Suttle: Distributive Justice and World Trade Law

Oisin Suttle (Queen's Univ. Belfast) has published Distributive Justice and World Trade Law: A Political Theory of International Trade Regulation (Cambridge Univ. Press 2017). Here's the abstract:

What does justice demand in international trade regulation? And how far does World Trade Organization (WTO) law respond to those demands? Whether our focus is developing countries, struggling industries, or environmental protection, distributive conflict is a pervasive feature of international economic law. Despite this, we lack an adequate theory of distributive justice for this domain. Drawing on philosophical approaches to global justice, this book advances a novel theory of justice in trade regulation, and applies this to explain and critique the law of the WTO. Integrating theoretical and doctrinal approaches, it demonstrates the potential for political theory to illuminate and inform the progressive development of WTO law, including rules on border measures, discrimination, trade remedies and domestic regulation. Written from an interdisciplinary perspective, accessible to lawyers, philosophers and political scientists, the book will appeal both to theorists interested in building bridges from theory to practice, and practitioners seeking new perspectives on existing problems.

Bekker & van de Poll: Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire Receive a Strict-Equidistance Boundary

Pieter Bekker (Univ. of Dundee - Law) & Robert van de Poll (Fugro Group) have posted an ASIL Insight on Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire Receive a Strict-Equidistance Boundary.

Call for Expressions of Interest: Hosting European Conference on the Theory and Philosophy of International Law

The ESIL Interest Group on International Legal Theory and Philosophy has issued a call for European scholarly institutions to express their interest in hosting and coorganizing the first European Conference on the Theory and Philosophy of International Law. Here's the call:

Call for Expressions of Interest

First European Conference on the Theory
and Philosophy of International Law

The ESIL Interest Group on International Legal Theory and Philosophy (IGITLP) cordially invites European scholarly institutions to express their interest in hosting and co-organising, together with IGILTP, the First European Conference on the Theory and Philosophy of International Law.

At this stage, IGILTP is only looking for an expression of interest in organising the conference. All details of the proposed conference, including date, format, selection of speakers and topic are subject of discussions between IGILTP’s Co-ordinating Committee and those expressing an interest in hosting the event. We nonetheless wish to propose a potential topic as basis for negotiations:

Unseen Fission? The Drifting-Apart of Theories
and Philosophies of International Law

Has the proliferation of theoretical (including philosophical) approaches to international law, the increasing specialisation of (legal-)theoretical research, together with a radicalisation of their argumenta-tive foundations, silently killed any hope for a common theoretical discourse about international law? Have legal theorists become too legalistic to hear and be heard by philosophers? Have theoretical discourses become too theoretical – and black-letter lawyers too practice-oriented – for each to be able to speak to the other? These questions (and more like it) are the unseen heart and unsung story of theoretical research into international law in Europe and beyond; the conference will explore it. The event is designed to foster maximum inclusivity, both regarding the approaches studied as well as re-garding the method(ologie)s used to study these phenomena.

Please submit expressions of interest to IGILTP’s chair, Jörg Kammerhofer (joerg.kammerhofer@jura.uni-freiburg.de), until Wednesday, 31 January 2018. Informal queries can be directed to the same address.

The ESIL IGILTP Co-ordinating Committee

Noora Johanna Arajärvi, Gleider I Hernández, Jörg Kammerhofer, John Morss, Ozlem Ulgen, Ekaterina Yahyaoui

Workshop: How Demanding Should Human Rights Be?

Today and tomorrow, October 13-14, 2017, Northwestern University will host a workshop on "How Demanding Should Human Rights Be?" The program is here. Here's the idea:

International human rights are classically understood to be “a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations” (Preamble, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948). However, it is unclear how demanding international human rights standards should be taken to be. Should they be understood as minimal standards of treatment below which no State can fall without strong international condemnation, or are they co-extensive with ambitious and ideal demands to which all States should strive and whose achievement may require strong international cooperation? This two-day workshop will bring together top scholars in the field of international human rights law and philosophy to debate these important normative and political questions. A local audience of scholars and practitioners will be invited to participate in the discussion as well. A particular emphasis will be placed on the real-world implications, legal or not, of these abstract moral questions about human rights and on the interaction of human rights, globalization in general, and global capitalism.

Fox, Dubinsky, & Roth: Supreme Law of the Land? Debating the Contemporary Effects of Treaties within the United States Legal System

Gregory H. Fox (Wayne State Univ. - Law), Paul R. Dubinsky (Wayne State Univ. - Law), & Brad R. Roth (Wayne State Univ. - Law) have published Supreme Law of the Land? Debating the Contemporary Effects of Treaties within the United States Legal System (Cambridge Univ. Press 2017). Contents include:

• Paul R. Dubinsky, Gregory H. Fox & Brad R. Roth, Introduction
• Mark Janis & Noam Wiener, Treaties in US law from the Founding to the Restatement (Third)
• Gregory H. Fox, Treaties and the Third Restatement
• Paul R. Dubinsky, Competing models for treaty interpretation: treaty as contract, treaty as statute, treaty as delegation
• Ingrid Wuerth, Self-execution
• Margaret McGuinness, Treaties, federalisation, and the contested legacy of Missouri v. Holland
• David P. Stewart, Recent trends in US treaty implementation
• Michael D. Ramsey, The treaty and its rivals: making international agreements in US law and practice
• Roger P. Alford, Judicial barriers to the enforcement of treaties
• Geoffrey Corn & Dru Brenner-Beck, Case study no. 1: exploring US treaty practice through a military lens
• Paul R. Dubinsky, Case study no. 2: private law treaties and federalism: can the United States lead?
• Gary B. Born, Conclusion

Symposium: Sir Elihu Lauterpacht: a celebration of his life and work

On October 13, 2017, the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law will hold a symposium on "Sir Elihu Lauterpacht: a celebration of his life and work." The program is here.

Call for Papers: Historians without Borders: Writing Histories of International Organizations

The ERC project "Rethinking Disability" has issued a call for papers for a workshop on "Historians without Borders: Writing Histories of International Organizations." Here's the call:

CFP: Historians without Borders: Writing Histories of International Organizations

Leiden University – 22-23 March 2018

This workshop is organized by the ERC project ‘Rethinking Disability’. It is intended to bring together early-career researchers from different fields working on international organizations, to discuss methodological challenges together with peers and established scholars. A combination of a master class, keynote lectures, and roundtable discussions aims at providing an informal and interactive setting for the exchange of ideas and perspectives. Confirmed speakers include:

• Davide Rodogno (The Graduate Institute, Geneva)
• Corinne Pernet (University of Geneva)
• Kiran Patel (Maastricht University)

Call for abstracts

Ever since the paradigm of ‘globalization’ has found its way into the field of history, ways of writing histories beyond borders have proliferated. Today, historians no longer need to justify enlarging their geographical scope beyond the national, but it can nonetheless be a daunting task to decide on how to do this. While we are going beyond borders, the choice for a translocal, transnational, transregional or global history still reveals our preference for a certain scale. Methodologically, our toolbox now offers us concepts such as comparisons, transfers, connections, entanglements and circulations. As different approaches focus on different concepts, choosing one approach often entails a rejection of other possible approaches. Transnational historians will distance themselves from comparative history; global history, as any global historian will tell you, is not the same as world history. The further we seem to get in advancing the call for breaking with our ‘methodological nationalism’, the more we seem to split up into different subfields, where fruitful dialogue becomes increasingly difficult. The purpose of this workshop is to open up this dialogue, to see what specific advantages different approaches can offer and how they can be best put to use.

In order to do this, the workshop will focus on the history of international organizations (IOs), as they are “extremely stimulating heuristic objects for historians of globalism in that they represent a true laboratory of the accords and tensions at work between the international, national, and local scenes and frames of reference” (Kott, 2011, p. 449). Therefore, writing their history automatically compels us to think about methodologies of doing ‘history beyond borders’. Although they automatically force historians to think about international connections, it is equally important to consider the continuing role of local or national scales within international organizations. Research objects in this regard can encompass both the main intergovernmental organizations (IOs) – such as the League of Nations, the UN or the NATO – and the vast field of International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs), spanning a diverse range of causes from the environment (Greenpeace), over human rights (Amnesty International), to humanitarianism (Médecins sans frontières).

For this workshop, we are looking for original contributions on the history of IOs and INGOs, based on empirical research, but with explicit methodological reflections on transnational, global, comparative, etc. approaches. Questions raised can include (but are not limited to):

• What specific advantages do different approaches bring to the history of international organizations?
• Are these approaches mutually exclusive, or do we need to combine different perspectives and concepts?
• What are some of the methodological challenges in writing the history of international organizations, in terms of analyzing connections, entanglements, comparisons, etc.?
• What are some of the practical challenges in writing the history of international organizations, in terms of mobility, language barriers, cultural sensitivity, etc.?
• How can we deal with the fact that levels can be used both as analytical concepts (used by the historian) and as historical concepts (used by the historical actors)?
• How can we deal with different uses of terms like international, national, local, e.g. as level, geographical or spatial unit or loyalty of a historical actor?
• How can we deal with the (hidden) hierarchy of terms or levels like global, national, etc.?

Program

The workshop will offer a combination of a master class, keynote lectures, and roundtable discussions. It will start on 22 March in the afternoon, with a master class by Davide Rodogno (The Graduate Institute, Geneva), followed by a keynote lecture by Corinne Pernet (University of Geneva). The second day (23 March) will consist of roundtable sessions, where participants present their research and enter into discussion. Senior researchers will chair these sessions and Kiran Patel (Maastricht University) will deliver a closing keynote.

Submission of abstracts

Please send an abstract of max. 500 words and a short CV to the following email address: rethinkingdisability@hum.leidenuniv.nl by 13 November 2017. Questions to the organizers can be sent using the same address. Authors will be notified regarding the acceptance of their contribution by 20 November. Invited participants will be expected to submit a short draft version of a more substantial paper two weeks prior to the event, which will be circulated among all other participants. Participants who are accepted to present their paper are also automatically accepted to participate in the master class. If you are unable or do not wish to attend the master class, kindly indicate this in your application.

Organization

The workshop is initiated and hosted by the research team of the ERC project ‘Rethinking Disability: the Global Impact of the International Year of Disabled Persons (1981) in Historical Perspective’, based in the Institute for History at Leiden University. It is supported by the Huizinga Institute, the national Dutch research network for Cultural History.

Download the pdf-document with the call for papers here

Evangelista & Tannenwald: Do the Geneva Conventions Matter?

Matthew Evangelista (Cornell Univ. - Government) & Nina Tannenwald (Brown Univ. - Watson Institute) have published Do the Geneva Conventions Matter? (Oxford Univ. Press 2017). Contents include:

• Nina Tannenwald, Assessing the Effects and Effectiveness of the Geneva Conventions
• Giovanni Mantilla, The Origins and Evolution of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the 1977 Additional Protocols
• Sahr Conway-Lanz, The Struggle to Fight a Humane War: The United States, the Korean War, and the 1949 Geneva Conventions
• Gary D. Solis, America, the 1949 Geneva Conventions, and War Crime Courts-martial in the Vietnam Conflict
• Elizabeth Grimm Arsenault, Geneva Convention Compliance in Iraq and Afghanistan
• Raphaëlle Branche, The French Army and the Geneva Conventions during the Algerian War of Independence and After
• Mark Kramer, Russia, Chechnya, and the Geneva Conventions, 1994-2006: Norms and the Problem of Internalization
• Amichai Cohen & Eyal Ben-Ari, The Application of International Humanitarian Law by the Israel Defence Forces: A Legal and Organizational Analysis
• R. Craig Nation, Noncompliance with the Geneva Conventions in the Wars of Yugoslav Secession
• Anicée Van Engeland “Be Karbala Miravim!” Iran or the Challenges of Internalizing International Humanitarian Law in a Muslim Country
• Renée de Nevers, Private Military and Security Companies
• Siobhán Wills, The Geneva Conventions: Do they matter in the context of peacekeeping missions?
• Matthew Evangelista, How the Geneva Conventions Matter

Call for Papers: 7th Conference of the Postgraduate and Early Professionals/Academics Network of SIEL

A call for papers has been issued for the 7th Conference of the Postgraduate and Early Professionals/Academics Network of the Society of International Economic Law, to be held April 13-14, 2018, in Nicosia. Here's the call:

7th Conference of the Postgraduate and Early Professionals/Academics Network of the Society of International Economic Law (PEPA/SIEL) 2018

Nicosia, Cyprus, 13-14 April 2018

The 7th Conference of the Postgraduate and Early Professionals/ Academics Network of the Society of International Economic Law (PEPA/SIEL) organised by PEPA/SIEL in collaboration with the Law School of the European University of Cyprus, will take place on 13 - 14 April 2018 in Nicosia, Cyprus.

This conference constitutes a unique and established platform which grants early academics (students enrolled in Master or Ph.D. programmes) and early professionals/academics (generally within five years of graduating) studying or working in the field of IEL, the opportunity to demonstrate and receive valuable feedback on their ideas and research about broader issues relating to International Economic Law (IEL). SIEL’s Postgraduate and Early Professionals/Academics Network (PEPA/SIEL) aims to, inter alia, foster collaboration and mentoring opportunities for emerging academics and professionals, by granting to the latter the opportunity to not only present and discuss their research in a supportive and welcoming environment, but most importantly the opportunity to receive fruitful feedback from experienced academics and professionals as well as experts in the field.

The organisers invite submissions on any IEL topic including, but not limited to:

• Law and practice in international economic governance and international organizations;
• International trade, investment, competition, monetary and financial law;
• The interaction of IEL branches with other branches of law governing intellectual property, human rights, environment, sustainable development, food safety;
• Bilateral and regional economic integration and the multilateral trading system;
• Comparative economic law, focusing on how international economic law interacts with laws, institutions and actors at the domestic level;
• International economics, philosophy, sociology, politics.
• International developments and economic law, which may inter alia, refer to Brexit, the OECD-led tax Initiatives international financial regulation, cryptocurrencies and monetary affairs.

Submissions should include a CV (no more than 2 pages) and a research abstract (no more than 400 words) and be sent no later than 3 November 2017 to pepa2018conference@gmail.com. Papers will be selected based on a double-blind review conducted by a senior practitioner or academic and a conference organizer so kindly ensure that your CV will be in a separate file and your abstract will not entail personal details.

Decisions regarding the symposium program will be made no later than November 30, 2017. Selected applicants will be expected to submit their complete paper (not exceeding 5.000 words) by February 28th, 2018.

General inquiries regarding the conference should be directed to the email address above.

A limited number of scholarships to cover travel/accommodation expenses for applicants from developing countries facing financial hardship, is available by the Developing Country Participant Fund. Applicants for such a waiver are kindly invited to add a short letter of no more than 3 paragraphs to their conference application, stating the reason for the scholarship.

Conference Co-Chairs: Freya Baetens, José Caiado, Konstantinos Tsimaras and Venetia Argyropoulou.

Schultz: Non-Analytical Obstacles to Stateless Law

Thomas Schultz (King's College London – Law) has posted Non-Analytical Obstacles to Stateless Law (North Carolina Journal of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

This article reviews legal scholars’ key prudential and moral reasons to oppose the view that law can exist without the state. After a discussion of the real-world impact of views on what counts as law, the article discusses the following grounds for resistance to stateless law: law as something necessarily produced by states scores quite high on criteria to determine how good a theory is; paradigms intrinsically resist change; certain forgotten prudential political rules are wrongly remembered as analytical precepts; there is sheer political resistance to the emancipation of powers outside the state; attempts are made by those who shape our understanding of law to please their constituencies; the pursuit by academics of a legal practice interferes with rigorous legal thinking; there are important vested interests in the current state-centred system; and a sense of anti-intellectualism dominates certain areas of the legal academy.

Foley: UN Peacekeeping Operations and the Protection of Civilians

Conor Foley (Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro) has published UN Peacekeeping Operations and the Protection of Civilians: Saving Succeeding Generations (Cambridge Univ. Press 2017). Here's the abstract:

This book is based on the author´s experience of working for more than two decades in over thirty conflict and post-conflict zones. It is written for those involved in UN peacekeeping and the protection of civilians. It is intended to be accessible to non-lawyers working in the field who may need to know the applicable legal standards relating to issues such as the use of force and arrest and detention powers on the one hand and the delivery of life-saving assistance according to humanitarian principles on the other. It will also be of interest to scholars and students of peacekeeping, international law and international relations on the practical dilemmas facing those trying to operationalise the various conceptions of 'protection' during humanitarian crises in recent years.

Bradley: Exiting Congressional-Executive Agreements

Curtis A. Bradley (Duke Univ. - Law) has posted Exiting Congressional-Executive Agreements. Here's the abstract:

Some commentators have argued that, even if the President has the unilateral authority to terminate Article II treaties concluded with the Senate’s advice and consent, the President lacks the unilateral authority to terminate “congressional-executive agreements” concluded with majority congressional approval, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This paper challenges that claim. If one accepts a presidential authority to terminate Article II treaties, this paper contends, there is no compelling reason to conclude differently with respect to congressional-executive agreements. Congressional-executive agreements have become largely interchangeable with Article II treaties as a matter of domestic law and practice, and, thus, for example, either instrument can be used to address matters relating to international commerce and trade. Moreover, while presidents do not have the authority to unilaterally terminate statutes, congressional-executive agreements are not mere statutes; they are, like Article II treaties, binding international instruments that can be concluded by the United States only through presidential action. These agreements also typically contain withdrawal clauses similar to the ones contained in Article II treaties that presidents have long claimed the authority to invoke unilaterally, and Congress has never indicated that it views presidents as having less withdrawal authority for such agreements. Indeed, in its trade legislation, Congress appears to have accepted that presidents may invoke such clauses unilaterally.

Meyer: Free Trade, Fair Trade, and Selective Enforcement

Timothy Meyer (Vanderbilt Univ. - Law) has posted Free Trade, Fair Trade, and Selective Enforcement (Columbia Law Review, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

The 2016 presidential election was one of the most divisive in recent memory, but it produced a surprising bipartisan consensus. Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders all agreed that U.S. trade agreements should be, but are not, “fair.” Although only achieving broad consensus recently, the critique that U.S. trade agreements are unfair has been around for decades. Since 1992, much of this fairness critique has focused on ensuring that trade liberalization does not undermine non-commercial values, such as environmental protection and labor conditions. Beginning with the negotiation and ratification of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the early 1990s, governments have responded by including in their trade agreements a prohibition on the selective enforcement of environmental and labor laws. This ban — a central component of efforts to make sure that free trade agreements are, indeed, fair — aims to prevent a global race to the bottom in environmental and labor standards.

These efforts have fallen wide of the mark. This Article makes two novel contributions. First, it demonstrates empirically that selective enforcement is considerably more pervasive than commonly thought. But contemporary selective enforcement is the reverse of the kind of selective enforcement that has traditionally concerned trade critics. Instead of selectively enforcing environmental and labor laws to gain a trade advantage, governments selectively enforce trade laws in ways that undermine environmental and labor interests. To illustrate, the Article presents data from trade enforcement actions in the energy and fisheries sector to demonstrate this claim. In both sectors, trade laws are enforced exclusively against natural resource substitutes, such as renewable energy and farmed fish. The natural resources with which these products compete, fossil fuels and wild fish, benefit from the same allegedly unlawful conduct but are not targeted for enforcement.

Second, this Article presents a theory of how selective enforcement of trade law distorts markets to the detriment of the environment. It argues that selective enforcement is an implicit subsidy for products that are not targeted for enforcement but benefit from the same allegedly unlawful conduct as targeted products. When, for instance, natural resource substitutes such as renewable energy are more likely to be targeted for enforcement, they incur three kinds of costs: litigation costs, liability, and lost investment. Taken together, these costs allow natural resources, such as fossil fuels, to sell at a discount relative to their competitors. This competitive advantage spurs unsustainable natural resource consumption and discourages investment in sustainable products. It presents evidence that selective enforcement in the energy and fisheries sectors has indeed caused these effects.

The Article concludes by suggesting how governments can reform trade law enforcement to address the pernicious effects of selective enforcement. Governments have acted to address other kinds of selective enforcement in the past, so reform is politically feasible. Nevertheless, given the current political climate, reforms should concentrate on increasing trade law enforcement across the board.

Scandinavian Studies in Law Articles on "Law Without State"

Volume 62 (2017) of Scandinavian Studies in Law focuses on "Law Without State." It includes the following articles relating to international law:

• Mikael Baaz, International Law in a "New Medievalism"
• Pål Wrange, International Humanitarian Law Without the State?

Symposium: Global Anti-Corruption: Transparency in the Modern Age

On October 17, 2017, the New York University Journal of International Law and Politics will hold a symposium on "Global Anti-Corruption: Transparency in the Modern Age." The program is here.

Symposium: International Humanitarian Law Symposium

On November 1-3, 2017, the Australian Red Cross and the Sydney Centre for International Law will hold a symposium on International Humanitarian Law. The program is here. Here's the idea:

In times of conflict, journalists and war correspondents often bear witness to the horrific, the unspeakable, and the illegal. Civilians used as human shields. Ambulances and humanitarian workers attacked. And chemical weapons turned on families and bystanders. But how can we be made aware of possible war crimes if no one recognises and accurately reports them? Your role as a journalist matters more than ever. And international humanitarian law - known as the 'laws of war' - can help you in this vital role. They can also be a tool to keep you safer. The inaugural Symposium, featuring of some of Australia's finest legal and writing specialists, will help explore your role in ending impunity for war crimes, and discover how IHL can help you report safely from conflict zones. Seminars will also look at how citizen journalists and mobile videos can change the course of a conflict; the implications of 'fake news'; and whether good reporting can lead to improved compliance with the laws of war.

Kleinlein: TTIP and the Challenges of Investor-State-Arbitration: An Exercise in Comparative Foreign Relations Law

Thomas Kleinlein (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt – Law) has posted TTIP and the Challenges of Investor-State-Arbitration: An Exercise in Comparative Foreign Relations Law (in US Constitutional Law in the Obama Era: A Transatlantic Perspective, Anna-Bettina Kaiser, Niels Petersen, & Johannes Saurer eds., forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Towards the end of the Obama era, the project of a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) raised considerable political and legal challenges both in the United States and in the European Union. This chapter addresses the political and legal challenges raised by investor-state arbitration as projected in the TTIP. This is followed by an analysis of how various concerns were processed within the constitutional and legal regimes of foreign trade law in the United States and the European Union, respectively, and how responsive constitutional doctrine on both sides of the pond is to the concerns raised. The chapter concludes that the U.S. and the EU systems allowed for specific venues of political contestation and provide for different roles of judicial review.

Schönfeldt: The Arctic in International Law and Policy

Kristina Schönfeldt (Universität Bonn - Law) has published The Arctic in International Law and Policy (Hart Publishing 2017). Here's the abstract:

The Arctic is an increasingly important region faced with major challenges caused not only by the effects of climate change, but also by a growing interest in its living and non-living resources, its attraction as a new destination for tourism, and as a route for navigation. It is not only the eight Arctic States that have paid an increased level of attention to the region; several non-Arctic actors from Asia and Europe also seek to gain more influence in the High North. At the same time, the evolving law and policy architecture for the Arctic region has recently played a more prominent role in the political and academic debate. Unlike Antarctica, where the coherent Antarctic Treaty System governs international cooperation, the legal regime of Arctic affairs is based on public international law, domestic law, and 'soft law'. These three pillars intersect and interact making Arctic governance multi-faceted and highly complex. This book provides an analytical introduction, a chronology of legally relevant events, and a selection of essential materials covering a wide range of issues-eg delineation and delimitation of maritime boundaries, environmental protection, indigenous peoples' rights, shipping, and fisheries. Included are multilateral and bilateral treaties, UN documents, official statements, informal instruments, domestic laws, and diplomatic correspondence.

Liivoja: Criminal Jurisdiction over Armed Forces Abroad

Rain Liivoja (Univ. of Melbourne - Law) has published Criminal Jurisdiction over Armed Forces Abroad (Cambridge Univ. Press 2017). Here's the abstract:

Rain Liivoja explores why, and to what extent, armed forces personnel who commit offences abroad are prosecuted under their own country's laws. After clarifying several conceptual uncertainties in the doctrine of jurisdiction and immunities, he applies the doctrine to the extraterritorial deployment of service personnel. Comparing the law and practice of different states, the author shows the sheer breadth of criminal jurisdiction that countries claim over their service personnel. He argues that such claims disclose a discrete category of jurisdiction, with its own scope and rationale, which can be justified as a matter of international law. By distinguishing service jurisdiction as a distinct category, the analysis explains some of the peculiarities of military criminal law and also provides a basis for extending national criminal law to private military contractors serving the state.

Meshel: The Croatia v. Slovenia Arbitration: The Silver Lining

Tamar Meshel (Univ. of Toronto - Law) has posted The Croatia v. Slovenia Arbitration: The Silver Lining (Law & Practice of International Courts and Tribunals, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Much controversy has surrounded the recent arbitration between Croatia and Slovenia. Nonetheless, the proceedings represent a welcome step in the right direction in terms of the perception and use of arbitration as a quasi-diplomatic interstate dispute resolution mechanism. Such an approach to arbitration is evident both in the parties’ arbitration agreement and in the arbitral tribunal’s final award in this case. The article first explains the proper use of interstate arbitration in its original form as a quasi-diplomatic process. This process produces a final and binding decision that respects international law yet does not necessarily rely solely on it. The article then examines how this original quasi-diplomatic nature of interstate arbitration is reflected in certain aspects of the Croatia v. Slovenia case.

Dagan & Dorfman: Interpersonal Human Rights

Hanoch Dagan (Tel Aviv Univ. - Law) & Avihay Dorfman (Tel Aviv Univ. - Law) have posted Interpersonal Human Rights. Here's the abstract:

Our increasingly globalized environment, typified by the significant role of transnational interactions, raises urgent concerns about the commission of grave transnational wrongs. Two main legal strategies—belonging, respectively, to public and private international law—offer important directions for addressing these urgent concerns. One strategy extends state obligations under human rights law to some nonstate actors; the other adapts traditional private international law doctrines, notably its public policy exception. Both strategies make important advances, yet both face significant difficulties, which are all fundamentally rooted in what we call “the missing link of privity,” namely: identifying the reason for imposing the burden of plaintiffs’ vertical rights on putative defendants. In this Essay we argue that the moral underpinnings of private law provide the relational key to this missing link. We claim that private law’s normative DNA is premised on a profound commitment to reciprocal respect to self-determination and substantive equality. Because this commitment is the jus gentium of our private laws, it can and should be understood as a manifestation of our interpersonal human rights, which should function both as a premise for criticizing domestic rules and as the foundation of aggrieved parties’ standing vis-à-vis those who wronged them.

New Issue: International Review of the Red Cross

The latest issue of the International Review of the Red Cross (Vol. 98, no. 902, August 2016) is out. The theme is: "War and Security at Sea." Contents include:

• Vincent Bernard, War and security at sea: Warning shots
• Interview with Ambassador Ong Keng Yong: Executive Deputy Chairman of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and former Secretary-General of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
• Bruno Demeyere, Jean-Marie Henckaerts, Heleen Hiemstra, & Ellen Nohle, The updated ICRC Commentary on the Second Geneva Convention: Demystifying the law of armed conflict at sea
• Steven Haines, War at sea: Nineteenth-century laws for twenty-first century wars?
• Wolff Heintschel von Heinegg, The difficulties of conflict classification at sea: Distinguishing incidents at sea from hostilities
• Rob McLaughlin, Authorizations for maritime law enforcement operations
• Irini Papanicolopulu, The duty to rescue at sea, in peacetime and in war: A general overview
• Jinxing Ma & Shiyan Sun, Restrictions on the use of force at sea: An environmental protection perspective
• David Letts, Naval mines: Legal considerations in armed conflict and peacetime
• Michael N. Schmitt & David S. Goddard, International law and the military use of unmanned maritime systems
• Gus Waschefort, Africa and international humanitarian law: The more things change, the more they stay the same
• Chris Dolan, Inclusive gender: Why tackling gender hierarchies cannot be at the expense of human rights and the humanitarian imperative

Himpe: Die Universalisierung sozialer Menschenrechte am Beispiel sozialer Grundsicherung

Nina-Claire Himpe has published Die Universalisierung sozialer Menschenrechte am Beispiel sozialer Grundsicherung (Nomos 2017). Here's the abstract:

Die Autorin untersucht die Frage, wie sich angesichts einer Welt mit mehr als 190 anerkannten Staaten – in der Unterschiede in der Argumentation durch Staaten (-vertreter) sowohl auf internationaler Ebene als auch in den nationalen Rechtsordnungen erwartet werden – eine Universalisierung sozialer Menschenrechte (Art. 22–25 AEMR, Art. 6, 9, 11 UN-Sozialpakt) mithilfe empirischer Indizien nachvollziehen lässt. Die Auslegung dieser Normen basiert auf den Primärdokumenten aus der Entstehungszeit von AEMR und UN-Sozialpakt, Staatenberichten der Mitgliedstaaten des UN-Sozialpaktes sowie Verfassungen, nationalen gesetzlichen und programmatischen Regelungen sowie nationaler Rechtsprechung für fünf Staaten der Welt (Deutschland, Mexiko, Russland, China und Indien). Mithilfe der durchgeführten Datenanalysen zeigt die Arbeit Hinweise für eine Universalisierung sozialer Menschenrechte am Beispiel sozialer Grundsicherung auf, und zwar konkret ab dem Beginn der 1990er-Jahre.

This work examines the question of how, in a world with more than 190 countries, in which we can anticipate that states (or their representatives) will argue differently on both an international level and with regard to their national legal systems, the universalisation of social human rights (Art. 22–25 Universal Declaration of Human Rights – UDHR; Art. 6, 9, 11 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights – ICESCR) can be understood by means of empirical evidence. The study’s interpretation of these social rights is based on primary documents from the periods in which the UDHR and ICESCR were drafted, national reports submitted by signatories of the ICESCR, and the constitutions, national laws and regulations of five countries in the world (Germany, Mexico, Russia, China and India). By focusing on basic social security cover, this work demonstrates that there has been some universalisation of social human rights, specifically from the beginning of the 1990s.

Ní Aoláin: Gendering the Law of Occupation: The Case of Cyprus

Fionnuala D. Ní Aoláin (Univ. of Minnesota - Law) has posted Gendering the Law of Occupation: The Case of Cyprus (Minnesota Journal of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

The law of occupation can rightly be considered a highly specialized sub-division of the law of armed conflict. Its genealogy is long, and its content, like much of the law that regulates the conduct of hostilities between states, and between state and non-state actors is routine, pedantic and highly ritualized. Despite its long history, the law of occupation has received much less scholarly and policy attention than other parts of the law regulating war. While the law of armed conflict has historically ignored the experiences and challenges faced by women in situations of armed conflict whether as civilians or combatants, the law of occupation has been distinctly bereft of scholarly and policy interest. Thus, there is little sustained legal analysis of women’s rights, obligations and challenges under occupation as well as no lasting analysis of the structural limits and gender capture of the law of occupation. This article addresses that gap with a focus on the long-term occupation of Northern Cyrus by Turkish forces, emphasizing the experiences of women during hostilities and the ongoing occupation. Based on fieldwork conducted in Cyprus in the autumn of 2016, the article draws on interview data, field observations, and secondary sources. In particular, the article addresses issues of sexual violence, the regulation of family life, as well as marriage and divorce in situations of transformative occupation. This focus is on private and family life, demonstrates how the law of occupation fails to regulate the private sphere, thereby creating significant regulatory gaps for women, with consequent and measurable effect on women' status and participation in public life as well as in peace and negotiation processes. The lack of regulation is compounded by the transformative and sustained nature of the occupation impinging on every aspect of public and private life. In exposing the centrality of the public/private divide to the structure of occupation law, the article underscores the exclusion and marginalization experienced by women living under occupation as well as opening up a discussion around necessary revisions and reinterpretations to fully and equally protect women living under occupation.

Call for Papers: XXIII Convegno annuale della SIDI

The Italian Society of International Law and European Union Law has issued a call for papers for its Twenty-Third Annual Conference, to be held June 7-8, 2018, at the Università di Ferrara. The theme is: "Codification in International and EU Law/La codificazione nel Diritto internazionale ed europeo." The call is here.

Heerten: The Biafran War and Postcolonial Humanitarianism: Spectacles of Suffering

Lasse Heerten (Freie Universität Berlin) has published The Biafran War and Postcolonial Humanitarianism: Spectacles of Suffering (Cambridge Univ. Press 2017). Here's the abstract:

In the summer of 1968, audiences around the globe were shocked when newspapers and television stations confronted them with photographs of starving children in the secessionist Republic of Biafra. This global concern fundamentally changed how the Nigerian Civil War was perceived: an African civil war that had been fought for one year without fostering any substantial interest from international publics became 'Biafra' - the epitome of humanitarian crisis. Based on archival research from North America, Western Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa, this book is the first comprehensive study of the global history of the conflict. A major addition to the flourishing history of human rights and humanitarianism, it argues that the global moment 'Biafra' is closely linked to the ascendance of human rights, humanitarianism, and Holocaust memory in a postcolonial world. The conflict was a key episode for the re-structuring of the relations between the West and the Third World.

New Issue: Rivista di Diritto Internazionale

The latest issue of the Rivista di Diritto Internazionale (Vol. 100, no. 3, 2017) is out. Contents include:

• Articoli
• G. Bartolini, Il progetto di articoli della Commissione del diritto internazionale sulla « Protection of Persons in the Event of Disasters »
• M. Montini, Riflessioni critiche sull’Accordo di Parigi sui cambiamenti climatici
• G. Gagliani, Pro bono pacis? Le interazioni tra diritto internazionale degli investimenti e patrimonio culturale
• Note e Commenti
• C. Ryngaert, From Universal Civil Jurisdiction to Forum of Necessity: Reflections on the Judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in Nait-Liman
• L. Salvadego, Il divieto per i dipendenti di imprese private di esibire simboli religiosi all’esame della Corte di giustizia dell’Unione Europea
• Panorama
• M.I. Papa, L’iniziativa dell’Assemblea generale dell’ONU di istituire un « Meccanismo » di sostegno nelle indagini sui crimini internazionali commessi in Siria a partire da marzo 2011
• D. Russo, Lo sfruttamento del lavoro negli Stati membri del Consiglio d’Europa: una riflessione a margine del caso Chowdury

New Issue: International & Comparative Law Quarterly

The latest issue of the International & Comparative Law Quarterly (Vol. 66, no. 4, October 2017) is out. Contents include:

• Articles
• Linos-Alexander Sicilianos, The European Court of Human Rights Facing the Security Council: Towards Systemic Harmonization
• Solène Rowan, The New French Law of Contract
• Fareda Banda & John Eekelaar, International Conceptions of the Family
• Rebecca Dowd & Jane McAdam, International Cooperation and Responsibility-Sharing to Protect Refugees: What, Why and How?
• Michael Ramsden & Tomas Hamilton, ‘Uniting Against Impunity: The UN General Assembly as a Catalyst for Action at the ICC’
• Vid Prislan, Domestic Explanatory Documents and Treaty Interpretation
• Daniel Pascoe & Michelle Miao, Victim–Perpetrator Reconciliation Agreements: What Can Muslim-Majority Jurisdictions and the PRC Learn From Each Other?
• Shorter Articles and Notes
• Jinyuan Su, Legality of Unilateral Exploitation of Space Resources Under International Law

Conference: Freedom under Pressure

On December 7-8 2017, the Faculty of Law of Ghent University will host a conference on "Freedom under Pressure." The program is here. Here's the idea:

The conference will gather legal scholars and practitioners to discuss key fundamental rights and freedoms under pressure in three distinct areas: (1) property protection; (2) data protection and privacy, and (3) freedom of movement in the EU. Panels will tackle a range of issues, including, for instance, the use and abuse of international investment arbitration, immunity from execution, or the use of targeted financial sanctions as a foreign policy tool. Confirmed speakers include Judge James Crawford (International Court of Justice), Judge Siofra O’Leary (European Court of Human Rights), Judge Allan Rosas (Court of Justice of the EU), Prof. Joseph Cannataci (UN Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy) and Mr. Gilles de Kerchove (EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator).

Elpel: Das Widerstandsrecht

Tessa A. Elpel has published Das Widerstandsrecht: Eine rechtsphilosophische und völkerrechtliche Betrachtung der Legitimität innerstaatlichen Widerstands zur Durchsetzung von Menschenrechten (Nomos 2017). Here's the abstract:

Die Autorin betrachtet in ihrer Arbeit ein in jeder Hinsicht bedeutsames Problem. Die Frage, ob es ein Recht zum Widerstand gegen eine menschenrechtsverachtende Staatsmacht gibt, gehört zu den aktuellsten der internationalen Politik. Das erste Kapitel der Arbeit stellt eine Analyse der Widerstandslehren im Werk großer Philosophen der Neuzeit dar. Im zweiten Kapitel untersucht die Autorin sämtliche in Frage kommende Grundlagen eines Widerstandsrechts im Völkerrecht. Eine wichtige Rolle spielen das Menschenrechtsregime und das Gewaltverbot, die einer rechtsphilosophischen Analyse unterzogen werden. Im Ergebnis wird das innerstaatliche Widerstandsrecht als allgemeiner Rechtsgrundsatz ausfindig gemacht. Im dritten Kapitel konkretisiert die Autorin dieses im Rahmen einer eigenen, stark begrenzenden Widerstandslehre und widmet sich dem Problem der ethischen Legitimität einer Widerstandsnorm, die als ultima ratio kriegerische Handlungen zu rechtfertigen vermag.

In her work, the author considers a problem that is important in every respect. The question of whether there is a right to resist a human rights abusive power is one of the most recent in international politics. The first chapter of the work presents an analysis of the doctrines of resistance in the work of great modern philosophers. In the second chapter, the author examines all possible foundations of a right of resistance in international law. An important role is played by the human rights regime and the prohibition of the use of force, which are subjected to a philosophical analysis. As a result, the right to resist exists as a general principle of public international law. In the third chapter, the author substantiates this right within the framework of her own, very limited theory of resistance and deals with the problem of ethical legitimacy of a martial right of resistance.

New Issue: International Journal of Human Rights

The latest issue of the International Journal of Human Rights (Vol. 21, no. 9, 2017) is out. Contents include:

• Special Issue: Transformative Reparations for Sexual Violence Post-conflict: Prospects and Problems
• Andrea Durbach, Louise Chappell & Sarah Williams, Foreword
• Rashida Manjoo, Introduction: reflections on the concept and implementation of transformative reparations
• Luke Moffett, Reparations for victims at the International Criminal Court: a new way forward?
• Louise Chappell, The gender injustice cascade: ‘transformative’ reparations for victims of sexual and gender-based crimes in the Lubanga case at the International Criminal Court
• Christoph Sperfeldt, The trial against Hissène Habré: networked justice and reparations at the Extraordinary African Chambers
• Andrea Durbach & Lucy Geddes, ‘To shape our own lives and our own world’: exploring women’s hearings as reparative mechanisms for victims of sexual violence post-conflict
• Sarah Williams & Jasmine Opdam, The unrealised potential for transformative reparations for sexual and gender-based violence in Sierra Leone
• Catherine O’Rourke & Aisling Swaine, Gender, violence and reparations in Northern Ireland: a story yet to be told
• Sara E. Davies & Jacqui True, When there is no justice: gendered violence and harm in post-conflict Sri Lanka
• Maxine Marcus, Louise Chappell & Andrea Durbach, ‘Nothing about us, without us, is for us’: victims and the international criminal justice system