Saturday, November 18, 2017

New Volume: Yearbook of International Environmental Law

The latest volume of the Yearbook of International Environmental Law (Vol. 26, 2015) is out. Contents include:
  • Sébastien Duyck, The Paris Climate Agreement and the Protection of Human Rights in a Changing Climate
  • Anik Kohli, Making Sense of Transparency and Review in the Paris Agreement
  • Paul Latimer & Philipp Maume, Carbon Market Regulation: Markets and Laws
  • Sharaban Tahura Zaman, Exploring the Legal Nature of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under International Law

Friday, November 17, 2017

New Issue: International Journal of Refugee Law

The latest issue of the International Journal of Refugee Law (Vol. 29, no. 3, October 2017) is out. Contents include:
  • Laura Smith-Khan, Different in the Same Way? Language, Diversity, and Refugee Credibility
  • Lindsey N Kingston, Bringing Rwandan Refugees ‘Home’: The Cessation Clause, Statelessness, and Forced Repatriation
  • Maja Janmyr, No Country of Asylum: ‘Legitimizing’ Lebanon’s Rejection of the 1951 Refugee Convention
  • Lili Song, Refugees or Border Residents from Myanmar? The Status of Displaced Ethnic Kachins and Kokangs in Yunnan Province, China

New Issue: Climate Law

The latest issue of Climate Law (Vol. 7, no. 4, 2017) is out. Contents include:
  • Maxine Burkett; Jainey Bavishi & Erin Shew, Climate Displacement, Migration, and Relocation—And the United States
  • Katrina M. Wyman, United States’ Options for Receiving Cross-Border Climate Migrants
  • Elizaveta Barrett Ristroph, When Climate Takes a Village: Legal Pathways toward the Relocation of Alaska Native Villages
  • Jennifer J. Marlow & Lauren E. Sancken, Reimagining Relocation in a Regulatory Void: The Inadequacy of Existing US Federal and State Regulatory Responses to Kivalina’s Climate Displacement in the Alaskan Arctic
  • Alice Venn, Universal Human Rights? Breaking the Institutional Barriers Facing Climate-Vulnerable Small-Island Developing States

New Issue: Nordic Journal of International Law

The latest issue of the Nordic Journal of International Law (Vol. 86, no. 4, 2017) is out. Contents include:
  • Vassilis P. Tzevelekos & Elena Katselli Proukaki, Migrants at Sea: A Duty of Plural States to Protect (Extraterritorially)?
  • Ana Lopéz Rodríguez, Robbing Peter to Pay Paul? ISDS and ICS from an EU Law Perspective
  • Christophe Deprez, The Gravity of International Crimes as a Challenge to the (Full) Protection of Human Rights before International Criminal Tribunals? A Strasbourg Perspective
  • Moritz Wüstenberg, Back to the Future: MFN Treatment in an Era of Protectionism

Thursday, November 16, 2017

Call for Submissions: African Yearbook on International Humanitarian Law

The African Yearbook on International Humanitarian Law has issued a call for submissions for its 2017 volume. Here's the call:

Call for Submissions for the African Yearbook on International Humanitarian Law

The Editorial Board of the African Yearbook on International Humanitarian Law (AYIHL), a double-blind peer review journal published by Juta Publishing (South Africa), is pleased to announce the AYIHL is now accepting submissions for the 2017 volume of the Yearbook, to be published mid-2018.

The Board invites articles (7,000-12,000 words), case notes, and shorter pieces for inclusion in the ‘Current Developments’ section (up to 4,500 words). The Board welcomes submissions that engage with the themes of international humanitarian law and policy, and particularly aspects thereof that are of relevance of the African continent, broadly construed. The Yearbook publishes research not only on international humanitarian law stricto sensu, but also international human rights law, international criminal law, and other areas of public international law relevant to the regulation of armed conflict.

All submissions are subject to double-blind peer review before an editorial decision on publication is made. Further information on the Yearbook and instructions for prospective authors are available here.

The closing date for submissions is 1 January 2018. Manuscripts must be submitted via email to Hannah.woolaver@uct.ac.za by the closing date.

Hannah Woolaver
Editor-in-Chief of the African Yearbook on International Humanitarian Law
Hannah.woolaver@uct.ac.za

Ishii: International Law and the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes

Yurika Ishii (National Defense Academy of Japan) has posted an ASIL Insight on International Law and the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes.

Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Mann: Maritime Legal Black Holes: Migration and Rightlessness in International Law

Itamar Mann (Univ. of Haifa - Law) has posted Maritime Legal Black Holes: Migration and Rightlessness in International Law (European Journal of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:
The article explores the trope of the “legal black hole” to reveal questions of legal theory arising from contemporary migrant drownings. The theme was popularized during what was then called the “war on terror,” but its trajectory is longer and more complex. Its material history, as well as its intellectual history within legal scholarship, suggest three distinct ‘legacies’ of legal black holes: the counter-terrorism legacy; the migrant-detention legacy; and the legacy of the maritime legal black hole. The tripartite division provides a typology of instances where persons are rendered rightless. While the two former types are characterized by de-facto rightlessness due to a violation of international law, the latter exposes a seldom-acknowledged yet crucial characteristic of international law: age-old doctrine on the division of responsibilities between states and individuals at land and at sea is now creating the conditions in which some people are rendered de-jure rightless. Moreover, the typology sheds light on the specifically legal reasons for the seeming failure to end mass drowning of migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean Sea. Tracing the ways in which people become de-jure rightless is ultimately suggested as a broader research agenda for scholars of international law.

Huneeus & Urueña: Treaty Exit and Latin America's Constitutional Courts

Alexandra Valeria Huneeus (Univ. of Wisconsin - Law) & René Urueña (Universidad de Los Andes - Law) have posted Treaty Exit and Latin America's Constitutional Courts. Here's the abstract:

Constitutional courts in Latin America have used judicial review to enhance the relevance of international law in recent years. Some scholars even speak of a growing “constitutionalization of international law” in the region. But these domestic courts can also act as gatekeepers that blunt or entirely deflect the domestic impact of international law. This essay explores three recent episodes in which constitutional courts joined or led efforts to escape treaty obligations: the Venezuelan Supreme Court’s judgment urging the Chávez administration to denounce the American Convention of Human Rights on constitutional grounds, which Chavez then did in 2012 (a court-inspired treaty exit); the Colombian executive’s 2013 petition to have Colombia’s acceptance of the ICJ’s jurisdiction under the Pact of Bogotá declared unconstitutional (a court legitimated treaty exit), and the Dominican Republic (DR) Constitutional Tribunal’s 2014 judgment holding that the DR’s acceptance of the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court had been unconstitutional (a court-led treaty exit).

Each of the domestic rulings to be discussed were issued in response to an adverse judgment from an international court, and each reflects an effort to quell the international court’s impact by attacking the instrument granting jurisdiction to the court. The essay describes the episodes in context and then analyzes them as a single phenomenon. Taken together, the cases show that in the realm of treaty exit the region’s constitutional courts are drawing on constitutional law to take on a surprisingly prominent foreign affairs role.

New Issue: Review of International Studies

The latest issue of the Review of International Studies (Vol. 43, no. 5, December 2017) is out. Contents include:
  • Lauren Wilcox, Practising gender, queering theory
  • Luca Mavelli, Governing populations through the humanitarian government of refugees: Biopolitical care and racism in the European refugee crisis
  • Brieg Powel, The soldier’s tale: Problematising Foucault’s military foundations
  • Roger Mac Ginty, A material turn in International Relations: the 4x4, intervention and resistance
  • Jason Ralph, Jack Holland, & Kalina Zhekova, Before the vote: UK foreign policy discourse on Syria 2011–13
  • Mathias Albert & Barry Buzan, On the subject matter of International Relations
  • Meirav Jones & Yossi Shain, Modern sovereignty and the non-Christian, or Westphalia’s Jewish State
  • Tobias Lenz & Lora Anne Viola, Legitimacy and institutional change in international organisations: a cognitive approach
  • Rajan Menon & Jack L. Snyder, Buffer zones: Anachronism, power vacuum, or confidence builder?

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Monday, November 13, 2017

New Issue: European Journal of International Law

The latest issue of the European Journal of International Law (Vol. 28, no. 3, August 2017) is out. Contents include:
  • Editorial
    • JHHW, Those Who Live in Glass Houses ...; In this Issue
  • Articles
    • Andrew D Mitchell & James Munro, Someone Else’s Deal: Interpreting International Investment Agreements in the Light of Third-Party Agreements
    • Gracia Marín Durán, Untangling the International Responsibility of the European Union and Its Member States in the World Trade Organization Post-Lisbon: A Competence/Remedy Model
    • Sergio Puig & Anton Strezhnev, The David Effect and ISDS
  • Focus: Human Rights and the ECHR
    • Merris Amos, The Value of the European Court of Human Rights to the United Kingdom
    • Susana Sanz-Caballero, The Principle of Nulla Poena Sine Lege Revisited: The Retrospective Application of Criminal Law in the Eyes of the European Court of Human Rights
    • Oddný Mjöll Arnardóttir, Res Interpretata, Erga Omnes Effect and the Role of the Margin of Appreciation in Giving Domestic Effect to the Judgments of the European Court of Human Rights
    • Vera Shikhelman, Geography, Politics and Culture in the United Nations Human Rights Committee
    • Thomas Kleinlein, Consensus and Contestability: The ECtHR and the Combined Potential of European Consensus and Procedural Rationality Control
  • Roaming Charges
    • Emma Nyhan, A Window Apart
  • EJIL: Debate!
    • Jonathan Bonnitcha & Robert McCorquodale, The Concept of ‘Due Diligence’ in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights
    • John Gerard Ruggie & John F Sherman, III, The Concept of ‘Due Diligence’ in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: A Reply to Jonathan Bonnitcha and Robert McCorquodale
    • Jonathan Bonnitcha & Robert McCorquodale, The Concept of ‘Due Diligence’ in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: A Rejoinder to John Gerard Ruggie and John F. Sherman, III
  • A Fresh Look at Old Cases
    • William Phelan, The Revolutionary Doctrines of European Law and the Legal Philosophy of Robert Lecourt
  • Critical Review of International Governance
    • Ekaterina Yahyaoui Krivenko, The ICJ and Jus Cogens through the Lens of Feminist Legal Methods

Basedow: The EU in the Global Investment Regime

Johann Robert Basedow (London School of Economics - European Institute) has published The EU in the Global Investment Regime: Commission Entrepreneurship, Incremental Institutional Change and Business Lethargy (Routledge 2018). Here's the abstract:

The European Union (EU) has emerged as a key actor in the global investment regime since the 1980s. At the same time, international investment policy and agreements, which govern international investment liberalisation, treatment and protection through investor-to-state dispute settlement, have become increasingly contentious in the European public debate.

This book provides an accessible introduction to international investment policy and seeks to explain how the EU became an actor in the global investment regime. It offers a detailed analysis of the EU’s participation in all major trade and investment negotiations since the 1980s and EU-internal competence debates to identify the causes behind the EU’s growing role in this policy domain. Building on principal-agent and historical institutionalist models of incremental institutional change, the book shows that Commission entrepreneurship was instrumental in the emergence of the EU as a key actor in the global investment regime. It refutes business-centred liberal intergovernmental explanations, which suggest that business lobbying made the Member States accept the EU’s growing role and competence in this domain. The book lends support to supranational and challenges intergovernmental thinking on European Integration.

Sunday, November 12, 2017

New Issue: Chinese Journal of International Law

The latest issue of the Chinese Journal of International Law (Vol. 16, no. 3, September 2017) is out. Contents include:
  • Editorial Comment
    • Zhang Xinbao, China's Strategy for International Cooperation on Cyberspace
  • Articles
    • Chris Whomersley, The Award on the Merits in the Case Brought by the Philippines against China Relating to the South China Sea: A Critique
    • Dire Tladi, The International Law Commission's Draft Articles on the Protection of Persons in the Event of Disasters: Codification, Progressive Development or Creation of Law from Thin Air?
    • Matthew Seet, Finding Reprieve: Should the Global Movement Against Capital Punishment Embrace China's Suspended Death Sentence As a Model for Other Retentionist States to Emulate?
    • Asif Hameed, Some Misunderstandings about Legislation and Law
    • Wenliang Zhang, Sino-Foreign Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments: A Promising "Follow-Suit" Model?
  • Chronology of Practice
    • Xiaohui Wu, Chronology of Practice: Chinese Practice in Public International Law in 2016

Klein et al.: The Paris Agreement on Climate Change: Analysis and Commentary

Daniel Klein (Secretariat, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), Maria Pia Carazo (Univ. for Peace), Meinhard Doelle (Dalhousie Univ. - Law), Jane Bulmer (Secretariat, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), & Andrew Higham (Mission 2020) have published The Paris Agreement on Climate Change: Analysis and Commentary (Oxford Univ. Press 2017). Here's the abstract:

The most important climate agreement in history, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change represents the commitment of the nations of the world to address and curb climate change.Signed in December 2015, it entered into force on 4th November 2016. Countries are moving into implementation, and efforts at all levels will be needed to fulfill its ambitious goals.

The Paris Climate Agreement: Commentary and Analysis combines a comprehensive legal appraisal and critique of the new Agreement with a practical and structured commentary to all its Articles. Part I discusses the general context for the Paris Agreement, detailing the scientific, political, and social drivers behind it, providing an overview of the pre-existing regime, and tracking the history of the negotiations. It examines the evolution of key concepts such as common but differentiated responsibilities, and analyses the legal form of the Agreement and the nature of its provisions. Part II comprises individual chapters on each Article of the Agreement, with detailed commentary of the provisions which highlights central aspects from the negotiating history and the legal nature of the obligations. It describes the institutional arrangements and considerations for national implementation, providing practical advice and prospects for future development. Part III reflects on the Paris Agreement as a whole: its strengths and weaknesses, its potential for further development, and its relationship with other areas of public international law and governance.