- Tilahun Weldie Hindeya, Indigeneity of Peoples in the Context of Ethiopia: A Tool in the Pursuit of Justice Against Land Dispossessions
- Godwin E. K. Dzah, Theorising the Right to Environment: An Africological Typology
- Avitus Agbor, Cameroon and the Corruption Conundrum: Highlighting the Need for Political Will in Combatting Corruption in Cameroon
- W. D. Lubbe & Louis J. Kotzé, Holistic Biodiversity Conservation in the Anthropocene: A Southern African Perspective
- Michael Gyan Nyarko, The Right to Property and Compulsory Land Acquisition in Ghana: A Human Rights Perspective
- Andra Le Roux-Kemp, The Enforceability of Health Rights in Kenya: An African Constitutional Evaluation
- Meredith A. Strike, Investor-State Dispute Settlement in Sub-Saharan Africa: Suggestions for Reform
- C. G. Kilian, Good Corporate Governance Principles and the Probability of Hate Speech in South Africa, Australia and Namibia
Saturday, February 9, 2019
New Issue: African Journal of International and Comparative Law
Ruys: The Quest for an Internal Jus Ad Bellum: International Law’s Missing Link, Mere Distraction or Pandora’s Box?
In spite of the contemporary prevalence of non-international armed conflicts, it is generally accepted that there is currently no ‘internal’ jus ad bellum, equivalent to the ‘external’ jus ad bellum governing inter-State recourse to force. Put simply, international law is ‘neutral’ towards rebellion. It neither permits, nor prohibits rebels from taking up arms against the government. Conversely, it accepts that States deploy their security apparatus to quell an uprising. In recent years, this status quo has been challenged by several scholars defending the need for an ad bellum regime for internal uses of force. The present papers revisits these proposals. The aim is to focus on the practical relevance and workability of these models, rather than their theoretical underpinning. Special consideration is given to the relevance of the criteria of necessity and proportionality in this context. The first part of this paper takes a closer look at government use of force against rebels within the State’s territory. The second part of the paper deals with internal use of force against the State authorities. The concluding section of the paper explores the links between the proposed internal jus ad bellum, on the one hand, and the concept of recognition of belligerency and third-State intervention in NIACs, on the other hand.
New Issue: Revista romana de drept international
- Articole
- Ion Gâlea, Echidistanța – circumstanțe speciale: o întoarcere la Convenția de la Geneva din 1958 sau o nesiguranță continuă ?
- Elena Lazăr, Migrația pe mare – provocări actuale în Dreptul internațional
- Carmen-Gina Achimescu, Interacțiunea dintre Dreptul mării și Convenția Europeană a Drepturilor Omului
Gonzalez-Salzberg: Sexuality and Transsexuality Under the European Convention on Human Rights: A Queer Reading of Human Rights Law
This book undertakes a critical analysis of international human rights law through the lens of queer theory. It pursues two main aims: first, to make use of queer theory to illustrate that the field of human rights law is underpinned by several assumptions that determine a conception of the subject that is gendered and sexual in specific ways. This gives rise to multiple legal and social consequences, some of which challenge the very idea of universality of human rights. Second, the book proposes that human rights law can actually benefit from a better understanding of queer critiques, since queer insights can help it to overcome heteronormative beliefs currently held. In order to achieve these main aims, the book focuses on the case law of the European Court of Human Rights, the leading legal authority in the field of international human rights law. The use of queer theory as the theoretical approach for these tasks serves to deconstruct several aspects of the Court's jurisprudence dealing with gender, sexuality, and kinship, to later suggest potential paths to reconstruct such features in a queer(er) and more universal manner.
New Additions to the UN Audiovisual Library of International Law
New Issue: Human Rights Quarterly
- Mathias Risse, Human Rights and Artificial Intelligence: An Urgently Needed Agenda
- Barbara Ann Rieffer-Flanagan, Promoting the Right of Freedom of Religion: Diverse Pathways to Religious Tolerance and Freedom of Religion and the Implications for American Foreign Policy
- Yon Soo Park & Benjamin Valentino, Animals Are People Too: Explaining Variation in Respect for Animal Rights
- Jodok Troy, The Papal Human Rights Discourse: The Difference Pope Francis Makes
- Elizabeth Barnert, Nathalie Lopez, Philippe Bourgois, Gery Ryan, Paul J. Chung, & Eric Stover, My Child’s Journey Home: Perspectives of Adult Family Members on the Separation and Reunification of the “Disappeared” Children of El Salvador
- Emilie M. Hafner-Burton & Heidi M. McNamara, United States Human Rights Policy: The Corporate Lobby
- Christina M. Cerna, The Abolition of the Imposition of the Death Penalty on Persons who Were Juveniles When They Committed Their Crimes
- Afua Twum-Danso Imoh, Terminating Childhood: Dissonance and Synergy between Global Children’s Rights Norms and Local Discourses About the Transition from Childhood to Adulthood in Ghana
- Encomium
- Anthony Tirado Chase, Recognizing Reza Afshari: Historical Challenges/Contemporary Challenges
- Anthony Tirado Chase, Challenges Toward a Human Rights of Structural Transformation: Connecting Theory and Lived Realities
- Courtney Hillebrecht, Normative Consensus and Contentious Practice: Challenges to Universalism in International Human Rights Courts
- Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, In Praise of Secularism: An Appreciation of Reza Afshari
- Steven L. B. Jensen, Decolonization: The Black Box of Human Rights?
- Mahmood Monshipouri, Reza Afshari and Cultural Relativism
- Daniel J. Whelan, On Reza Afshari’s “On Historiography of Human Rights”
Friday, February 8, 2019
Sandholtz & Rangel: Law and Politics in the Inter-American System: The Amnesty Cases
The Inter-American Human Rights System takes into account domestic political contexts in ways that sometimes have not been fully recognized. International human rights courts face a tension between the goal of expanding rights and the need to gain legitimacy with domestic constituencies. Cases involving national amnesty laws have posed this dilemma in acute fashion in the Inter-American System. An analysis of those cases and their domestic political contexts shows how the Commission and the Court have taken into account domestic circumstances, the first through the timing of referrals and the second through its jurisprudence.
New Issue: Chicago Journal of International Law
- Jeffrey Atteberry, Turning in the Widening Gyre: History, Corporate Accountability, and Transitional Justice in the Postcolony
- Gilat J. Bachar, Collateral Damages: Domestic Monetary Compensation for Civilians in Asymmetric Conflict
- Ariel E. Dulitzky, The Latin-American Flavor of Enforced Disappearances
- Anne Dutton & Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, Between Reparations and Repair: Assessing the Work of the ICC Trust Fund for Victims Under Its Assistance Mandate
- Philipp Maume & Mathias Fromberger, Regulations of Initial Coin Offerings: Reconciling U.S. and E.U. Sanctions Laws
- Michael P. Scharf, Striking a Grotian Moment: How the Syria Airstrikes Changed International Law Relating to Humanitarian Intervention
New Issue: Yale Journal of International Law
- Elena Chachko, Foreign Affairs in Court: Lessons from CJEU Targeted Sanctions Jurisprudence
- Oona A. Hathaway, Paul K. Strauch, Beatrice A. Walton, & Zoe A.Y. Weinberg, What is a War Crime?
- Tamar Megiddo, Beyond Fragmentation: On International Law's Integrationist Forces
Thursday, February 7, 2019
New Volume: Yearbook on International Investment Law & Policy
Wheatley: The Idea of International Human Rights Law
International human rights law has emerged as an academic subject in its own right, separate from, but still related to international law. This book explains the distinctive nature of this discipline by examining the influence of the idea of human rights on general international law. Rather than make use of a particular moral philosophy or political theory, it explains human rights by examining the way the term is deployed in legal practice, on the understanding that words are given meaning through their use. Relying on complexity theory to make sense of the legal practice of the United Nations, the core human rights treaties, and customary international law, the work demonstrates the emergence of the moral concept of human rights as a fact of the social world. It reveals the dynamic nature of this concept, and the influence of the idea on the legal practice, a fact that explains the fragmentation of international law and special nature of international human rights law.
Wednesday, February 6, 2019
Call for Papers: New Perspectives in International Legal Theory
The ASIL International Legal Theory Interest Group will use its business meeting at the ASIL Annual Meeting (March 27-30, 2019) to hold a roundtable on “New Perspectives in International Legal Theory.” The roundtable will provide an opportunity for three scholars to present and receive feedback on unpublished papers addressing topics related to international legal theory. Other interest group members will be invited to read the selected papers in advance of the roundtable to facilitate a vibrant conversation.
Scholars wishing to participate should submit a one-page abstract to the Interest Group’s chair, Evan Criddle (ejcriddle@wm.edu), by February 25, 2019. With the abstract submission, applicants should include their contact information, professional title, institutional affiliation, and number of years teaching in the academy. Preference will be given to scholars who have been teaching at an academic institution in the United States for seven years or fewer. Successful applicants must commit to deliver their draft paper for circulation to the interest group no later than March 10, 2019.
Langer & Eason: The Quiet Expansion of Universal Jurisdiction
Based on an original world-wide survey of all universal jurisdiction complaints over core international crimes presented between 1961 and 2017 and against widespread perception by international criminal law experts that universal jurisdiction is in decline, this article shows that universal jurisdiction practice has been quietly expanding as there has been a significant growth in the number of universal jurisdiction trials, in the frequency with which these trials take place year by year, and in the geographical scope of universal jurisdiction litigation. This expansion is likely the result of, among other factors, the adoption of ICC implementing statutes, the creation of specialized international crimes units by states, institutional learning by states and NGOs, technological changes, new migration and refugee waves to universal jurisdiction states, criticisms of international criminal law as neo-colonial, and the search of new venues by human rights NGOs. Universal jurisdiction’s expansion has been quiet because most tried defendants have been low-level, universal jurisdiction states have not made an effort to publicize these trials, and observers have wrongly assumed Belgium and Spain were representative of universal jurisdiction trends. The paper finally assesses positive and negative aspects of the quiet expansion of universal jurisdiction for its defenders and critics.
Parfitt: The Process of International Legal Reproduction: Inequality, Historiography, Resistance
That all states are free and equal under international law is axiomatic to the discipline. Yet even a brief look at the dynamics of the international order calls that axiom into question. Mobilising fresh archival research and drawing on a tradition of unorthodox Marxist and anti-colonial scholarship, Rose Parfitt develops a new 'modular' legal historiography to make sense of the paradoxical relationship between sovereign equality and inequality. Juxtaposing a series of seemingly unrelated histories against one another, including a radical re-examination of the canonical story of Fascist Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, Parfitt exposes the conditional nature of the process through which international law creates and disciplines new states and their subjects. The result is a powerful critique of international law's role in establishing and perpetuating inequalities of wealth, power and pleasure, accompanied by a call to attend more closely to the strategies of resistance that are generated in that process.
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Getachew: Worldmaking after Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination
Decolonization revolutionized the international order during the twentieth century. Yet standard histories that present the end of colonialism as an inevitable transition from a world of empires to one of nations—a world in which self-determination was synonymous with nation-building—obscure just how radical this change was. Drawing on the political thought of anticolonial intellectuals and statesmen such as Nnamdi Azikiwe, W.E.B Du Bois, George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, Eric Williams, Michael Manley, and Julius Nyerere, this important new account of decolonization reveals the full extent of their unprecedented ambition to remake not only nations but the world.
Adom Getachew shows that African, African American, and Caribbean anticolonial nationalists were not solely or even primarily nation-builders. Responding to the experience of racialized sovereign inequality, dramatized by interwar Ethiopia and Liberia, Black Atlantic thinkers and politicians challenged international racial hierarchy and articulated alternative visions of worldmaking. Seeking to create an egalitarian postimperial world, they attempted to transcend legal, political, and economic hierarchies by securing a right to self-determination within the newly founded United Nations, constituting regional federations in Africa and the Caribbean, and creating the New International Economic Order.
Using archival sources from Barbados, Trinidad, Ghana, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, Worldmaking after Empire recasts the history of decolonization, reconsiders the failure of anticolonial nationalism, and offers a new perspective on debates about today’s international order.
AJIL Unbound Symposium: Can International Trade Law Recover?
Call for Papers: Young Researchers' Forum on International Law and Theory
New Issue: International Theory
- Janina Dill, Do attackers have a legal duty of care? Limits to the ‘individualization of war’
- Helen M. Kinsella, Sex as the secret: counterinsurgency in Afghanistan
- Shmuel Nili, Global poverty, global sacrifices, and natural resource reforms
- Pietro Maffettone & Luke Ulaş, Legitimacy, metacoordination and context-dependence
- Claire Vergerio, Context, reception, and the study of great thinkers in international relations
Monday, February 4, 2019
Fink: Frontex and Human Rights: Responsibility in 'Multi-Actor Situations' under the ECHR and EU Public Liability Law
This book analyses the allocation of responsibility for human rights violations that occur in the context of border control or return operations coordinated by Frontex. The analysis is conducted in three parts. The first part examines the detailed roles and powers of Frontex and the states involved during joint operations, focussing on the decision-making processes and chains of command. The second and third parts develop general rules that govern the allocation of responsibility under public international law, ECHR law, and EU non-contractual liability law in order to apply them to Frontex operations. To illustrate the practical implications of the findings, the study uses four hypothetical scenarios that are based on situations that have in the past given rise to human rights concerns.
The book concludes that whilst responsibility for most human rights violations lies with the host state of an operation, it often shares this responsibility with participating states who contribute large assets as well as Frontex. However, the book also exposes how difficult it is for individuals to find a place for bringing complaints against violations of their human rights suffered at the EU's external borders. This casts doubts on whether the current legal framework offers them an effective remedy.
de la Rasilla: The Problem of Periodization in the History of International Law
Every field of historical research has a well-established catalogue of standard historical periodizations relevant to its objects of study. The history of international law is no exception. . . . To illustrate the central if often overlooked role that periodization plays in the history of international law, this article proceeds in three parts. The first part critically discusses six approaches to periodization in the history of international law: the hegemonic, the Eurocentric universalist, the statecentric, the doctrinal, the institutional, and the normative. The second part studies how, in the wake of the recent “turn to history” in international legal scholarship, a new critical historiography has problematized the question of periodization because of the homogenizing effect and the “teleology of progress” to which periodization is interpreted as contributing. This part also shows that even despite a radical postmodern critique of periodization that distrusts “great meta-narratives,” alternative meta-narratives and ideological frameworks nonetheless structure other periodizations for contemporary historians of international law. The third part elaborates on the heuristic potential of a multiperspective approach to the question of periodization, and addresses the notion of “alternative periodization.” With examples from a new wave of literature on the history of international law, it illustrates its value as a launch pad for the “formation of new formerly unknown periods,” a task that can be considered “an essential part of historiographical innovation.”
Sunday, February 3, 2019
IMF: Prevention and Resolution of Sovereign Debt Crises
Prevention and Resolution of Sovereign Debt Crises provides a guided narrative to the IMF's policy papers on sovereign debt produced over the last 40 years. The papers are divided into chapters, tracking four historical phases: the 1980s debt crisis; the Mexican crisis and the design of policies to ensure adequate private sector involvement ('creditor bail-in'); the Argentine crisis and the search for a durable crisis resolution framework; and finally, the global financial crisis, the Eurozone crisis, and their aftermaths.
Istrefi: European Judicial Responses to Security Council Resolutions: A Consequentialist Assessment
In this book, Kushtrim Istrefi explores the multiple effects of European courts decisions as regards Security Council targeted sanctions and security detentions interfering with fundamental rights. He elaborates what type of judicial responses ensured real and practical respect for human rights for the petitioners, encouraged Security Council due process reform, clarified Security Council authorisations on security detentions, and tested the primacy and universal character of the UN Charter. Making use of legal and non-legal instruments, Istrefi sheds some light upon what happened to, among others, petitioners, the SC due process reform agenda, and the UN Charter after such cases as Kadi, Al-Jedda, Ahmed, Al-Dulimi.
Call for Papers: Domestic Contestations against International Courts and Tribunals
Domestic Contestations against International Courts and Tribunals
Interest Group on International Courts and Tribunals
Side-event to the ESIL 2019 Annual Conference, Athens
September 12, 2019.
Theme of the workshop
It was in 2006 that Anne-Marie Slaughter and William Burke-White published their article entitled ‘The Future of International Law Is Domestic’ in the Harvard International Law Journal. They argued that the future of international law would lie in its ability to guide and direct domestic actors to act in prescribed ways. More than a decade later, the article’s general contention seems to hold true. In a range of regulatory fields such as human rights, crimes, investment, public health, and environmental conservation, international law prescribes rules governing, not necessarily state-to-state relations, but those at the domestic level.
The future that Slaughter and Burke-White depicted then placed international courts and tribunals and treaty-monitoring bodies in a position to review the government’s exercise of authority over individuals and corporations with regard to the matters which are primarily governed by domestic (public) law. This also means that the effectiveness of the decisions of international courts and tribunals often relies on the government’s willingness to change its domestic law and practices. At times, however, the decisions of international courts and tribunals have given rise to normative conflicts with a country’s constitutional law or other national legal principles and rules. To give effect to international judicial decisions may also be seen undemocratic.
Against this background, the Interest Group invites paper proposals regarding the domestic reception of the decisions of international courts and tribunals. The Interest Group particularly welcomes proposals that address a range of normative bases and legal techniques, on the basis of which international judicial decisions have been avoided or contested by legislative, executive, and/or judicial bodies. On top of international courts and tribunals, the Interest Group also welcomes proposals concerning the critical domestic reception of the decisions of treaty-monitoring bodies.
Submission of proposals and the timeline
All Members of the Interest Group are invited to submit abstracts of up to 500 words.
Deadline for submitting abstracts: April 15, 2019.
Abstracts should be sent to esil.igict@mpi.lu
The following information must be provided with each abstract:
Authors of selected abstracts will be notified by May 1, 2019.
- The author’s name and affiliation
- The author’s CV, including a list of relevant publications
- The author’s contact details, including email address
Authors of accepted abstracts should submit their draft papers by August 15, 2019. The draft will be circulated among the workshop participants. For substantive questions, please contact the Interest Group convenors: Edouard Fromageau (edouard.fromageau@mpi.lu); Andrea Gattini (andrea.gattini@unipd.it); Machiko Kanetake (m.kanetake@uu.nl); and Stephan Wittich (stephan.wittich@univie.ac.at).
We are looking forward to receiving your abstracts.
Please note that the Interest Group is unable to provide funding for travel and accommodation. See the ESIL website for information about travel grants and carers’ grants offered to ESIL members, and other relevant information about the conference.
Selected speakers are strongly encouraged to become members of the Society and to register for the Annual Conference; please note, however, that the Society is unable to offer reduced conference registration fees to speakers at pre-conference events (please do not register as agora speakers).
Selected speakers can indicate their interest in being considered for the ESIL Young Scholar Prize, if they meet the eligibility conditions as stated on the ESIL website. The ESIL Secretariat must be informed of all speakers who wish to be considered for the Prize by 15 May at the very latest.
Aust & du Plessis: The Globalisation of Urban Governance
- Helmut Philipp Aust & Anél Du Plessis, Introduction: The Globalization of Urban Governance – Legal Perspectives on Sustainable Development Goal 11
- Noora Arajärvi, Including Cities in the 2030 Agenda – A Review of The Post-2015 Process
- Michael Riegner, International Institutions and The City: Towards A Comparative Law of Local Governance
- Boris Vormann, City Limits: Sustainable Urban Governance in Planetary Infrastructural Regimes
- Oliver Fuo, Funding and Good Financial Governance as Imperatives for Cities’ Pursuit of SDG 11
- Cindy Wittke, War and Peace in the City
- Hannah Birkenkötter, Ensuring Access to Public Space As A Dimension Of "Safe Cities": The Role Of UN Entities In Shaping The Global Urban Governance Agenda
- Francois Venter, The Challenges of Cultural Diversity for Safe and Sustainable Cities
- M. Cecilia Oliveira, Global Goals and Urban Development: The Territorial Effects of Implementing the MDGs In Brazil
- Jaap De Visser, City Regions in Pursuit of SDG 11: Institutionalising Multilevel Cooperation in Gauteng, South Africa
- Angela van der Berg, The Pursuit of SDG 11 Through the Lens of Integrated Development Planning
- Peter Gailhofer, Governance in The Smart City: Sketches of A Research Programme in Legal Theory
- Alejandro Rodiles, The Tensions Between Local Resilience-Building and Transnational Action; US-Mexican Cooperation in Crime Affected Communities In Northern Mexico, And What This Tells About Global Urban Governance
- Anél Du Plessis & Helmut Philipp Aust, Conclusion: Summary of Observations And Pointers For Future Research