The latest issue of the Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d'histoire du droit international (Vol. 22, no. 4, 2020) is out. Contents include:
In December 2019, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court concluded her preliminary examination into the situation in Palestine, determining there is a reasonable basis to initiate an investigation into the situation. Instead of doing so, she first decided to seek a ruling from the Pre-Trial Chamber on the scope of the Court’s territorial jurisdiction, specifically aimed at confirming her view that the ‘territory’ over which the Court may exercise its jurisdiction comprises the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). This article focuses on the amici curiae observations and other communications made by eight states parties in the proceedings — Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary and Uganda. A critical examination of these observations and communications reveals that they did not answer the question posed by the OTP, but rather advanced a number of strained arguments aimed, inter alia, at impugning the very notion that the Court has any jurisdiction at all on the basis that Palestine is not a state. When juxtaposed against the ostensible commitment of these states parties to the object and purpose of the Statute, their observations and other communications reveal a conspicuous hypocrisy. If accepted by the Court, these observations and communications would operate to not only affirm the continued contingency of the state of Palestine on the international plane, but, even worse, to shield persons known to have committed or be committing crimes of the gravest concern to the international community with impunity.
Over the last two decades, the "new international order" of 1919 has grown into an expansive new area of research across multiple disciplines. With the League of Nations at its heart, the interwar settlement's innovations in international organizations, international law, and many other areas shaped the world we know today.
This book presents the first study of the relationship between this new international order and the new regional order in Central and Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Habsburg empire. An analysis of the co-implication of these two orders is grounded in four key scholarly interventions: understanding the legacies of empire in international organizations; examining regionalism in the work of interwar international institutions; creating an integrated history of the interwar order in Europe; and testing recent claims of the conceptual connection between nationalism and internationalism.
With chapters covering international health, international financial oversight, human trafficking, minority rights, scientific networks, technical expertise, passports, commercial treaties, borders and citizenship, and international policing, this book pioneers a regional approach to international order, and explores the origins of today's global governance in the wake of imperial collapse.
The latest issue of the Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht (Vol. 80, no. 4, 2020) is out. Contents include:
The latest issue of the Journal of World Trade (Vol. 54, no. 6, 2020) is out. Contents include:
In recent decades, foreign direct investment (FDI) has played an increasingly significant role in world economic activity and development. In economic terms, the accumulated stock of FDI and its generation of commercial activity by foreign affiliates have made FDI comparatively more important than international trade in goods and services. At the same time, the globalization of markets and the development of consumer brands in many domestic markets has brought an increasingly international approach to the management, and value, of intellectual property (IP) rights. IP Rights have therefore become increasingly enmeshed with international investment and the subject of transnational disputes as evidenced by cases that concern, inter alia, various limitations for trademarks used on tobacco packaging, or the invalidation of pharmaceutical patents by domestic courts. FDI is increasingly involved with the exploitation of IP which underpins highly valued products and services and this has shifted the balance of return on FDI from physical to intellectual property. Thus, IP rights have never been more economically and politically important or controversial than they are today.
There have long been international treaties that protect IP, but in recent years other international treaties have come into being that protect IP rights along with other property rights. These treaties include various international investment agreements (IIAs), which regard IP rights as a protected investment.
This book analyses the standards of treatment and protection enshrined in IIAs for IP rights and their relationship to the key international treaties in IP Rights, with reference to topics such as the fragmentation of international law; investor-host-state dispute resolution; investors and investments; relative standards of treatment (such as most favoured nation); absolute standards of treatment (such as fair and equitable treatment); and expropriation.
The work fills the significant gaps left by the comparably small amount of intellectual property related ISDS case-law. As IP Rights are a more recent concern in FDI, many questions regarding the relevance of IIA for IP rights are yet to be decided by investment tribunals. To assist the practitioner in understanding how IP Rights will be treated in investment disputes, the work sets out a number of hypothetical cases based on actual cases decided by other adjudicating bodies in different legal contexts, such the European Court of Human Rights or the European Court of Justice and the work also engages with the issues and applicable law for disputes involving IP Rights arising from the actions relating to Philip Morris trademarks in Australia and Uruguay, and Eli Lilly.
Millions around the globe are affected by the actions of non-state armed groups (NSAGs). Like states, NSAGs are bound by international humanitarian law (IHL) and are addressed by other nonbinding normative standards aimed at mitigating the harmful effects of armed conflict. Although a consensus is emerging on the importance of engaging NSAGs on these rules, they have not been included as participants in the processes that lead to rule development.
NSAGs participation in such normative processes is important for two main reasons, despite concerns of ‘legitimisation’. First, a self-regulatory compliance system such as IHL can only be fit for purpose if it is based on an understanding of the perspectives of the actors it regulates and the realities they face. Second, decades of experience and some evidence underscore that a sense of ownership of norms can be an important factor in securing NSAGs’ compliance.
This Brief proposes a strategic model aimed at the progressive inclusion of NSAGs in humanitarian norm development processes. At the very least, processes should consult NSAGs. Outcome documents, where appropriate, should not just address ‘states’, but ‘parties to the conflict’ (or similar) so that they can be endorsed by NSAGs. The model addresses potential sources of state opposition or apprehension and encourages the international community to find new ways of approaching these tensions and dilemmas.
Are victims of armed conflict entitled to reparation, which legal rules govern the question, and how can reparation be implemented? These key questions of transitional justice are examined by three scholars whose professional, theoretical, and methodological backgrounds and outlooks differ greatly. They discuss how regional human rights case law, international criminal law, the practice of ad hoc international bodies, and domestic practice give rise to a right to reparation. This right emerges out of the interplay between international and domestic law. The problems of mass claims, fragile statehood, and the high risk of marginalisation of particular groups of victims are addressed. The analysis is alert to the current backlash against international legal institutions, and to the practical constraints in making post-conflict law work. The multiperspectivism of the trialogical setting exposes the divergence and complementarity of the authors' approaches and leads to a richer understanding of the law of reparation.
The latest volume of the Yearbook of Polar Law (Vol. 12, 2020) is out. Contents include:
This book addresses the relationship between International Refugee Law and International Human Rights Law. Using international refugee law’s analytical turn to human rights as its object of inquiry, it represents a critical intervention into the revisionism that has led to conceptual fragmentation and restrictive practices.
Mainstream literature in refugee law reflects a mood of celebration, a narrative of progress which praises the discipline’s rescue from obsolescence. This is commonly ascribed to its repositioning alongside human rights law, its veritable rediscovery as an arm of this far greater edifice. By using human rights logic to construct the current legal paradigm and inform us of who qualifies as a refugee, this purportedly lent areas of conceptual uncertainty a set of objective, modern criteria and increased enfranchisement to new, non-traditional claimants.
The present work challenges this dominant position by finding the untold limits of its current paradigm. It stands alone in this orientation and hereby represents one of the most comprehensive, heterodox and structurally detailed reviews of this connection. The exploration of the gap between modern approaches and the unsatisfactory realities of seeking asylum forms the substance of this book. It asserts, by contrast, the existence of revolution rather than evolution. Human rights law has erased the founding tenets of the Refugee Convention, enabling powerful states to contain refugees in their region of origin.
The concept of responsibility has emerged as central to the study of international politics. This book explores the integral role of responsibility within the context of global crises such as the responsibility to address climate change, manage financial crises, and intervene with political conflicts. Vetterlein and Hansen-Magnusson address responsibility as a conceptual tool in its own right, existing at the intersection of accountability and legitimacy and spanning across governance sectors of the environment, business, and security. This practice-based approach to the study of responsibility maps similarities and difference across policy fields and reveals the diverse moral actors responsible for negotiating responsibility. The emergence of responsibility further implicates underlying moral values and policy-making within the context of global politics. The Rise of Responsibility in World Politics addresses not only individual agency, but also how questions of community play a role in broader negotiations around the meaning of responsibility.
This work provides important insights into how judges and arbitrators resolve complex commercial disputes in both national and international settings. The analysis is built from three major research sources which ensures that the analysis can bridge evidence of perception, behaviours, and outcomes amongst judges and arbitrators. A statistical survey provides a benchmark and point of comparison with the subjective statements arising from an extensive programme of interviews and questionnaires to provide an objective lens on the reasoning process that informs decisions and awards in practice.
The outcome, presented in Legal Reasoning across Commercial Disputes, is an evidence-based model of the determining factors in legal reasoning by identifying and quantifying approximately seventy-five objective markers for which data can be compared across the arbitral-judicial, domestic-international, and common law-civil law divides.
The methodology provides for a thorough and contextual assessment of legal reasoning by judges and arbitrators in commercial disputes. Legal Reasoning across Commercial Disputes investigates the level of sophistication and complexity associated with commercial arbitration relative to commercial litigation through domestic courts.
The study not only helps parties make more informed choices about where and how to resolve their legal disputes, it also assists judges and arbitrators in carrying out their duties by improving counsel's understanding about how to best to craft and present legal arguments and submissions. The study also addresses longstanding theoretical concerns about the legitimacy of national and international commercial arbitration by replacing assumptions and anecdotes with objective data.
The final part of the book draws together the various strands of analysis and concludes with a number of forward-looking proposals about how a deeper understanding of legal and judicial reasoning can be established to improve the quality of decisions and outcomes for all parties.
The latest issue of the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law (Vol. 53, no. 4, October 2020) is out. Contents include:
The latest volume of the Hague Yearbook of International Law (Vol. 30, 2017) is out. Contents include:
The International Legal Theory Interest Group of the American Society of International Law (ASIL) invites nominations for an International Legal Theory Scholarship Prize, to be bestowed at the ASIL Annual Meeting. This year’s prize will be awarded for the best article or book chapter in the field of international legal theory published in 2020 by a non-tenured scholar based at an institution in the United States, as determined by a committee of experts. The members of this year’s committee are Adil Haque, Karen Knop, John Linarelli, and Elizabeth Rodriguez-Santiago.
Eligible authors must be based at an institution in the United States, non-tenured and in teaching for 8 years or less. Nominees need not be members of the American Society of International Law, and self-nominations are encouraged.
Nominations for this year’s award are due by January 22, 2021. Nominations should be sent to the IG Chair, Harlan Cohen, at hcohen@uga.edu, and include the nominee's name, a short statement describing their eligibility, and a PDF of the nominated article or chapter. An author may be considered for more than one eligible publication. Multi-authored works may be nominated if all the authors are eligible to enter the competition.
The latest issue of the Journal of International Arbitration (Vol. 37, no. 6, 2020) is out. Contents include:
International courts and tribunals hold the power to decide on questions involving sovereignty over territory, grave human rights violations, international crimes, or millions of euros' worth of economic interests. Judges and arbitrators are the 'faces' and arguably the drivers of international adjudication. Yet certain groups tend to be overrepresented on international benches, while others remain underrepresented.
Although international courts and tribunals differ in their institutional make-up and functions, they all rely in essence on the judgement of a group of individuals, each with their own background and experience. Even if adjudicators' identity is not the only, and may not be the decisive, influence on their decision-making, the relative lack of diversity has an effect on the judicial process and its outcomes, which in turn entails broader implications for the legitimacy of international law.
This book analyses the implications of identity and diversity across numerous international adjudicatory bodies, focusing on a wide range of factors. Lack of diversity within the judiciary has been identified as a legitimacy concern in domestic settings, and the last few years have seen increasing attention to this question at the international level as well, making the book both timely and topical.
The latest issue of the Journal of International Peacekeeping (Vol. 23, nos. 3-4, 2019) is out. Contents include:
This illuminating Research Handbook offers a detailed overview and critical discussion of the key themes and perspectives that characterize the burgeoning research area of transnational environmental law. It analyzes important sectors at the forefront of the field, including climate change and biodiversity.
Interdisciplinary and comprehensive, this Research Handbook provides stimulating and provocative discussions on transnational legal phenomena and the ways in which we can unpack their complexities. Bringing together varied perspectives from both leading and emerging scholars from around the world, chapters deliver methodological and conceptual frameworks for future research, whilst providing an original view on this emerging field of law. Contributors also pay special attention to the engagement of the field with multilevel governance and the involvement of non-state actors in legislative, regulatory and adjudicative processes.
When can a state give political support to a military intervention in another state? The Government of the Netherlands commissioned an international Expert Group composed of eminent members from the fields of international law, international relations and diplomacy. The Expert Group’s objective was to examine this complex, topical and time-sensitive question and to consider whether the government should press for international acceptance of humanitarian intervention as a new legal basis for the use of force between states in exceptional circumstances. This volume is the result of those efforts. The Expert Group was led by Professor Cyrille Fijjnaut and consisted of Mr. Kristian Fischer, Professor Terry Gill, Professor Larissa van den Herik, Professor Martti Koskenniemi, Professor Claus Kreß, Mr. Robert Serry, Ms. Monika Sie Dhian Ho, Ms. Elizabeth Wilmshurst and Professor Rob de Wijk. Their thorough analysis and recommendations offer important insights that can aid governments in formulating a position on political support for the use of force between states and humanitarian intervention.
The latest issue of the International Organizations Law Review (Vol. 17, no. 3, 2020) is out. Contents include:
The latest issue of the Journal of International Economic Law (Vol. 23, no. 4, December 2020) is out. Contents include:
Due diligence is a prominent concept in international law, frequently referred to in arbitral awards, court decisions, and in scholarly discussions on state responsibility. However, until now, the specific normative content and systemic relation of due diligence to rules and principles of international law has largely remained unexplored. The present book provides a comprehensive analysis of the content, scope, and function of due diligence across various areas of international law, including international environmental law, international peace and security law, and international economic law.
Sector by sector, contributors explore the diverse interactions between due diligence and area-specific substantive and procedural rules as well as general principles of international law. This book exposes the promises and limits of due diligence for enhancing accountability and compliance. It identifies the rise of due diligence as both a driver and signal of change in the international legal order towards risk management and proceduralisation.
The latest issue of the Journal of International Humanitarian Legal Studies (Vol. 11, no. 2, 2020) is out. Contents include:
Volume 412 of the
Recueil des Cours, Collected Courses of the Hague Academy of International
Law
is out. Contents include:
The design of empirical research and theory-building projects in the sociolegal literature on criminalization is often premised on a presumed dichotomy between domestic and international planes of criminal lawmaking. However, in a global era in which domestic processes of criminalization are increasingly shaped by norms, institutions, and actors developed and operating outside national borders, criminalization research should develop a new theoretical frame for studying how international and domestic practices of criminal lawmaking interact with one another. This article builds from the theory of transnational legal orders and the recursivity of law to propose a transnational processual theoretical framework for the study of criminalization. This framework provides tools for investigating how criminal prohibitions are constituted through recursive interactions between actors operating in international, national, and local sites of legal practice. It draws on empirical studies to show how the processes of constructing, applying, and contesting definitions of international and transnational crimes are embedded in broader structures of power. The article demonstrates how a processual theory of transnational criminalization sheds light on important sociolegal questions about the driving forces and consequences of current efforts to harmonize the definitions of criminal activities across national jurisdictions.
