Saturday, May 2, 2020

John M. Murrin (1935-2020)

When I applied to graduate schools nearly thirty years ago in late 1990 I sent my applications to five history departments. Of course, when you apply for a doctoral program, you are mainly choosing a dissertation adviser. I was familiar with the work of the early Americanists at four of those universities: Bernard Bailyn, John Demos, Gary Nash, and Gordon Wood. They were all major figures in the field, and I had read their books in my courses. The fifth Americanist was John Murrin. I had probably read John's stunning chapter "A Roof Without Walls: The Dilemma of American National Identity," which was published a few years earlier in a collection of essays co-edited by Rick Beeman, who (together with Richard Dunn) was one of my undergraduate advisers. But somehow, despite being a tenured professor at Princeton, John had not written a monograph, and it is fair to say that he was the least well-known and "famous" of this group. Upon getting accepted, I think I visited four of these five schools, including a flight west to Los Angeles to check out UCLA, which culminated in a dinner (with a good amount of wine) at Gary Nash's amazing home on the side of a cliff in Pacific Palisades. There was no fancy dinner at Princeton. Some graduate students kindly took me to lunch outside of Chancellor Green (there was a cafeteria in the adjacent East Pyne), and I remember a meeting with Murrin in his long, not particularly well-appointed and definitely cluttered, rectangular office in Dickinson Hall. I was used to the slightly frenetic Beeman and his bow ties and the refined Dunn who was always put-together, and I had met the jovial Nash and the very pleasant Demos (who, and I don't think I'm making this up, had an antique chair hanging from the ceiling of his office). On first impression, Murrin was entirely different: pleasant, but awkward and quite hard to read and definitely not well-coiffed - I couldn't quite figure him out. Fortunately, I was told (and I had to be told, because what did I know?) that Princeton had overall the best History Department in the country and that Murrin was the most brilliant early Americanist on the planet.

Murrin died today. My friend Andy Shankman, who arrived in Princeton a year after me, has written the definitive guides to Murrin's work in his introduction to the volume of Murrin essays he edited, Rethinking America, and in his chapter in the festschrift he co-edited, Anglicizing America. In a message distributed earlier today announcing John's death, Andy wrote beautifully and so accurately about Murrin the individual and scholar, and the twitter replies testify further. In his scholarship, John revealed broad trends that others couldn't see or appreciate because his learning was incredibly wide and deep and because he was willing to critically question established ideas. I remember him personally as he was in this photo (for eventually I did figure him out): friendly, open, playful, impish, and completely unpretentious. My own research interests shifted slightly in my second and third years, and I would write my dissertation under the supervision of Dirk Hartog, who had propitiously moved to Princeton. John was characteristically nonplussed, even encouraging about the switch. Under the rules of academic genealogy, I am a very proud Hartog student, but I am also pleased to remember, particularly today, that I had also been a Murrin student.

New Issue: Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Institutions

The latest issue of Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Institutions (Vol. 26, no. 1, January-March 2020) is out. Contents include:
  • Thuli Madonsela, Social Justice Transcending Inequalities
  • Ann-Marie Ekengren, Fredrik D. Hjorthen & Ulrika Möller, A Nonpermanent Seat in the United Nations Security Council: Why Bother?
  • David Curran & Charles T. Hunt, Stabilization at the Expense of Peacebuilding in UN Peacekeeping Operations: More Than Just a Phase?
  • Anjali Kaushlesh Dayal & Agathe Christien, Women’s Participation in Informal Peace Processes
  • Mareike Well, Barbara Saerbeck, Helge Jörgens & Nina Kolleck, Between Mandate and Motivation: Bureaucratic Behavior in Global Climate Governance
  • Grégoire Mallard, Farzan Sabet & Jin Sun, The Humanitarian Gap in the Global Sanctions Regime: Assessing Causes, Effects, and Solutions
  • Sybille Reinke de Buitrago & Patricia Schneider, Ocean Governance and Hybridity: Dynamics in the Arctic, the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean Sea
  • Martin Weber, From Alma Ata to the SDG s: The Politics of Global Health Governance and the Elusive “Health for All”

New Issue: ICSID Review: Foreign Investment Law Journal

The latest issue of the ICSID Review: Foreign Investment Law Journal (Vol. 34, no. 2, Spring 2019) is out. Contents include:
  • Special Focus Section: Africa and the ICSID Dispute Resolution System
    • Makane Moïse Mbengue, ‘Somethin’ ELSE’: African Discourses on ICSID and on ISDS—An Introduction
    • Antonio R Parra, The Participation of African States in the Making of the ICSID Convention
    • Francis N Botchway, Consent to Arbitration: African States’ Practice
    • Uché Ewelukwa Ofodile, African States, Investor–State Arbitration and the ICSID Dispute Resolution System: Continuities, Changes and Challenges
    • Emilia Onyema, African Participation in the ICSID System: Appointment and Disqualification of Arbitrators
    • Marie-Andrée Ngwe & Marion Deligny Malchair, La propension des Etats africains à résoudre leurs litiges d’investissement à l’amiable
    • Won Kidane, The Culture of Investment Arbitration: An African Perspective
    • Olabisi D Akinkugbe, Reverse Contributors? African State Parties, ICSID and the Development of International Investment Law
    • Makane Moïse Mbengue, Africa’s Voice in the Formation, Shaping and Redesign of International Investment Law
    • Hamed El-Kady & Mustaqeem De Gama, The Reform of the International Investment Regime: An African Perspective
    • Matthew Happold, Investor–State Dispute Settlement using the ECOWAS Court of Justice: An Analysis and Some Proposals
    • Mohamed S Abdel Wahab, ICSID’s Relevance for Africa: A Symbiotic Bond Beyond Time
    • Meg Kinnear & Paul Jean Le Cannu, Concluding Remarks: ICSID and African States Leading International Investment Law Reform

New Volume: Recueil des Cours

Volume 404 of the Recueil des Cours, Collected Courses of the Hague Academy of International Law is out. Contents include:
  • Volume 404
    • L. Rajamani, Innovation and Experimentation in the International Climate Change Regime
    • J.-M. Sorel, Quelle normativité pour le droit des relations monétaires et financières internationales

Friday, May 1, 2020

New Issue: Rivista di Diritto Internazionale

The latest issue of the Rivista di Diritto Internazionale (Vol. 103, no. 1, 2020) is out. Contents include:
  • Articoli
    • R. Baratta, L’effetto diretto delle disposizioni inter- nazionali self-executing
    • M. Paparinskis, Revisiting the Indispensable Third Party Principle
    • A. Pietrobon, Withdrawal from Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Agreements
  • Note e Commenti
    • C. Cinelli, La disciplina della ricerca scientifica in mare alla luce della recente prassi internazionale
    • A. Muccinone, Le misure di contrasto all’« epidemia globale del tabacco » alla prova del diritto OMC. Il caso Australia - Tobacco Plain Packaging

De Pooter: The Civil Protection Mechanism of the European Union: A Solidarity Tool at Test by the COVID-19 Pandemic

Hélène De Pooter (Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté - Law) has posted an ASIL Insight on The Civil Protection Mechanism of the European Union: A Solidarity Tool at Test by the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Hathaway, Bradley, & Goldsmith: The Failed Transparency Regime for Executive Agreements: An Empirical and Normative Analysis

Oona A. Hathaway (Yale Univ. - Law), Curtis Bradley (Duke Univ. - Law), Jack Landman Goldsmith (Harvard Univ. - Law) have posted The Failed Transparency Regime for Executive Agreements: An Empirical and Normative Analysis (Harvard Law Review, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

The Constitution specifies only one process for making international agreements. Article II states that the President “shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.” The treaty process has long been on a path to obsolescence, however, with fewer and fewer treaties being made in each presidential administration. Nevertheless, the United States has not stopped making international agreements. Even as Article II treaties have come to a near halt, the United States has concluded hundreds of binding international agreements each year. These agreements, known as “executive agreements,” are made by the President without submitting them to the Senate, or to Congress, at all. Congress has responded to the rise of executive agreements by imposing a transparency regime—requiring that all the binding executive agreements be reported to Congress and that important agreements be published for the public to see.

Until now, however, there has been no systematic assessment of how well the transparency regime has been working. This Article seeks to fill that gap. Through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, we obtained thousands of documents relating to the agreements reported to Congress and the legal authority on which the Executive Branch has relied for these agreements. Together with a series of interviews with lawyers directly involved in the process, this new information has given us an unprecedented look inside the system of concluding, publicizing, and reporting executive agreements. For the first time, we can describe how the system for making and scrutinizing executive agreements actually works—and when and how it fails to work. The overall picture that emerges is one of dysfunction and non-accountability. In brief: the Executive Branch does not come close to meeting its reporting duties; the entire process is opaque to everyone involved, including Executive Branch officials and congressional staffers; and Congress is failing in its oversight role. The “system” is badly in need of repair if we are going to preserve the integrity and legality of the United States’ primary means of making international law. This Article proposes a number of reforms, most of which should be normatively uncontroversial.

Williams, Woolaver, & Palmer: The Amicus Curiae in International Criminal Justice

Sarah Williams (Univ. of New South Wales - Law), Hannah Woolaver (Univ. of Cape Town - Law), & Emma Palmer (Griffith Univ. - Law) have published The Amicus Curiae in International Criminal Justice (Hart Publishing 2020). Here's the abstract:

The amicus curiae – or friend of the court – is the main mechanism for actors other than the parties, including civil society actors and states, to participate directly in proceedings in international criminal tribunals. Yet reliance on this mechanism raises a number of significant questions concerning: the functions performed by amici, which actors seek to intervene and why, and the influence of amicus interventions on judicial outcomes. Ultimately, the amicus curiae may have a significant impact on the fairness, representativeness and legitimacy of the tribunals' proceedings and decisions.

This book provides a comprehensive examination of the amicus curiae practice of the International Criminal Court and other major international criminal tribunals and offers suggestions for the role of the amicus curiae. In doing so, the authors develop a framework to augment the potential contributions of amicus participation in respect of the legitimacy of international criminal tribunals and their decisions, while minimising interference with the core judicial competence of the tribunal and the right of the accused to a fair and expeditious trial.

New Issue: Cooperation and Conflict

The latest issue of Cooperation and Conflict (Vol. 55, no. 2, June 2020) is out. Contents include:
  • Lise Philipsen, Improvising the international: Theorizing the everyday of intervention from the field
  • Marc Jacobsen, Greenland’s Arctic advantage: Articulations, acts and appearances of sovereignty games
  • Courtney J Fung, Rhetorical adaptation, normative resistance and international order-making: China’s advancement of the responsibility to protect
  • Andrew EE Collins & Chuck Thiessen, A grounded theory of local ownership as meta-conflict in Afghanistan
  • Tal Sadeh & Nizan Feldman, Globalization and wartime trade
  • Laura Chappell & Roberta Guerrina, Understanding the gender regime in the European External Action Service

Thursday, April 30, 2020

Special Issue: Border Justice: Migration and Accountability for Human Rights Violation

The current issue of the German Law Journal (Vol. 21, Special Issue No. 3, April 2020) focuses on "Border Justice: Migration and Accountability for Human Rights Violation." Contents include:
  • Special Issue: Border Justice: Migration and Accountability for Human Rights Violation
    • Cathryn Costello & Itamar Mann, Border Justice: Migration and Accountability for Human Rights Violations
    • Nikolas Feith Tan & Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, A Topographical Approach to Accountability for Human Rights Violations in Migration Control
    • Başak Çalı, Cathryn Costello, & Stewart Cunningham, Hard Protection through Soft Courts? Non-Refoulement before the United Nations Treaty Bodies
    • Violeta Moreno-Lax, The Architecture of Functional Jurisdiction: Unpacking Contactless Control—On Public Powers, S.S. and Others v. Italy, and the “Operational Model”
    • Efthymios Papastavridis, The European Convention of Human Rights and Migration at Sea: Reading the “Jurisdictional Threshold” of the Convention Under the Law of the Sea Paradigm
    • Vladislava Stoyanova, The Right to Life Under the EU Charter and Cooperation with Third States to Combat Human Smuggling
    • Carla Ferstman, Human Rights Due Diligence Policies Applied to Extraterritorial Cooperation to Prevent “Irregular” Migration: European Union and United Kingdom Support to Libya
    • Daria Davitti, Beyond the Governance Gap: Accountability in Privatized Migration Control
    • Evangelia (Lilian) Tsourdi, Holding the European Asylum Support Office Accountable for its role in Asylum Decision-Making: Mission Impossible?
    • Melanie Fink, The Action for Damages as a Fundamental Rights Remedy: Holding Frontex Liable
    • Gabrielle Holly, Challenges to Australia's Offshore Detention Regime and the Limits of Strategic Tort Litigation
    • Ioannis Kalpouzos, International Criminal Law and the Violence against Migrants
    • Itamar Mann, The Right to Perform Rescue at Sea: Jurisprudence and Drowning

New Issue: Questions of International Law

The latest issue of Questions of International Law / Questioni di Diritto Internazionale (no. 68, 2020) is out. Contents include:
  • The multi-faceted character of the ‘political question’ doctrine in recent practice: A one-size-fits-all tool?
    • Introduced by Micaela Frulli
    • Diego Mauri, The political question doctrine vis-à-vis drones’ ‘outsized power’: Antithetical approaches in recent case-law
    • Martina Buscemi, The non-justiciability of third-party claims before UN internal dispute settlement mechanisms. The ‘politicization’ of (financially) burdensome questions

New Volume: Anuario Español de Derecho Internacional

The latest volume of the Anuario Español de Derecho Internacional (Vol. 36, 2020) is out. Contents include:
  • Estudios Romualdo Bermejo-García & Andrea Cocchini, Los drones a la luz del Derecho Internacional Humanitario (DIH)
  • Roberto Pérez-Salom, Los convenios internacionales y la promoción internacional del turismo sostenible
  • Alfonso-J. Iglesias-Velasco, La progresiva asimilación del fenómeno deportivo y de sus instituciones por el Derecho internacional
  • Irene Vázquez-Serrano, La constitucionalidad de la LO 1/2014 relativa a la jurisdicción universal
  • Déborah Presta-Novello, La presencia de las Naciones Unidas en Colombia. La cooperación al desarrollo y la preocupación por los Derechos Humanos
  • Risteard de-Paor, Hacia la criminalidad climática: creación de una quinta categoría de crimen bajo el Estatuto de Roma para penalizar la agravación del cambio climático
  • Daniel Iglesias-Márquez, Cambio climático y responsabilidad empresarial: análisis del papel de las empresas para alcanzar los objetivos del Acuerdo de París
  • Cesáreo Gutiérrez-Espada & María-José Cervell-Hortal, ¿Y para cuando el código de la navegación marítima? (¿O hemos perecido en el intento?)
  • Yolanda Gamarra, Observaciones de una amica curiae en el caso Al-Bashir ante la Corte Penal Internacional
  • Karla Zambrano-González, La Unión Europea ante la emergencia climática

Tuesday, April 28, 2020

New Issue: Leiden Journal of International Law

The latest issue of the Leiden Journal of International Law (Vol. 33, no. 2, June 2020) is out. Contents include:
  • Editorial
    • Cristina Hoss, Santiago Villalpando, & Eric De Brabandere, In Memoriam: Professor Hugh W. A. Thirlway (14 June 1937 – 13 October 2019)
  • International Legal Theory
    • Michelle Burgis-Kasthala, Researching secret spaces: A reflexive account on negotiating risk and academic integrity
    • Ioannis Kalpouzos, Double elevation: Autonomous weapons and the search for an irreducible law of war
  • International Law and Practice
    • Leonardo Borlini, When the Leviathan goes to the market: A critical evaluation of the rules governing state-owned enterprises in trade agreements
    • Veronika Fikfak, Non-pecuniary damages before the European Court of Human Rights: Forget the victim; it’s all about the state
    • Eva Kassoti, Between Sollen and Sein: The CJEU’s reliance on international law in the interpretation of economic agreements covering occupied territories
    • Goemeone E.J. Mogomotsi, Patricia K. Mogomotsi, & Ketlhatlogile Mosepele, Legal aspects of transboundary water management: An analysis of the intergovernmental institutional arrangements in the Okavango River Basin
    • Ksenia Polonskaya, Selecting candidates to the bench of the World Court: (Inevitable) politicization and its consequences
    • Rebecca Sutton, Enacting the ‘civilian plus’: International humanitarian actors and the conceptualization of distinction
    • Diego Zannoni, The legitimate expectation of regulatory stability under the Energy Charter Treaty
  • International Court of Justice
    • Charles N. Brower & Massimo Lando, Judges ad hoc of the International Court of Justice
  • International Criminal Courts and Tribunals
    • Marina Aksenova & Amber N. Rieff, Setting the scene: The use of art to promote reconciliation in international criminal justice

New Issue: International Journal of Human Rights

The latest issue of the International Journal of Human Rights (Vol. 24, no. 4, 2020) is out. Contents include:
  • Special Section: Gender, Sexuality and Transitional Justice
    • Katherine Fobear & Erin Baines, Pushing the conversation forward: the intersections of sexuality and gender identity in transitional justice
    • Katie McQuaid, ‘There is violence across, in all arenas’: listening to stories of violence amongst sexual minority refugees in Uganda
    • Rocky James, An evolution in queer indigenous oral histories through the Canada Indian residential school settlement agreement
    • John Nagle, Frictional encounters in postwar human rights: an analysis of LGBTQI movement activism in Lebanon
    • Nicole Maier, Queering Colombia's peace process: a case study of LGBTI inclusion
  • Regular Articles
    • Andrea Broderick, Of rights and obligations: the birth of accessibility
    • Rhona Smith, Conall Mallory & Sean Molloy, Brexiting human rights diplomacy at the United Nations Human Rights Council: opportunity or cause for concern?
    • Katarina Frostell, Welfare rights of families with children in the case law of the ECtHR
    • Ruth Gaffney-Rhys, Female genital mutilation: the law in England and Wales viewed from a human rights perspective
    • Anne J. Gilliland & Kathy Carbone, An analysis of warrant for rights in records for refugees

Call for Papers: The Communist Crimes – Question of Individual and State Responsibility

A call for papers has been issued for a conference on "The Communist Crimes – Question of Individual and State Responsibility," which will take place November 9-10, 2020, in Warsaw. The call is here.

Monday, April 27, 2020

AJIL Unbound Symposium: How Will Artificial Intelligence Affect International Law?

AJIL Unbound has posted a symposium on "How Will Artificial Intelligence Affect International Law?" The symposium includes an introduction by Ashley Deeks and contributions by Malcolm Langford, Steven Hill, Bryant Walker Smith, and Daragh Murray.

Özsu: Organizing Internationally: Georges Abi-Saab, the Congo Crisis, and the Decolonization of the United Nations

Umut Özsu (Carleton Univ. - Law and Legal Studies) has posted Organizing Internationally: Georges Abi-Saab, the Congo Crisis, and the Decolonization of the United Nations (European Journal of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:
Why and how have "Third World" international lawyers engaged with the law of international organizations? This article considers Georges Abi-Saab’s 1978 work, The United Nations Operation in the Congo 1960–1964, an important but largely forgotten intervention in debates about the power and authority of the United Nations at the height of the post-Second World War wave of decolonization. Fusing careful analysis of the legal rules and instruments that underwrote UN operations during the Congo crisis with a narrative reconstruction of the accompanying political and diplomatic negotiations, Abi-Saab’s book examines the organization’s involvement in the conflict following Congo’s formal independence from Belgium in June 1960, both during and after Dag Hammarskjöld’s tenure as UN Secretary-General. This article takes up Abi-Saab’s account of Hammarskjöld’s role in and management of the crisis. It demonstrates that Abi-Saab understood the Secretary-General’s office to be hedged in by significant "constitutional" constraints on publicly justifiable action but also uniquely equipped to coordinate competing interests and facilitate collective action. It also demonstrates that this dual understanding of the Secretary-General--both "legalistic" and overtly "political"--informed Abi-Saab’s commitment to developing international law in and through international organizations.

Heath: Trade and Security Among the Ruins

J. Benton Heath (New York Univ. - Law) has posted Trade and Security Among the Ruins (Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

The collision of trade and security interests is taking place today in an increasingly fragmented landscape. Governments’ conceptions of their own vital interests are undergoing a rapid transformation, as the concept of “national security” expands to encompass issues such as national industrial policy, cybersecurity, and responses to climate change and pandemic disease. At the same time, the system for settling trade disputes is being pulled apart by competing tendencies toward legalism and deformalization. Last year, a landmark decision suggested that international adjudicators could oversee this clash between security and trade, deciding which security interests can override trade rules and which ones cannot. Then the collapse of the WTO Appellate Body threw into doubt the future of a legalized trade regime, suggesting a partial return to a system driven by politics, where governments retain significant discretion to advance their own interpretations of their trade obligations and their security interests.

In this contribution to the Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law symposium on trade and security, I argue that this fragmented landscape provides an opportunity to experiment with different ways of resolving the clash between trade and security. After introducing the expansion of state security interests with reference to recent policy developments, I identify three emerging models for reconciling expanded security interests with trade obligations: structured politics, trade legalism, and judicial managerialism. Each of these models brings tradeoffs in terms of oversight and flexibility, and each is associated with an ideal institutional setting. Rather than attempting to vindicate one model for all settings and all purposes, we should embrace plurality, especially at a moment where the relationship between trade and security appears to be undergoing a historic transformation.

Ozturk: Covid-19: Just Disastrous or the Disaster Itself? Applying the ILC Articles on the Protection of Persons in the Event of Disasters to the Covid-19 Outbreak

Alp Ozturk has posted an ASIL Insight on Covid-19: Just Disastrous or the Disaster Itself? Applying the ILC Articles on the Protection of Persons in the Event of Disasters to the Covid-19 Outbreak.

Sunday, April 26, 2020

Verdier: Global Banks on Trial: U.S. Prosecutions and the Remaking of International Finance

Pierre-Hugues Verdier (Univ. of Virginia - Law) has published Global Banks on Trial: U.S. Prosecutions and the Remaking of International Finance (Oxford Univ. Press 2020). Here's the abstract:

In the years since the 2008 financial crisis, U.S. federal prosecutors have brought dozens of criminal cases against the world's most powerful banks, charging them with manipulating financial indices, helping their customers evade taxes, evading sanctions, and laundering money. To settle these cases, global banks like UBS, Barclays, HSBC and BNP Paribas paid tens of billions of dollars in fines. They also agreed to extensive reforms, hiring hundreds of compliance officers, spending billions on new systems, and installing independent monitors. In effect, they agreed to become worldwide enforcers of U.S. law, including financial sanctions-sometimes despite their own governments' protests.

This book examines the U.S. enforcement campaign against global banks across four areas: benchmark manipulation, tax evasion, sanctions violations, and sovereign debt. It shows that U.S. prosecutors have unilaterally carved out a new role as global bank regulators, heralding a fundamental shift in how international finance is overseen. Their ability to do so stems from U.S. control over access to vital hubs of the international financial system. In some areas, unilateral U.S. actions have ushered in important multilateral reforms, such as the rise of automatic tax information exchange and better-regulated financial indices. In other areas, such as financial sanctions, unilateralism has attracted protests from other states and spurred attempts to challenge U.S. dominance of international finance.

New Issue: Human Rights Law Review

The latest issue of the Human Rights Law Review (Vol. 20, no. 1, March 2020) is out. Contents include:
  • Marko Milanovic, The Murder of Jamal Khashoggi: Immunities, Inviolability and the Human Right to Life
  • Mark Dawson, Fundamental Rights in European Union Policy-making: The Effects and Advantages of Institutional Diversity
  • Krešimir Kamber, Substantive and Procedural Criminal Law Protection of Human Rights in the Law of the European Convention on Human Rights
  • Dana Schmalz, Beyond an Anxiety Logic: A Critical Examination of Language Rights Cases before the European Court of Human Rights
  • Lize R Glas, From Interlaken to Copenhagen: What Has Become of the Proposals Aiming to Reform the Functioning of the European Court of Human Rights?
  • Nicola Barker, ‘Marry in Haste …’: The (Partial) Abolition of Same-sex Marriage in Bermuda
  • Nigel D White, Jam Tomorrow? Implications for United Nations Human Rights Liability of the United States Supreme Court’s Judgment on Immunity

New Additions to the UN Audiovisual Library of International Law

The Codification Division of the UN Office of Legal Affairs recently added two lectures to the UN Audiovisual Library of International Law Podcast Channel. Due to current circumstances, the AVL team can post these only to the podcast channel and not the website. The lectures were given by Ivana Hrdličková on "Special Tribunal for Lebanon – A Tribunal of Many Firsts" and Lavanya Rajamani on "The International Climate Change Regime: Evolution and Challenges."

Call for Applications: Law & Practice of International Courts and Tribunals Book Review Editor

The Law & Practice of International Courts and Tribunals has issued a call for applications for the position of Book Review Editor. Here's the call:

The Law & Practice of International Courts and Tribunals (LPICT) now invites applications for the position of Book Review Editor

The Law & Practice of International Courts and Tribunals (LPICT) is adding a book review section to its regular offerings of high-level scholarly articles and legal development columns.

For this purpose, we are currently looking for a Book Review Editor with at least 3 years of post- PhD experience (or equivalent) and, preferably, with previous editorial expertise. Women and non-Western scholars are particularly encouraged to apply.

The Book Review Editor will be asked to evaluate incoming book reviews, as well as to identify recently published titles suitable for review and suitable reviewers. The Book Review Editor will work closely with the co-Editors-in-Chief (Prof. Régis Bismuth and Prof. Freya Baetens) and be asked to make a commitment for a term of 3 years (renewable). The position is unpaid.

Vacancy now open! Deadline: 31 May 2020

Interested candidates are kindly invited to send a motivation letter, CV and list of publications to the co-Editors-in-Chief (regis.bismuth@sciencespo.fr and freya.baetens@jus.uio.no) by 31 May 2020 (with ‘LPICT Book Review Editor Application’ as email subject).

All applicants will be notified of the outcome of the selection process in June 2020. Shortlisted candidates may be invited for an online interview. The appointed Book Review Editor will be expected to start in July 2020.

Pacholska: Complicity and the Law of International Organizations: Responsibility for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law Violations in UN Peace Operations

Magdalena Pacholska (Legal Adviser, Polish Armed Forces) has published Complicity and the Law of International Organizations: Responsibility for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law Violations in UN Peace Operations (Edward Elgar Publishing 2020). Here's the abstract:

This timely book examines the responsibility of international organizations for complicity in human rights and humanitarian law violations. It comprehensively addresses a lacuna in current scholarship through an analysis of the mandates and modus operandi of UN peace operations, offering workable normative solutions and striking a balance between the UN’s duty not to contribute to international law violations and its need to discharge mandated tasks in a highly volatile environment.

Building on existing scholarship on State responsibility for aid or assistance, this incisive book is the first to focus on how the complicity of international organizations in human rights and humanitarian law violations can be established. Through a re-examination of classic legal notions such as due diligence and effective control, and their application to the problem of UN responsibility for complicity, Dr Magdalena Pacholska provides a pertinent analysis of the complex issues surrounding the UN’s legal exposure for its activities in the field of peace and security.

New Issue: Review of European, Comparative & International Environmental Law

The latest issue of the Review of European, Comparative & International Environmental Law (Vol. 29, no. 1, April 2020) is out. Contents include:
  • Special Issue: Water Protection and Armed Conflicts in International Law
    • Carl Bruch, Erika Weinthal, & Jessica Troell, Water law and governance in post‐conflict settings
    • Daniëlla Dam‐de Jong, Building a sustainable peace: How peace processes shape and are shaped by the international legal framework for the governance of natural resources
    • Mara Tignino & Öykü Irmakkesen, Water in peace operations: The case of Haiti
    • Bjørn‐Oliver Magsig, Water security: A litmus test for international law
    • Marco Pertile & Sondra Faccio, Access to water in Donbass and Crimea: Attacks against water infrastructures and the blockade of the North Crimea Canal
    • Marja Lehto, Armed conflicts and the environment: The International Law Commission’s new draft principles
  • Original Articles
    • Olivia Woolley, What would ecological climate change law look like? Developing a method for analysing the international climate change regime from an ecological perspective
    • Emily Webster, Transnational legal processes, the EU and RED II: Strengthening the global governance of bioenergy
    • Carlos Soria‐Rodríguez, The European environmental regulation of marine renewable energies
    • Beatrice Garske, Jessica Stubenrauch, & Felix Ekardt, Sustainable phosphorus management in European agricultural and environmental law
    • Zachary Allen Roy Phillips, Barbuda’s community title to land: A furtherance of the Convention on Biological Diversity?
  • Case Notes
    • Lorenzo Squintani, Balancing nature and economic interests in the European Union: On the concept of mitigation under the Habitats Directive