An answer from Westminster to the claim that international law has never worked Toby Cadman, Head of Chambers | 1 October 2026 The Charge This year’s London Conference on International Law is meeting in Westminster, a short walk from Church House, where in the summer of 1945 representatives of four Allied powers negotiated the instrument that would put the leaders of the Third Reich on trial. It was a strange setting, then, in which to hear one of the recurring questions of t

Toby Cadman examines four recent atrocity trials in Bosnia, Kosovo, Bangladesh and Syria, arguing that credible accountability depends not on institutional design alone, but on fairness, transparency, public ownership and the quality of judicial reasoning.

For two decades, Daniel Ortega preserved the appearance of democracy while systematically dismantling its foundations. With the announcement that Nicaragua will no longer hold elections, the pretence has ended. Toby Cadman examines how constitutions, courts, the legal profession and civil society are captured before the ballot box itself disappears, and why the rule of law must confront autocracy before its final stage