firewall of Article 15(1) TEU, prohibiting the EU Council to act as a legislator (it is not!) and the elusive yet relevant principle of institutional balance — Why von der Leyen's commitment to report to the European Council on her own legislative compliance is structurally incompatible with Commission independence — Why the Better Regulation Communication is designed to launder, not fix, what the omnibus packages broke — And why this matters not just legally, given its impact on the EU institutional balance, but for everyone who is affected by law The geopolitical urgency is real. But urgency has always been the justification, from the euro crisis to pandemic emergency law to today to cut corners by stretching into informal decision-making and arrangements. Each time, the constitutional costs were borne by those with the least influence at EUCO informal retreats: citizens, the EU Parliament (due to heavy reliance on Art 122), civil society. What do you think? READ 🔗 verfassungsblog.de/the-castle-met… #EULaw #Democracy #Omnibus #BetterRegulation #ConstitutionalDrift #EuropeanCouncil #RuleOfLaw

The European Commission at the Board of Peace - for comments and background, see: verfassungsblog.de/the-european-c…

One of the EU’s conditions for a peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv is for Russia to withdraw its troops from Moldova’s region of Transnistria, according to Kaja Kallas svoboda.org/a/kallas-preds…

We think any SG candidate, even if knowing they are preferred by the 3 P5, will still seek to build bridges to the wider UN membership including by participating in the GA dialogues. A good SG-P5 relationship is critical, but alone it is not sufficient for an SG to be effective.

News: Chilean President Boric declares Michelle Bachelet as a candidate for UN secretary-general. Her paperwork has been sent to the UN president of the General Assembly as required, per Chilean official

Here is @antonioguterres letter explaining just how broke the UN is.