The Reporter: Payam Akhavan: Seeking justice for Georgia

By Pascal Zamprelli in the McGill Reporter.

In telling a war story, it’s rare to focus on the lawyers.

But McGill law professor Payam Akhavan is playing a critical role in the conflict over a pair of breakaway regions few people had heard of before August. That’s when he found himself in the midst of an international incident, having to make decisions about how to take the Russian Federation to court even as their tanks were rolling in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Akhavan’s client? Georgia. The task? To take Russia to the International Court of Justice (ICJ)...