White & Henderson: Research Handbook on International Conflict and Security Law: Jus ad Bellum, Jus in Bello and Jus post Bellum

Nigel D. White (Univ. of Nottingham - Law) & Christian Henderson (Univ. of Liverpool - Law) have published Research Handbook on International Conflict and Security Law: Jus ad Bellum, Jus in Bello and Jus post Bellum (Edward Elgar Publishing 2013). The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:

This innovative Research Handbook brings together leading international law scholars from around the world to discuss and highlight the contemporary debate regarding issues of conflict prevention and the legality of resorting to the use of armed force through to those arising during an armed conflict and in the phase between conflict and peace.

The Handbook covers key conceptual topics drawn from across the three areas of jus ad bellum, jus in bello and jus post bellum. The subject matter of the included chapters range from conflict prevention through to reparation and compensation, via coverage of issues such as disarmament, the role of the Security Council, self-defence, humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect, targets, war crimes, private military contractors, peacekeeping, and the protection of human rights.

Nordquist, Moore, Chircop, & Long: The Regulation of Continental Shelf Development: Rethinking International Standards

Myron H. Nordquist (Univ. of Virginia - Law), John Norton Moore (Univ. of Virginia - Law), Aldo Chircop (Dalhousie Univ. - Law), & Ronán Long (National Univ. of Ireland, Galway - Law) have published The Regulation of Continental Shelf Development: Rethinking International Standards (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 2013). The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:

The lack of international conventional law governing the operational aspects of continental shelf activity may be characterized as unfinished business of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The Convention, adopted in 1982, generally addressed the issue but did not consider more detailed development of the legal regime for the continental shelf. In The Regulation of Continental Shelf Development: Rethinking International Standards, leading experts from around the world identify and explore a multitude of unresolved legal concerns related to the continental shelf.

Chesterman: International Criminal Law with Asian Characteristics?

Simon Chesterman (National Univ. of Singapore - Law) has posted International Criminal Law with Asian Characteristics? Here's the abstract:

The history of international criminal law has been, for the most part, a European tale. Though it was American insistence that prevented the summary execution of hundreds or thousands of German officers after the Second World War — an approach favoured by Churchill and seriously contemplated by Stalin — the United States subsequently backed away from serious engagement in international criminal law. Auschwitz and Nuremberg are the touchstones, with modern counterparts in Bosnia and The Hague. In the official record, the non-European experiences of international criminal law have tended to be in the form of poorer and more troubled siblings. Lack of resources has bedevilled African tribunals in Rwanda and their hybrid counterparts in Sierra Leone and elsewhere. In Asia, political tensions have been far more of a feature — whether one is considering the International Military Tribunal for the Far East or the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia.

Such an account highlights the difficulties facing international tribunals, which are often burdened with unrealistic expectations of punishing the guilty, resolving societal conflicts, deterring future misconduct, and providing an authoritative history of a traumatic period. Yet that account also overlooks some of the important legal developments that have taken place outside Europe.

There is, I would submit, much to learn from closer study of the Asian experiences of international criminal law in particular. Not all of it is positive. But as my former colleague Thomas M. Franck used to say: no one is completely useless; one can always be a bad example. International criminal law “with Asian characteristics” is not quite that bad, though it offers a provocative and under-utilised lens through which to view the possibilities and limitations of this relatively new set of laws and institutions.

To that end, I first survey briefly the European history of international criminal law before considering how the notion of prosecution for international crimes developed in Asia in the international tribunals established after the war, the more recent experiments with hybrid institutions, and a few cases of domestic prosecutions.

Hasanat: Soft-Law Cooperation in International Law: The Arctic Council's Efforts to Address Climate Change

Waliul Hasanat (Univ. of Lapland - Northern Institute for Environmental and Minority Law) has posted Soft-Law Cooperation in International Law: The Arctic Council's Efforts to Address Climate Change (Lapland Univ. Press 2012). Here's the abstract:

The thesis is an article based dissertation which includes four articles by the author and published in peer reviewed international journals, in addition to two individual thesis chapters – introduction and conclusion. Following the introductory part Chapter Two explores the conception of soft-law cooperation from the viewpoint of international law, including the address of relevant issues connected to soft law. Chapter Three explains the evolvement of Arctic-wide cooperation and its functioning system and examines Arctic cooperation from the viewpoint of addressing the issue of climate change in the Arctic region. Chapter Four analyses cooperation in the Barents Euro-Arctic Region in an international law context. Chapter Five looks to resolve some lines of legal inquiry regarding the Northern Forum. Chapter Six prepares some recommendations to suggest soft-law cooperation as a better functioning mechanism (in particular in relation to the Arctic Council) to fully address the challenges resulting from climate change in the Arctic. The chapter includes how selected soft-law bodies manage their individuality in participating in regional development and their connections to each other. It also explains the raison d’être of a number of soft-law forms of cooperation in the Arctic. Cumulatively, this chapter critically synthesizes all of the above mentioned published articles and examines any significant updates since the preparation of those articles, along with any relevant additional findings that were not conceived or remained inaccessible to the author during those times and which could constitute the outcome of the study.

Bray & Bray: Post-Hearing Issues in International Arbitration

Devin Bray & Heather L. Bray have published Post-Hearing Issues in International Arbitration (Juris Publishing 2013). The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:

Post-Hearing Issues in International Arbitration includes articles that originally appeared in the Stockholm Arbitration Report (SAR) and the Stockholm International Arbitration Review (SIAR). All of the articles have been extensively revised and updated for this publication. The authors and articles selected include a wide range of perspectives and include judges, arbitrators, seasoned practitioners and well-respected scholars that can account for the first-hand practice-orientated developments of international arbitration. The book is set out in three parts.

In Part I, the authors discuss three significant issues related to the conclusion of an international arbitral award: arbitrator deliberations, punitive damages, and post-award interest. Part II attempts to navigate the interesting and often daunting review processes of an international arbitration award. Part III considers a blend of international arbitration recognition and enforcement issues, including jurisdictional hurdles, public policy concerns, primary defences, and the practical requirements of a successful claim.

New Issue: Les Cahiers de l'Arbitrage

The latest issue of Les Cahiers de l'Arbitrage (2013, no. 3) is out. Contents include:

• Doctrine
• Alexis Mourre & Marie Nioche, Le règlement Bruxelles I « refondu » évite le risque d’une régionalisation de l’arbitrage
• Pierre Chevallier & Charles Kaplan, L’affaire Pirelli resituée dans son contexte

New Issue: Manchester Journal of International Economic Law

The latest issue of the Manchester Journal of International Economic Law (Vol. 10, no. 2, 2013) is out. Contents include:

• Janelle M. Diller, International Labour Law and the Challenge of Pluralism in the International Order
• Juqian Li, Comparative Analysis of the Application of WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism in East Asia
• Andrea Saldarriaga, Investment Awards and the Rules of Interpretation of the Vienna Convention: Making Room for Improvement
• Jaime Tijmes, Parallel Reports in the WTO Dispute Settlement
• Cecilia Juliana Flores Elizondo, Good Governance in the IMF: An Eclectic Theoretical Appraisal of Decision-Making Processes

Di Benedetto: International Investment Law and the Environment

Saverio Di Benedetto (Università del Salento - Law) has published International Investment Law and the Environment (Edward Elgar Publishing 2013). Here's the abstract:

This book expands upon research into the protection of foreign investments, which is currently an intensively studied area of international law. At the same time, it also examines environmental protection, as well as general areas of debate in international law, including fragmentation, self-contained regimes, the role of interpretation and of principles, and theories of indeterminacy.

Nouwen: The Importance of Frames: The Diverging Conflict Analyses of the United Nations and the African Union

Sarah Nouwen (Univ. of Cambridge - Law) has posted the abstract to The Importance of Frames: The Diverging Conflict Analyses of the United Nations and the African Union. Here's the abstract:

International legal scholarship on the African Union has focused on the question whether international law allows the AU to intervene militarily in its member states in the absence of authorization by the UN Security Council. The reality of recent practice, however, has revealed the opposite scenario: the AU has often not intervened, even when not only its own Constitutive Act, but also international law on the use of force more generally, allowed it. Indeed, in some situations, the African Union opposed the intervention that the UN had authorized. These remarks made at the Annual Conference of the American Society of International Law explore one possible explanation. It argues that differences in views between the United Nations and the African Union on how to resolve crises in Africa have stemmed from the different lenses through which they have looked at these crises. The different lenses explain disagreements between the AU and the UN about how a conflict is framed. As a result of different framing, the AU and UN differ in their analyses of the conflict and in their theories of change, in other words, in how the situation can be transformed from one of conflict into one of (relative) peace.

Roughan: Authorities: Conflicts, Cooperation, and Transnational Legal Theory

Nicole Roughan (National Univ. of Singapore - Law) has published Authorities: Conflicts, Cooperation, and Transnational Legal Theory (Oxford Univ. Press 2013). Here's the abstract:

Interactions between state, international, transnational and intra-state law involve overlapping, and sometimes conflicting, claims to legitimate authority. These have led scholars to new theoretical explanations of sovereignty, constitutionalism, and legality, but there has been no close attention to authority itself. This book asks whether, and under what conditions, there can be multiple legitimate authorities with overlapping or conflicting domains. Can legitimate authority be shared between state, supra-state and non-state actors, and if so, how should they relate to one another?

Roughan argues that understanding authority in contemporary pluralist circumstances requires a new conception of relative authority, and a new theory of its legitimacy. The theory of relative authority treats the interdependence of authorities, and the relationships in which they are engaged, as critical to any assessment of their legitimacy. It offers a tool for evaluating inter-authority relationships prevalent in international, transnational, state and non-state constitutional practice, while suggesting significant revisions to the idea that law, in general or even by necessity, claims to have legitimate authority.

Espósito, Li, & Bohoslavsky: Sovereign Financing and International Law

Carlos Espósito (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid - Law), Yuefen Li (UNCTAD), & Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky (UNCTAD) have published Sovereign Financing and International Law: The UNCTAD Principles on Responsible Sovereign Lending and Borrowing (Oxford Univ. Press 2013). Contents include:

• Carlos Espósito, Yuefen Li, & Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, Introduction
• Yuefen Li & Ugo Panizza, Why the Need for Promoting Principles on Responsible Sovereign Lending and Borrowing?
• Armin von Bogdandy & Matthias Goldmann, Sovereign Debt Restructurings as Exercises of Public Authority: Towards a Decentralized Sovereign Insolvency Law
• Carlos Espósito & Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, Legal Status of UNCTAD's Principles on Responsible Sovereign Lending and Borrowing
• Michael Waibel, Out of Thin Air? Tracing the Origins of the UNCTAD Principles in State Practice
• Matthias Goldmann, Legal Stipulations of Sovereign Lending and Borrowing in Domestic Jurisdictions
• Anastasios Gourgourini, Antonis Bredimas, & Georges Pavlidis, The Legal Contours of Sovereign Debt Restructuring under the UNCTAD Draft Principles
• Kunibert Raffer, Improving Debt Management on the Basis of UNCTAD's Principles
• Juan Bautista Justo, UNCTAD's Principles and the United Nations Convention against Corruption. Links and joint strategies
• José Oyola & Marie Sudreau, Fiduciary Relations: Legal Framework and Implications for Responsible Sovereign Debt Management
• Ignacio Tirado, Current EU Mechanisms to Tackle Sovereign Insolvency: An Analysis Against the Benchmark of the UNCTAD Principles
• Meibo Huang, China's Governmental Preferential Loans and the Performance of its Lending Responsibility - Take China Export-Import Bank as an Example
• Xiuli Han, Debt Crisis Prevention for China as the Biggest Sovereign Creditor and the Principles
• Lee Buccheit, Restructuring a Sovereign's Contingent Liabilities
• Mark C. Weidemaier, Producing Change in Sovereign Lending Practices
• Anna Gelpern, Implementation of the Principles on Responsible Sovereign Financing
• Robert Howse, Concluding Remarks in the Light of International Law

Wheatley: Conceptualizing the Authority of the Sovereign State over Indigenous Peoples

Steven Wheatley (Lancaster Univ. - Law) has posted Conceptualizing the Authority of the Sovereign State over Indigenous Peoples (Leiden Journal of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

The objective of this article is to evaluate whether the distinctive nature of the international law on indigenous peoples reflected in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) can be explained by reference to the service conception of authority developed by Joseph Raz. The article rejects arguments that the distinctive character of UNDRIP can be justified by ideas of ‘Indigenous Sovereignty’, not least because ‘sovereignty’ was developed in Western political thought in contradistinction to a constructed and imagined dystopian state of nature endured by the indigenous populations of the Americas. Instead, the work seeks to understand the UNDRIP regime in the light of Raz’s conceptualization of legitimate political authority, concluding that the inchoate and under-theorized international law on the rights of indigenous peoples becomes comprehensible within this framework.

Conference: Fall Meeting of the ABA Section of International Law

The 2013 Fall Meeting of the American Bar Association Section of International Law will take place today through October 19, in London. The meeting's schedule is available here.

New Issue: Schweizerische Zeitschrift für internationales und europäisches Recht

The latest issue of the Schweizerische Zeitschrift für internationales und europäisches Recht (Vol. 23, no. 3, 2013) is out. Contents include:

• Aktuell
• Robert Kolb, Deux arguments nocifs pour le droit international public
• Artikel
• Gian Paolo Romano, Le sort international des avoirs de prévoyance professionnelle à la suite de démariage : Réflexions à l’occasion d’une réforme

New Issue: Journal of World Investment & Trade

The latest issue of the Journal of World Investment & Trade (Vol. 14, no. 5, 2013) is out. Contents include:

• Laurens J.E. Timmer, Manifest Excess of Powers as a Ground for the Annulment of ICSID Awards
• Elvira R. Gadelshina, Hermeneutic Reflections on the Specific Purpose of Umbrella Clauses
• Catharine Titi, The Arbitrator as a Lawmaker: Jurisgenerative Processes in Investment Arbitration
• Amanda Pamela Dakouré, Cotton-4 and the Cotton Subsidies Issue: A Litmus Test for the WTO’s Benefits to Least-Developed Countries
• Ibrahim Al Swelmiyeen, Ahmed Al-Nuemat, & Andy Kok, Developing Democracy on Facebook through Integration of 3D Arbitration
• Mary B. Ayad, The Vienna Convention as Authority for the Use of Precedent as Customary Practice in International Arbitrations of Oil Concessions and Investment Disputes in North Africa and the Gulf Arab States; or a Lex Mercatoria for a Lex Petrolea

Howse & Teitel: Does Humanity Law Require (or Imply) A Progressive Theory of History? (And Other Questions for Martti Koskenniemi)

Robert L. Howse (New York Univ. - Law) & Ruti Teitel (New York Law School) have posted Does Humanity Law Require (or Imply) A Progressive Theory of History? (And Other Questions for Martti Koskenniemi) (Temple International and Comparative Law Journal, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

In a number of essays over the last decade or so, Martti Koskenniemi has analyzed post-cold war developments in international law, especially the human rights revolution or the emergence of "humanity law" (Teitel, Humanity’s Law). In these works, Koskenniemi asserts a close, if not essential, connection between optimistic or progressive theories of history and liberal, cosmopolitan, post- or anti-statist approaches to international law. We challenge Koskenniemi’s arguments that humanity law is associated with a dogmatically progressive theory of history, that it is oriented toward a world government, that it relies on a version of historical determinism, that it posits a false universalism, and that legal indeterminacy undermines its claims. Many of our disagreements are related to Koskenniemi’s reading of Kant, and we explain in some detail where our readings diverge. Other differences reflect our competing notions of how contemporary law works, particularly the significance of non-state actors and the effects of international law beyond and below the state.

New Issue: Global Trade and Customs Journal

The latest issue of Global Trade and Customs Journal (Vol. 8, no. 10, 2013) is out. Contents include:

• John Pisa-Relli, Benchmarking U.S. Trade Controls Compliance: Toward an Integrated Approach
• Iain Sandford & David Morfesi, Effective Compliance with Trade Law and International Business Integrity Requirements in Australia
• Mohammad Masudur Rahman, Chanwahn Kim, & Laila Arjuman Ara, Enhancing Trade in Textile and Clothing in South Asia: The Role Trade Facilitation Can Play
• Stephen Creskoff & Robert Kielbas, Improving Trade Facilitation in Developing Countries: The Role of Affordable Customs Guarantees
• Matthew Kronby, Cargill v. Mexico: The Territorial Scope of Damages under the NAFTA

Deeks: Taming the Doctrine of Preemption

Ashley Deeks (Univ. of Virginia - Law) has posted Taming the Doctrine of Preemption (in The Oxford Handbook on the Use of Force, Marc Weller ed., forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

One of the most contested questions in the jus ad bellum is whether and when it is lawful for a state to use force unilaterally before it suffers an armed attack. The question took on particular salience in 2002, when the United States claimed – more clearly and assertively than before – that a state could use force to forestall certain hostile acts by its adversaries. Eleven years after that controversial assertion, it is well worth assessing where the debate currently stands and where it is heading.

Because states and scholars use a variety of poorly-defined terms to discuss acts of self-defense in advance of an attack, Part II sorts through the terminology. Part III lays down the basic positions in the historical debate about the legality of such self-defense. Part IV turns to new pressures on self-defense brought on by new actors, new threats, and new technologies. Part V considers the future of pre-emption. It concludes that recent trends in state practice and in scholarship reveal that the timing of a state’s right to use force in self-defense continues to evolve, particularly when the fact patterns implicate terrorist groups or weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Yet certain technological developments make it difficult to predict the degree to which this evolution will continue.

Jupille, Mattli, & Snidal: Institutional Choice and Global Commerce

Joseph Jupille (Univ. of Colorado, Boulder - Political Science), Walter Mattli (Univ. of Oxford - Politics and International Relations), & Duncan Snidal (Univ. of Oxford - Politics and International Relations) have published Institutional Choice and Global Commerce (Cambridge Univ. Press 2013). Here's the abstract:

Why do institutions emerge, operate, evolve and persist? Institutional Choice and Global Commerce elaborates a theory of boundedly rational institutional choice that explains when states USE available institutions, SELECT among alternative forums, CHANGE existing rules, or CREATE new arrangements (USCC). The authors reveal the striking staying power of the institutional status quo and test their innovative theory against evidence on institutional choice in global commerce from the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries. Cases range from the establishment in 1876 of the first truly international system of commercial dispute resolution, the Mixed Courts of Egypt, to the founding and operation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the World Trade Organization, and the International Accounting Standards Board. Analysts of institutional choice henceforth must take seriously not only the distinct demands of specific cooperation dilemmas, but also the wide array of available institutional choices.

New Issue: Korean Journal of International and Comparative Law

The latest issue of the Korean Journal of International and Comparative Law (Vol. 1, no. 2, 2013) is out. Contents include:

• Gay J. McDougall, Addressing State Responsibility for the Crime of Military Sexual Slavery during the Second World War: Further Attempts for Justice for the “Comfort Women”
• Kohki Abe, International Law as Memorial Sites: The “Comfort Women” Lawsuits Revisited
• Mitsue Inazumi, The Regional Difference on Human Rights and Criminal Justice: Judicial Self-Determination Lost through the Suppression from Western States? Universal Jurisdiction and Prohibition of the Death Penalty

Call for Submissions: Journal of World Investment & Trade

The Journal of World Investment & Trade has issued a call for submissions. Here's the call:

The Journal of World Investment and Trade (JWIT) is under new editorial responsibility starting with the first issue 2014. It operates as a double-blind peer-reviewed journal and focuses on the law relating to foreign investment relations in a broad sense, including the law of investment treaties, investor-State dispute settlement, domestic law relating to foreign investment, and relevant trade law aspects, such as services, public procurement, trade-related investment measures, and intellectual property, both under the WTO and PTAs.

JWIT aims to embed foreign investment law in its broader context, including its interactions with international and domestic law, both private and public, including general public international law, international commercial law and arbitration, international environmental law, human rights, sustainable development, as well as domestic constitutional and administrative law. It is open to doctrinal as well as interdisciplinary analysis covering the mainstream of foreign investment law and its frontiers.

JWIT publishes articles, notes, case comments, and book reviews, and welcomes proposals for special issues in its fields of interest. For further information, including the full editorial board and instructions to authors, please visit the journal's website. Inquiries and submissions may be sent to jwit@mpil.de.

Call for Submissions: TL&D Special Issue on "Trade and Climate Change"

The journal Trade, Law and Development has issued a call for submissions for its upcoming special issue on "Trade and Climate Change." Here's the call:

Call for Submissions

Special Issue on Trade and Climate Change

Founded in 2009, the philosophy of Trade, Law and Development has been to generate and sustain a constructive and democratic debate on emergent issues in international economic law and to serve as a forum for the discussion and distribution of ideas. In keeping with these ideals, the Board of Editors is pleased to announce Trade and Climate Change as the theme for its next Special Issue (Vol. VI, No. 1).

Climate change is one of the foremost challenges facing the global community today and intersects with international trade in numerous ways. Sustainable development and protection and preservation of the environment are recognized as fundamental goals of the WTO, although its principal objective is to foster international trade. The WTO permits members to avail of exceptions to its principles in order to protect the environment under specific conditions. The on-going Doha Round has further consolidated the WTO’s stance on the environment by launching the first ever multilateral trade and environment negotiations. Moreover, the recent COP-15, Rio+20 and Earth Summit negotiations have given significant impetus towards achieving a global solution to climate change. There is hope that this multilateral dialogue will materialise into a global climate change deal in 2015 under the auspices of the UNFCCC.

This Special Issue, currently scheduled for publication in June, 2014, will provide an ideal platform for deliberation on the relationship between trade and climate change in the run-up to the proposed 2015 global climate change deal. Accordingly, the Board of Editors is pleased to invite original, unpublished submissions for the Special Issue on Trade and Climate Change for publication as ‘Articles’, ‘Notes’, ‘Comments’ and ‘Book Reviews’. Preference will be given to submissions that espouse perspectives of developing and under-developed countries.

Manuscripts may be submitted via email, ExpressO, or the TL&D website. For further information and submission guidelines, please visit the Journal’s website.

In case of any queries, please feel free to contact us at: editors[at]tradelawdevelopment[dot]com

LAST DATE FOR SUBMISSIONS: JANUARY 31, 2014

New Issue: Journal of World Trade

The latest issue of the Journal of World Trade (Vol. 47, no. 5, October 2013) is out. Contents include:

• Reinhard Quick, Do We Need Trade and Environment Negotiations or Has the Appellate Body Done the Job?
• Dukgeun Ahn, Jihong Lee, Jee-Hyeong Park, Understanding Non-litigated Disputes in the WTO Dispute Settlement System
• Erik Wijkström & Devin McDaniels, Improving Regulatory Governance: International Standards and the WTO TBT Agreement
• Maarten Smeets, Trade Capacity Building in the WTO: Main Achievements since Doha and Key Challenges
• Susan Ariel Aaronson & M. Rodwan Abouharb, Is More Trade Always Better? The WTO and Human Rights in Conflict Zones
• Krista Nadakavukaren Schefer & Mintewab Gebre Woldesenbet, The Revised Agreement on Government Procurement and Corruption