Most Interesting 2020: Corradetti, Kant, Global Politics and Cosmopolitan Law

The seventh in our series "Most Interesting 2020":

Claudio Corradetti, Kant, Global Politics and Cosmopolitan Law: The World Republic as a Regulative Idea of Reason (Routledge 2020)

Kant, Global Politics, and Cosmopolitan Law. The World Republic as a Regulative Idea of Reason is an enlightening book for understanding the huge complexity of our contemporary political world. The book generously offers a unique lens by brilliantly reconstructing the development of international law through the fruitful key of Kant’s cosmopolitan thought and especially by proposing a novel focus on Kant’s notion of the world republic as a way of thinking in the form of ‘as if’ paradigm about international politics where the possibility of progression towards peace results from its use as a regulative idea.

Simona Tiribelli
Fulbright Fellow in Ethics of Technology
MIT Media Lab | MIT
Ph.D. candidate in Global Studies. Justice, Rights, Politics
University of Macerata | Unimc

New Issue: International Studies Quarterly

The latest issue of the International Studies Quarterly (Vol. 64, no. 4, December 2020) is out. Contents include:

• Martha Finnemore & Michelle Jurkovich, The Politics of Aspiration
• Øyvind Stiansen & Erik Voeten, Backlash and Judicial Restraint: Evidence from the European Court of Human Rights
• Kelebogile Zvobgo, Wayne Sandholtz, & Suzie Mulesky, Reserving Rights: Explaining Human Rights Treaty Reservations
• Michael A Gavin, Global Club Goods and the Fragmented Global Financial Safety Net
• Yoram Z Haftel, Daniel F Wajner, & Dan Eran, The Short and Long(er) of It: The Effect of Hard Times on Regional Institutionalization
• Zoltán I Búzás & Erin R Graham, Emergent Flexibility in Institutional Development: How International Rules Really Change
• Matthew Hauenstein & Madhav Joshi, Remaining Seized of the Matter: UN Resolutions and Peace Implementation
• Omer Zarpli, Shaking Hands with the Internal Enemy: Democracy and Civil Conflict Settlement
• Gary Uzonyi & Burak Demir, Excluded Ethnic Groups, Conflict Contagion, and the Onset of Genocide and Politicide during Civil War
• Eleonora Mattiacci & Benjamin T Jones, Restoring Legitimacy: Public Diplomacy Campaigns during Civil Wars
• Sirianne Dahlum & Tore Wig, Peace Above the Glass Ceiling: The Historical Relationship between Female Political Empowerment and Civil Conflict
• Bryan Rooney, Emergency Powers and the Heterogeneity of Terror in Democratic States
• Lora DiBlasi, From Shame to New Name: How Naming and Shaming Creates Pro-Government Militias
• Tarald Laudal Berge, Dispute by Design? Legalization, Backlash, and the Drafting of Investment Agreements
• Gabriele Spilker, Quynh Nguyen, & Thomas Bernauer, Trading Arguments: Opinion Updating in the Context of International Trade Agreements
• Tabea Palmtag, Tobias Rommel, & Stefanie Walter, International Trade and Public Protest: Evidence from Russian Regions
• Samuel Brazys & Andreas Kotsadam, Sunshine or Curse? Foreign Direct Investment, the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, and Individual Corruption Experiences in Africa
• Christopher Heurlin, Authoritarian Aid and Regime Durability: Soviet Aid to the Developing World and Donor–Recipient Institutional Complementarity and Capacity
• Simone Dietrich, Helen V Milner, & Jonathan B Slapin, From Text to Political Positions on Foreign Aid: Analysis of Aid Mentions in Party Manifestos from 1960 to 2015
• Laura Seelkopf & Ida Bastiaens, Achieving Sustainable Development Goal 17? An Empirical Investigation of the Effectiveness of Aid Given to Boost Developing Countries’ Tax Revenue and Capacity
• Filippo Costa Buranelli, Authoritarianism as an Institution? The Case of Central Asia
• Brian Blankenship, Promises under Pressure: Statements of Reassurance in US Alliances

Most Interesting 2020: Bassetti, Human Rights Bodies' Adjudication of Trans People's Rights: Shifting the Narrative from the Right to Private Life to Cruel and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment

The sixth in our series "Most Interesting 2020":

Matteo E. Bassetti, Human Rights Bodies' Adjudication of Trans People's Rights: Shifting the Narrative from the Right to Private Life to Cruel and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment (European Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 291-325, November 2020)

This article shows a beautiful and groundbreaking analysis of how human rights bodies can and must step up their game to support transgender people in their fight for legal gender recognition and how the current processs for legal gender recognition can be classified as inhuman and degrading treatment.

Juliette Wyss
CIVICUS

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

The latest issue of the Review of European, Comparative & International Environmental Law (Vol. 29, no. 3, November 2020) is out. Contents include:

• Special Issue: Contemporary Issues in International Water Law
• Lingjie Kong, The Dispute over the Status and Use of the Waters of the Silala case and the customary rules on the definition of international watercourse
• Yang Liu, Beyond semantics: Overcoming the normative incoherence surrounding the protection of international watercourse ecosystems
• Nabaat Tasnima Mahbub, The role of proportionality in the law of transboundary waters
• Alistair Rieu‐Clarke, Can reporting enhance transboundary water cooperation? Early insights from the Water Convention and the Sustainable Development Goals reporting exercise
• Yu Su, Evolving normativity in contemporary international water law: A communicative approach to the growing role of non‐state actors
• Patricia Wouters & Sergei Vinogradov, Reframing the transboundary water discourse: Contextualized international law in practice
• David J. Devlaeminck & Xisheng Huang, China and the global water conventions in light of recent developments: Time to take a second look?
• Sergei Vinogradov & Patricia Wouters, Adaptation regulatory regimes to address climate change challenges in transboundary water basins: Can multilateral regionalism help?
• Tianbao Qin & Jin Gu, Payments for ecosystem services in transboundary water allocation cases: An approach for China and its neighbours
• Owen McIntyre, State responsibility in international law for transboundary water‐related harm: The emergence of a new ecosystems‐based paradigm?
• Ana Maria Daza‐Clark, Enforcing transboundary water obligations through investment treaty arbitration: China, Laos and the Mekong River
• Huiping Chen, The role of amicus curiae in implementing the human right to water in the context of international investment law
• Original Articles
• Veera Pekkarinen, Going beyond CO2: Strengthening action on global methane emissions under the UN climate regime
• José Juste Ruiz, The process towards a Global Pact for the Environment at the United Nations: From legal ambition to political dilution
• Case Note
• Roberta Greco, Cordella et al v Italy and the effectiveness of human rights law remedies in cases of environmental pollution

Nelson: The Artemis Accords and the Future of International Space Law

Jack Wright Nelson (National Univ. of Singapore) has posted an ASIL Insight on The Artemis Accords and the Future of International Space Law.

Zhou: An Important Step Forward and a Delicate Balance – Observations on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership

Jingyuan (Joey) Zhou has posted an ASIL Insight on An Important Step Forward and a Delicate Balance – Observations on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

Most Interesting 2020: Cançado Trindade, Reflections on the Realization of Justice in the Era of Contemporary International Tribunals

The fifth in our series "Most Interesting 2020":

Antônio Augusto Cançado Trindade, Reflections on the Realization of Justice in the Era of Contemporary International Tribunals (Recueil des cours de l'Académie de La Haye, vol. 408, pp. 9-87, 2020)

Judge Cançado Trindade has always taken a somehow unconventional position regarding international justice and its theoretical foundations, object and purpose. The abovementioned Special Lecture delivered by him perfectly summarises his core ideas about that subject, as reflected in the numerous separate and dissenting opinions he had appended to the ICJ's decisions. The State-centric voluntarist positivism, as he aptly points out, is flawed and the raison d'État should undoubtedly be replaced by the raison d'humanité as the focal point of international justice (cf. pp. 67, 86, and passim). The undersigned considers that the abovementioned Special Lecture once again raises the alarm, for the sake of humanity, to reminds us that international law should, in fine, serve human values. In this regard, Judge Cançado notes the urgent need for the more enlarged "access to justice by distinct subjects of international law" (p. 85) and the further move towards compulsory jurisdiction (p. 56 and passim).

Amirhooshang Mostarshedi
PhD Student in International Law
Université Paris Nanterre

Most Interesting 2020: Sands, The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive

The fourth in our series "Most Interesting 2020":

Philippe Sands, The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive (Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2020)

Philippe Sands’ The Ratline: Love, Lies and Justice on the Trail of a Nazi Fugitive is a book by an international lawyer that is not exactly about international law. At least not ostensibly. Instead, it is about what international law is about. The reader follows Sands around the world, often along with Horst von Wächter, the youngest son of Otto von Wächter, the Nazi Brigadeführer who disappears following the War and whose life Sands traces and tries to understand. Sands leads readers on three journeys. First, from Austria where von Wächter was when the War ended, through the Alps where he hid for three years, and then as he continued to Rome and prepared to abscond to Argentina. Next, it is a journey that traces the final days and death of the would-be escapee, the clouded circumstances of which are set amongst an oscillating commitment to post-War accountability and the dawn of Cold War realpolitik. And finally, it is a human journey that tells the tale of a son who is unable to comprehend the totality of his father’s crimes and of the descendant of the victims who works to reconcile the fate of his own family members and so many like them. In each of these journeys we see the enduring influence of international law. Sands provides the context that is so often missing from the texts and cases that document the origins of the institutions that give international law its contemporary shape. If the mechanisms that emerged following the Second World War and now constitute the architecture of international criminal law are, in some significant part, intended to create a historical narrative, to document a horrific truth that causes so many — perpetrator, victim, witness — to avert their eyes, to misremember, or to deny, Sands tells the stories that exist in the gaps where formal accountability falls short and that are often lost to history’s willful ignorance. The Ratline raises profound legal questions about complicity and responsibility. Through the art of storytelling, it pushes beyond international law’s formal boundaries to show our discipline’s broader purpose, its persistent flaws, but also its continued relevancy and potential.

David Hughes
Trebek Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law

Kirby: African Leadership in Human Rights: The Gambia and The Commonwealth Human Rights Commission, 1977–83

James Kirby (La Trobe Univ.) has posted African Leadership in Human Rights: The Gambia and The Commonwealth Human Rights Commission, 1977–83 (Journal of Contemporary History, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

This article examines The Gambia’s campaign from 1977-83 for a new international mechanism to protect human rights in the Commonwealth of Nations. President Dawda Jawara’s crusade for a Commonwealth Human Rights Commission complicates the dominant scholarly interpretation of human rights history, which tends to dismiss or overlook African participation in the international human rights movement. The article explains The Gambia’s display of human rights idealism as a strategy to attract aid and legitimacy in the global arena. It also shows how The Gambia’s project was thwarted by the ‘Old Commonwealth’, including the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. Western member states worked together to surreptitiously weaken and defeat The Gambia’s initiative, while deflecting blame and counting on ‘New Commonwealth’ governments in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Pacific to play the role of antagonist. Overall, the article contends the Commonwealth Human Rights Commission was killed because it threatened illusions and assumptions about the human rights movement that were convenient for western powers. With the use of archival sources from the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, this article spotlights the need for a more nuanced understanding of African and Global South actors in human rights history.

New Issue: The Law and Practice of International Courts and Tribunals

The latest issue of The Law and Practice of International Courts and Tribunals (Vol. 19, no. 3, 2020) is out. Contents include:

• Freya Baetens & Régis Bismuth, Face à Face: Interview with Giorgio Sacerdoti – Professor, Arbitrator and Former Member and President of the WTO Appellate Body
• Robert Kolb, Digging Deeper into the “Plausibility of Rights”-Criterion in the Provisional Measures Jurisprudence of the ICJ
• Emanuele Cimiotta, Parallel Proceedings before the International Court of Justice and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
• Simon Weber, Demystifying Moral Damages in International Investment Arbitration
• Juan-Pablo Perez-Leon-Acevedo, Reparation Modalities at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC)
• Mwiza Jo Nkhata, Res judicata and the Admissibility of Applications before the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights: a Fresh Look at Dexter Eddie Johnson v. Republic of Ghana
• Giorgio Sacerdoti, The Authority of “Precedent” in International Adjudication: The Contentious Case of the WTO Appellate Body’s Practice
• Guillaume Le Floch, Marie Lemey, & Lucie Paiola, Procedural Developments at the International Criminal Court (2019)

Alvarez: International Law in a Biden Administration

José E. Alvarez (New York Univ. - Law) has posted International Law in a Biden Administration (New York University Journal of International Law and Politics, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

The incoming Biden administration’s attempt to ‘restore’ respect for international law and its institutions will be constrained by eight foreign policy trends that will outlast President Trump: (1) preference for non-treaty ‘commitments’ not requiring congressional action; (2) a more hostile view of China and its intentions; (3) skepticism towards the world trading system; (4) reliance on sanctions to punish ‘bad’ actions; (5) wariness towards UN system organizations; (6) aversion to international courts and tribunals; (7) opposition to the use of force (including for ‘humanitarian’ purposes); and (8) ever more ‘ironclad’ commitments to Israel’s security. While Biden will moderate each of these, his ‘restoration’ of international law will be tempered and will not consist of a return to the Obama-era status quo.

Webinar: Teaching International Law

Beginning on January 8, 2021, the British Institute of International and Comparative Law will host a webinar on "Teaching Intenrational Law." The series composed of ten webinars over five sessions. Program and registration information are available here.

Most Interesting 2020: Yildiz, A Court with Many Faces: Judicial Characters and Modes of Norm Development in the European Court of Human Rights

The third in our series "Most Interesting 2020":

Ezgi Yildiz, A Court with Many Faces: Judicial Characters and Modes of Norm Development in the European Court of Human Rights (European Journal of International Law, Vol. 31, no. 1, 2020)

It is always great to read ambitious work that manages to balance a multitude of complex aspects, and still stick the landing by actually being enjoyable to read. This is one such article. Using a conceptual framework that consists both of a typology of different judicial characters, and different modes of norm development, Ezgi Yildiz shows how the European Court of Human Rights has expanded and adjusted the norms of the European Convention on Human Rights over several decades. The article combines interviews with large-scale coding and analysis of the jurisprudence of the European Court and uses a case study on the prohibition of torture case law, to show how norms change, and how these changes are affected by altering institutional features, external context, and interpretative dynamics. It is a noteworthy article that contributes to the understanding of the role international courts have in developing international law.

Martin Lolle Christensen
4th Year Doctoral Researcher in Law
European University Institute

Nacer: Les normes internationales du travail entre global et local : Etude internationale et comparée de l'interprétation des instruments de l'OIT

Rachid Nacer has published Les normes internationales du travail entre global et local : Etude internationale et comparée de l'interprétation des instruments de l'OIT (L'Harmattan 2020). Here's the abstract:

Le sujet de l'interprétation soulève de nombreuses interrogations, tant en matière institutionnelle que substantielle, à la fois au sein de l'Organisation internationale du travail (OIT) et en-dehors. Le regain d'intérêt pour les travaux de l'instance genevoise conduit à une situation où la question de l'interprétation de ses instruments se trouve renouvelée, complexifiée et fragmentée devant la diversité des acteurs qu'elle implique. Cet ouvrage propose une réflexion pour savoir si cette configuration permet de rendre effectifs des textes adoptés en vue de donner corps à la justice sociale. Sont ainsi analysés différents niveaux dans lesquels les instruments de l'OIT sont susceptibles d'être utilisés, à travers l'étude successive du cadre international puis de situations nationales, sur la base des jurisprudences canadienne, française et sud-africaine.

Madir: Sanctions Regimes of Multilateral Development Banks: What Process is Due

Jelena Madir (Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance) has published Sanctions Regimes of Multilateral Development Banks: What Process is Due (Brill | Nijhoff 2021). Here's the abstract:

In Sanctions Regimes of Multilateral Development Banks: What Process is Due, Jelena Madir examines the type of due process rights that should characterise sanctions regimes of multilateral development banks (MDBs). By benchmarking against comparable regimes, including the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights and administrative tribunals of international organisations, the author analyses the extent to which MDBs’ sanctions regimes should be bound by the rules of law, analogous to those of national judicial bodies, and the level of due process and transparency that should be required from these ever-evolving regimes that are generally immune from judicial review.

New Issue: European Journal of International Relations

The latest issue of the European Journal of International Relations (Vol. 26, no. 4, December 2020) is out. Contents include:

• Rosella Cappella Zielinski & Ryan Grauer, Organizing for performance: coalition effectiveness on the battlefield
• Corinne Bara, Shifting targets: the effect of peacekeeping on postwar violence
• Adrian Florea, Rebel governance in de facto states
• Christian Gläßel, Belén González, & Adam Scharpf, Grist to the mill of subversion: strikes and coups in counterinsurgencies
• Miriam Bradley, From armed conflict to urban violence: transformations in the International Committee of the Red Cross, international humanitarianism, and the laws of war
• Masakazu Matsumoto, Amoral realism or just war morality? Disentangling different conceptions of necessity
• Haro L Karkour & Dominik Giese, Bringing Morgenthau’s ethics in: pluralism, incommensurability and the turn from fragmentation to dialogue in IR
• Joshua Tschantret, Democratic Breakdown and the Hidden Perils of the Democratic Peace
• Lauge N Skovgaard Poulsen, Loyalty in world politics
• Robyn Eckersley, Rethinking leadership: understanding the roles of the US and China in the negotiation of the Paris Agreement
• Michiel Foulon & Gustav Meibauer, Realist avenues to global International Relations
• Kevin Blachford, Revisiting the expansion thesis: international society and the role of the Dutch East India company as a merchant empire
• Andrew Phillips & JC Sharman, Company-states and the creation of the global international system

Charnovitz: Solving the Challenges to World Trade

Steve Charnovitz (George Washington Univ. - Law) has posted Solving the Challenges to World Trade. Here's the abstract:

World trade faces fundamental challenges. This essay examines six threats to the intellectual case for open trade: to wit, worries about ecology, fairness, morality, equity, security, and geopolitics. Together, these threats implicate a huge swath of international trade. One of the biggest indicators of diminishing support for trade is the moribund status of the leading institution of the trading system, the World Trade Organization (WTO). There are three branches of WTO governance and all three are in trouble: the judicial branch and its vacant Appellate Body, the executive branch and its vacant post of WTO Director-General, and the legislative branch where the WTO Ministerial Conference has failed to meet since 2017. Solving global problems often requires focused international policies and sometimes specialized international agencies to administer such policies. Unfortunately, during the 21 st century, the growth in international problems has not been matched by a growth in international solutions. The faltering of the trading system is one example of that mismatch, but the same pathology exists in many areas of global governance. The biggest problem may be the shallow Paris Agreement on Climate Change that lacks any mutually agreed commitments, such as a carbon tax, for harmonized actions to combat global warming. Yet even without any international commitment to impose a carbon tax on domestic commerce, there are political demands to impose carbon taxes on imported products for ecological and fairness reasons. This essay introduces the term “tradeclimate” questions as nomenclature for the set of environmental issues relating to transborder trade that should be resolved in the climate regime, not in the WTO. In discussing China, the essay notes that the trade war between China and the United States spills into the WTO, and explains why the WTO should not arrogate to itself the task of re-educating China. Gaining China’s cooperation is critical to achieving better policies in the WTO, the Paris Agreement, and the World Health Organization.

Most Interesting 2020: d’Aspremont & Singh eds., Concepts for International Law – Contributions to Disciplinary Thought

Published in 2019, but the paperback edition came out in 2020, so on a technicality I'll allow it. (It doesn't hurt that I have a chapter in this volume.) The second in our series "Most Interesting 2020":

Jean d’Aspremont & Sahib Singh eds., Concepts for International Law – Contributions to Disciplinary Thought (Edward Elgar Publishing 2019)

Although Concepts for International Law was initially released as a hardback in 2019, the paperback has been released in 2020 and for the people who desire a physical copy to peruse, 50£ is more financially acceptable than 250£, so I think it deserve a mention. It is one of the most useful edited books on international law I have ever read, containing an inexhaustible treasure of insights on prominent concepts used in international law. It can be a daunting task for new researchers to familiarize themselves with the countless concepts being thrown around by established scholars in international legal academia. This book helps with that task. It will undoubtably become a starting point for many theses in the days to come.

Martin Lolle Christensen
4th Year Doctoral Researcher in Law
European University Institute

New Issue: Journal du Droit International

The latest issue of the Journal du Droit International ("Clunet") (Vol. 147, no. 4, Octobre-Novembre-Décembre 2020) is out. Contents include:

• Doctrine
• Isabelle Pingel, Les valeurs dans les traités européens. Illustrations
• Ludovic Benezech, Réflexions sur l’ouverture de la Cour de justice de l’Union européenne à la jurisprudence de la Cour internationale de justice
• Variétés
• Ludovic Chan-Tung, Le traité sur l’Antarctique comme traité objectif : une nouvelle approche
• Jean-Charles Jaïs, La confidentialité des correspondances internationales des avocats et juristes en entreprise – la question du droit applicable

Mystris: An African Criminal Court: The African Union’s Rethinking of International Criminal Justice

Dominique Mystris (Univ. of Pretoria - South African SDG Hub) has published An African Criminal Court: The African Union’s Rethinking of International Criminal Justice (Brill | Nijhoff 2021). Here's the abstract:

In An African Criminal Court Dominique Mystris explores the potential contribution of a regional criminal court to international criminal law and justice across the continent. As set out in the Malabo Protocol, the court’s approach to international core crimes builds on from the current international system. Yet, the additional crimes and region-centric approach reflect the continental concerns.

To fully realise the court’s contribution, the African Union’s institutional objectives and approach to justice, peace and security, the author argues for the inclusion of the court within the African Peace and Security Architecture. By adopting such a holistic understanding of the Malabo Protocol court within the AU structure, a more accurate depiction of the potential of an African criminal court emerges.

New Issue: Revue de Droit International et de Droit Comparé

The latest issue of the Revue de Droit International et de Droit Comparé (2020, no. 4) is out. Contents include:

• M. Berlingin, Le nouveau règlement d’arbitrage du centre belge d’arbitrage et de médiation (CEPANI)
• A. Delbecque, Le principe de précaution : conflits de normes sous l’angle du CETA
• R. Ngando Sandjè, Le droit de l’étranger à la participation politique au Cameroun
• J. Niyomukesha, La protection de l’investisseur non professionnel au sein de l’Union européenne et en Suisse : une réciprocité cohérente au regard notamment de MIFID II et LSFin ?
• J.C. Benito Sánchez, Discriminatie op grond van ras en etnische afkomst. Het sanctieregime en de toepassing in de rechtspraak

Most Interesting 2020: Kurz, “Hide a Fact Rather than State it”: The Holocaust, the 1940s Human Rights Surge, and the Cosmopolitan Imperative of International Law

Many thanks to all those who submitted their choices for most "interesting, important, or influential" article or book published in 2020! As a reminder, the call was open exclusively to junior scholars. Beginning today, I will post the submissions, in the order I received them. Each post will include the article and/or book and a statement from the recommender explaining the reason why they believe the article/book is interesting, important, or influential. The full series will be available at the label "Most Interesting 2020." Here's the first submission:

Nathan A. Kurz, “Hide a Fact Rather than State it”: The Holocaust, the 1940s Human Rights Surge, and the Cosmopolitan Imperative of International Law (Journal of Genocide Research, forthcoming)

The travaux préparatoires are one of the most studied documents in international legal scholarship. They are used as a means to study treaties, custom, and historical development. At the same time, we know very little about how they were produced, to what ends, and what is left out of them. Nathan Kurz makes a persuasive and powerful case for a more rigorous and critical analysis of the travaux as international legal documents - through the lens of human rights and the Holocaust in the 1940s. He demonstrates why scholars of international law need revise their understanding of the travaux as representing 'facts' and legal knowledge, and why these documents are historically problematic, with critical consequences for how we see international law today. This article, published in the Journal of Genocide Research, is highly original, innovative, and very well-researched. Highly recommended.

Boyd van Dijk
McKenzie Fellow
Melbourne Law School

Palombino, Virzo, & Zarra: Provisional Measures Issued by International Courts and Tribunals

Fulvio Maria Palombino (Univ. of Naples Federico II - Law), Roberto Virzo (Univ. of Sannio - Law), & Giovanni Zarra (Univ. of Naples Federico II - Law) have published Provisional Measures Issued by International Courts and Tribunals (Asser Press 2020). The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:

This book makes a significant contribution to the comprehension of the law and practice of provisional measures issued by international courts and tribunals, including international commercial arbitration. After having analyzed the common features of provisional measures, it provides an overview of the peculiarities of these orders within the context of different international proceedings (e.g. the ICJ, the ITLOS, the CJEU, the ICC, human rights courts and investment arbitration). In this regard, the book is valuable in offering a broad and rigorous comparative analysis between the various forms of provisional measures.

Kumar: On Scripts and Sensibility: Cold War International Law and Revolutionary Caribbean Subjects

Vidya Kumar (Univ. of Leicester - Law) has published On Scripts and Sensibility: Cold War International Law and Revolutionary Caribbean Subjects (German Law Journal, Vol. 21, no. 8, pp. 1541-1569, December 2020). Here's the abstract:

Through a literary-theatrical reading of international legality, this Article challenges the “settled script” produced by international legal scholars to frame and assess the legality of two historical events—the Grenada Revolution (1979–1983) and the U.S. Invasion of Grenada (1983). It does so by reading the Cold War as a sensibility performed by these scholars, one that recognized the operation of rival international legal orders and one that crafted a different script—Cold War Customary Law (“CWCL”)—to decide questions of international legality in a Cold War context. In addition to offering a new way to read the Cold War and international legality, this Article argues first that it is important to uncover this parallel and competing script of international legality operating at the time, and not dismiss it as unrelated political or ideological discourse, as it clearly influenced the interpretive logic and reasoning practices international lawyers deployed to frame what constituted legality in international law. Second, it argues that this Cold War sensibility in international legal scholarship on intervention and revolution predated the events in Grenada, and that if a different theatrical mise en scène is adopted—one which eschews “the short durée” or “evental history” of the settled script—this sensibility can be understood as being both continuous and discontinuous with rival imperial forms of international law operating in the Caribbean across time and place, where its discontinuities open up space to recover revolutionary Caribbean subjects of international law and a sensibility of shame in the present.

New Volume: Austrian Review of International and European Law

The latest volume of the Austrian Review of International and European Law (Vol. 23, 2018) is out. Contents include:

• Jane A Hofbauer, 1918 – The League of Nations as a ‘First Organized Expression of the International Community’ and the Permanent Court of International Justice as its Guardian
• Ralph Janik, 1928 – The Pact of Paris
• Michael J Moffatt, 1938 – 80 Years After the Anschluss: Can a Theory of Incorporation Harmonize the Dissonance?
• Markus P Beham, 1948 – The 1948 Genocide Convention: Origins, Impact, Legacy
• Koloman Roiger-Simek, 1958 – The Geneva Conventions on the Law of the Sea of 1958
• Sara Mansour Fallah, 1968 – Decolonization: Mauritius and the Chagos Archipelago Author:
• Philipp Janig, 1978 – The 1978 Vienna Convention, the Clean Slate Doctrine and the Decolonization of Sources
• Johannes Tropper, 1988 – Palestinian Declaration of Independence: A Tale of Poetry and Statehood
• Isabella Brunner, 1998 – UNGA Resolution 53/70 ‘Developments in the Field of Information and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security’ and Its Influence on the International Rule of Law in Cyberspace
• Céline Braumann, 2008 – The Global Financial Crisis and International Law
• Jane A Hofbauer & Stephan Wittich, 2018 – The Look Forward: Challenges to Consolidation or Opportunities for Change?

New Issue: Global Constitutionalism

The latest issue of Global Constitutionalism (Vol. 9, no. 3, November 2020) is out. Contents include:

• Articles
• Friederike Kuntz, ‘We the heads of state …’: Pitfalls of global constitutional practice
• Alexander Somek, Cosmopolitan constitutionalism: The case of the European Convention
• Symposium: A Cosmopolitan Legal Order by Alec Stone Sweet and Clare Ryan
• Garrett Wallace Brown & Mads Andenas, The European Convention of Human Rights as a Kantian cosmopolitan legal order
• Seyla Benhabib, Dialogic constitutionalism and judicial review
• Wojciech Sadurski, Legislative aims and the Kantian supranational court: A comment on Alec Stone Sweet and Clare Ryan, A Cosmopolitan Legal Order
• Claudio Corradetti, A rationale for the legitimacy of the world legal order: Kant’s idea of a cosmopolitan will
• Po Jen Yap, Democracy, courts and proportionality analysis in Asia
• Wayne Sandholtz, The ECtHR, transregional dialogues and global constitutionalism
• Eirik Bjorge, Legal cosmopolitanism in international law
• Alec Stone Sweet and Clare Ryan, Kant, cosmopolitanism and systems of constitutional justice in Europe and beyond

Longobardo: States’ Mouthpieces or Independent Practitioners? The Role of Counsel before the ICJ from the Perspective of the Legal Value of Their Oral Pleadings

Marco Longobardo (Univ. of Westminster - Law) has posted States’ Mouthpieces or Independent Practitioners? The Role of Counsel before the ICJ from the Perspective of the Legal Value of Their Oral Pleadings (The Law and Practice of International Courts and Tribunals, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

This article explores the role of counsel before the International Court of Justice, taking into account their tasks under the Statute of the Court and the legal value of their pleadings in international law. Pleadings of counsel constitute State practice for the formation of international customary law and treaty interpretation, and that they are attributable to the litigating State under the law on State responsibility. Accordingly, in principle, counsel present the views of the litigating State, which in practice approves in advance the pleadings. This consideration is relevant in discussing the role of counsel assisting Sates in politically sensitive cases, where there is no necessary correspondence between the views of the States and that of their counsel. Especially when less powerful States are parties to the relevant disputes, the availability of competent counsel in politically sensitive cases should not be discouraged since it advances the legitimacy of the international judicial function.

Webinar: Covid-19 and International Law: Novel Strain or Old Wine in New Test Tubes?

On December 15, 2020, Bocconi University, in collaboration with the European Society of International Law, will hold a webinar on “Covid-19 and International Law: Novel Strain or Old Wine in New Test Tubes?” Program and registration are here.

Call for Members: ILA Study Group on "The International Law of Regional Organizations"

Samantha Besson (Collège de France; Univ. of Fribourg) and Eva Kassoti (TMC Asser Institute), co-chairs, invite expressions of interest on the part of potential members for the newly formed ILA Study Group on "The International Law of Regional Organizations." The call is here.

AJIL Unbound Symposium: The Olympics and International Law

AJIL Unbound has posted a symposium on "The Olympics and International Law." The symposium includes an introduction by Laurence Boisson de Chazournes and contributions by Daniela Heerdt, Rebecca Schmidt, James A.R. Nafziger, Peter J. Spiro, Ryan Gauthier, and Doriane Lambelet Coleman.

Call for Participation: Seminar on the JHIL's Special Issue "Politics and the Histories of International Law"

The European Society of International Law's Interest Group on the History of International Law has issued a call for participation for an online seminar appraising the individual articles in and assessing the impact on the field of the recently published special issue of the Journal of the History of International Law on "Politics and the Histories of International Law." The call is here.

Baade, Burchardt, Feihle, Köppen, Mührel, Riemer, & Schäfer: Cynical International Law? Abuse and Circumvention in Public International and European Law

Björnstjern Baade (Freie Universität Berlin), Dana Burchardt (Freie Universität Berlin), Prisca Feihle (Freie Universität Berlin), Alicia Köppen (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Linus Mührel (Freie Universität Berlin), Lena Riemer (formerly, Freie Universität Berlin), & Raphael Schäfer (Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law) have published Cynical International Law? Abuse and Circumvention in Public International and European Law (Springer 2020). The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:

Analysing international law through the prism of “cynicism” makes it possible to look beyond overt disregard for international law, currently discussed in terms of a backlash or crisis. The concept allows to analyse and criticise structural features and specific uses of international law that seem detrimental to international law in a more subtle way. Unlike its ancient predecessor, cynicism nowadays refers not to a bold critique of power but to uses and abuses of international law that pursue one-sided interests tacitly disregarding the legal structure applied. From this point of view, the contributions critically reflect on the theoretical foundations of international law, in particular its relationship to power, actors such as the International Law Commission and international judges, and specific fields, including international human rights, humanitarian, criminal, tax and investment law.

Webster: Disaggregating Corporate Liability: Japanese Multinationals and World War II

Timothy Webster (Western New England Univ. - Law) has posted Disaggregating Corporate Liability: Japanese Multinationals and World War II (Stanford Journal of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

The past two decades have witnessed unprecedented attention to corporate legal liability for human rights abuses. Yet the supporting jurisprudence is relatively thin. Scholars generally agree that corporations can incur legal liability for serious violations of international human rights law. But courts find any number of ways to avoid such a result. This Article finds qualified support for an emergent norm of corporate civil liability from recent litigation in Japan. Specifically, the transnational war reparations litigation of the past three decades has yielded a consistent jurisprudence of qualified liability. Courts detail the abuses committed by Japan's largest multinational corporations, and find them illegal under applicable law. But they ultimately avoid liability by accepting one or more affirmative defenses. These cases provide legal theories that other jurisdictions may wish to consider in reviewing corporate legal liability. It also informs debate about the ongoing project of World War II reparations, and the relationship between states and corporations in remediating human rights violations.

Orford: Pensée critique et pratique du droit international

Anne Orford (Univ. of Melbourne - Law) has published Pensée critique et pratique du droit international (Pedone 2020). Here's the abstract:

Le droit international ne peut pas exister indépendamment de certaines conceptions du droit et de ses relations avec le pouvoir. C’est au dévoilement de certaines d’entre elles que nous invite le présent ouvrage. Pour découvrir celles-ci, Anne Orford a suivi deux chemins. Elle a d’une part minutieusement examiné le fonctionnement juridique concret des institutions internationales. Elle a ensuite, pour dégager la signification des phénomènes observés, fait appel à diverses autres disciplines que le droit, en particulier à la pensée économique et à l’histoire. Il en ressort de profondes lignes de force qui ont toujours marqué les mondes de la pratique et de la doctrine du droit international. Ceux-ci, en effet, prolongent, de manière plus ou moins consciente, une logique impérialiste et genrée de la conduite des relations internationales. Les développements de Anne Orford sur les interventions militaires et l’articulation de celles-ci avec les interventions économiques sont à cet égard édifiants. Juriste dotée d’une très vaste culture, observatrice douée d’une grande force intellectuelle, l’auteure nous donne à comprendre le rôle du droit international dans la constitution économique et militaire du monde qu’on ne peut plus regarder de la même manière après l’avoir lue. C’est là un instrument précieux pour le juriste qui veut réfléchir aux manières de comprendre ce monde que la crise historique que nous vivons montre à bout de souffle.

Vordermayer-Riemer: Non-Regression in International Environmental Law

Markus Vordermayer-Riemer has published Non-Regression in International Environmental Law (Intersentia 2020). Here's the abstract:

The book analyses the emerging concept of ‘non-regression’ as a novel legal principle of international environmental law. In order to do so, it traces the development of non-regression in the framework of international human rights law and provides an examination of the respective jurisprudence under universal and regional human rights instruments. These are then compared to closely-related normative concepts in the framework of international environmental law, including the non-regression concepts of the Paris Climate Change Agreement and biodiversity-related agreements such as the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands and the Bonn Convention on Migratory Species. The book advocates a novel usage of comparative law methods in order to allow for fruitful interactions between human rights and international environmental law.