Tag: General

Good day,

It has been a while since I have last posted (it seems to be a pattern), so I thought I would write a minor update.

I have had a busy start to the year with school work, doctoral research and personal life.

This was the first semester since I was admitted into a doctoral program. I have taken four courses, which ate up quite a bit of my time. I am still completing one. Along with the dissertation, doctoral students still need to earn other credits.

I continue to hone my research plan and methodology as I read a lot. I will not be taking courses this summer, so I will be full-time working on my research (I am on a grant). My plan is to share some of my research, or at least things I find interesting, here on this blog.

Hopefully, through more content, there will be more engagement on the website.

This week marks the return of the Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction or BBNJ. The Fourth session of the conference is scheduled to take place between the 7th and 18th of this month in New York. There is pressure to reach an agreement on a new legally binding instrument under UNCLOS. I will follow the conference closely as any development from this will likely be included in my doctoral research.

In my last post, I stated that I would write a piece regarding Turkey closing off access to the Black Sea for warships. There has been a call for articles regarding maritime security, in which I will likely submit the piece to that, instead of on this blog. If selected, I may link to the article.

As all of you must be quite aware, these are some troubling times. After two years of a pandemic, we have now moved into the early stages of a potential global conflict. I live in one of the Nordic countries, and you can feel the tension. For instance, iodine tablets have been sold out at pharmacies due to nuclear accident/attack fear.

I thought to write a post regarding my opinion on the many legal aspects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The issues seem to grow by the day, war of aggression, self-defence, self-determination, war crimes, ICJ application, ICC investigations, and whether Russia can be removed from the UNSC (or are they even a legit USSR successor). I follow many intelligent international legal scholars who have varying opinions on the matter, and since my expertise is in Law of the Sea, I think I will back away from most of these topics. However, Turkey has flip-flopped on closing the Black Sea to Russian warships. I will do a post on that this weekend.

My Ph.D. research is still in the beginning stages. I am currently taking a swedish language class, research tools, and a research ethics class. These, especially swedish, take up a lot of my time. The spring and summer will be dedicated to my research and writing before taking courses in the fall. I plan on taking legal methods and legal theory courses.

Since my last post, I had a little book recommendation/review selected and posted to the International Law Reporter Blog. I was pretty happy with that. I have also received a funding grant from my University, which will hold me over until September.

Anyway, stay safe and healthy, everyone.

I have forgotten to make a post regarding some very exciting news in my life: I have been accepted into a doctoral program.

I am accepted into a Ph.D. in social sciences (Public International Law). Although it is not a legal doctorate, my proposal is heavily based on legal research methods. Apart from the preliminary research used in my proposal, I am very much at the beginning stages of this project and I plan on sharing different things from my research on this blog.

And yes, the topic of the dissertation is law of the sea/maritime law related.

There is a campaign underway to raise 30 million dollars to remove 30 million pounds of trach from our seas. It is being run by a couple of popular YouTubers, including MrBeast, who have previous experience in raising money to fund environmental projects (#TeamTrees).

Please check out their website at https://teamseas.org/.

Well, the summer is over, and September is in full swing.

After June, I was a bit burnt out from the moot court competition, so I needed some time to unwind in July.  Next came August, and it was preparation time for Ph.D. applications. Many schools where I live had their rounds open in late August, and I spent most of the time searching for a supervisor. It was pretty challenging! I had a few rejections and a couple of non-replies, but the rejections were very positive. Nobody destroyed my proposal but had other reasons they could not be a supervisor, while still saying my idea seemed excellent. It is a 3-4 year commitment, so I understand. But now that this season’s rounds are over, I will be coming back to this blog… More like finally starting it.

There have been some interesting developments in the law of the sea world over the summer.

• I had made a post regarding the Kerch strait earlier in the year. Tensions have risen in that area.
• The oral rounds in The M/T “San Padre Pio” (No. 2) Case (Switzerland/Nigeria) before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea were postponed until further notice.
• The ILC recently released a report from their 2021 meeting. The discussion regarding the issues of the territorial limits changing due to the rising sea levels was of particular interest.

So, that is my update for now.

Thanks for reading,

NJ

The 2021 International Criminal Court Moot Competition is finally over. I was lucky enough to be selected to be a part of a team representing my university. This moot is one of the largest in the world, with over 95 teams making it to the international rounds this year.

I believe the case problem came out in late October or early November, and from there, a lot of time, energy, and effort was put into this event. I wrote and pleaded as the prosecution for our team.

Although we were eliminated after the preliminary rounds (in the international round), the experience was very enriching. I thought I had a firm grip of international criminal law prior, but this competition challenges you to apply the knowledge in novel ways. Also, this was my first moot; previously, I have never argued or debated in a formal setting. I applied for the competition to get the experience of being a trial lawyer. I have not gone into any detail yet on my circumstances, but the path I have gone on in law will leave me on the academic side of things vice a practicing lawyer. Though, I must say, this experience has left me wanting more and to find ways to practice law. It was thoroughly fun, and I found out a lot about myself and what I can do.

However, there were some drawbacks. It is very time-consuming. There is a reason that it is worth 15-credits while an ordinary university course is worth 5. You really need to have free time to participate fully, which means not taking other classes or, in my case, even working part-time. I was taking thesis seminars and also had to write my master’s thesis alongside the competition. I ended up dropping the language classes I had planned.

Another negative was participating during a pandemic. There was no trip to The Hague, which means no networking and experiencing the ICC in person. Hopefully, one day I get the opportunity to go there.

What’s up next?

As my previous post alluded to, I now have some free time to devote to writing here. So stay tuned.

Links:

Wiki Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court_Moot

Good day to the small number of readers of this blog.

I have been absent lately due to a moot court competition. Once the event is over, I will be quite active through the summer with a few projects on here:

1) Videos – I will start to make videos on law/cases

2) More article style blog posts

3) Non-law items

Alongside this, I will be starting to research and write a paper I wish to submit for publication. I will keep that a little close to the chest. I also plan on preparing a research proposal for a Ph.D. program, which I might discuss from time to time.

Thanks for bearing with me.

I have just submitted my master’s thesis for grading. While it is fresh in my mind, I have decided to summarize some of the resources I utilized.

Before I even began to do research or even have a topic, I purchased How to Write a Thesis by Umberto Eco. I knew it would be dated since it was published in 1977, but after reading reviews, there was still excellent information in it.

Since we are in the 21^st century, index cards were out, and software was in. I checked out a few guides and YouTube videos on different applications. The first one I attempted to use was Scrivener. After going through the tutorial, I realized this had a bit of a learning curve and maybe more functionality than required.

During my classes, I started to use OneNote, which is part of MS Office. I have a Surface, which with a Surface pen, I was able to take notes in class, right onto the slides all within that particular class’s notebook. A few YouTube videos later, to see if others used it for research, too, I decided to go with OneNote. It worked like a charm. I laid out each chapter into its own section and also added ones for research and extra. Under the research section, each page was a separate source, where I listed the notes and quotations from it. I am sure there is a more efficient way, but I manually copied each note and quote to the corresponding chapter section before writing. When it came time to the actual writing, I was ready to go.

Now, onto the part of essay or writing that people hate the most, the references/citations. Along with this thesis, I have been participating in a Moot Court competition since October 2020. For the written submission, I began to use a program called Zotero. It is amazing. Now, I do not have anything to compare it to besides the manual way, but it is a timesaver. From organizing all your sources to using a browser extension to add the source automatically, it is very beneficial. I found myself adding each of my books to it through the ISBN. However, the most important function is the footnote and bibliography extension in MS Word. By selecting the Zotero tab and then clicking Add/Edit Citation, a textbox appears, allowing you to start typing your source and then it brings up a list based on what you write. From there, you choose the correct source and add a prefix/suffix or a page number, if required. Depending on the style you choose, I usually use (OSCOLA), it will make the automatic changes required, such as the (n #), where the number is the footnote the source is first used. Zotero also compiles the bibliography for you, although it must be manually sorted if you need to break it up into sections (Cases, Legislation, Books, etc.)

Some of this may not be new to you. These programs have been around for a while, but when you start using them, especially Zotero, it changes the game. I have not written of Scrivener, and if I am lucky enough to be accepted into a Ph.D. program, I will surely be spending some time to become competent with that program.

Links:

Zotero – https://www.zotero.org/

Scrivener – https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview

What is a jurist?

Surprisingly, this question does come up; but it’s fair.

There are several definitions:

• Someone who has a thorough knowledge of the law; esp., a judge or eminent legal scholar – Black’s Law Dictionary
• One having a thorough knowledge of law – Merriam-webster.com
• An expert in law, especially a judge – Cambridge Dictionary
• An expert of law or someone who researches jurisprudence – Wiktionary
• An expert in or writer on law – Lexico

We often hear the term jurist used when describing a judge. Many of those definitions contain the terms ‘thorough knowledge,’ ‘expert,’ and ‘eminent.’

However, historically it has been used to refer to a lawyer, a legal writer, or a legal scientist. Its origins are found in Roman Law, with legal commentators who would write to explain and interpret the law.

What does jurist mean in your name?

Firstly, I am not a licensed or practicing lawyer. Nothing I write about should ever be considered legal advice.

But, I consider myself knowledgeable, well-read and try to be up-to-date on various legal issues. When I refer to myself as a jurist, I believe it means a legal scholar who analyses, reads, researches, studies, and writes on the law.

Now, the Northern part of the name is simply a nod to where I am from.