New Issue: Nordic Journal of International Law

The latest issue of the Nordic Journal of International Law (Vol. 90, no. 3, 2021) is out. Contents include:

• Yoshifumi Tanaka, Temporal Elements in the Valuation of Environmental Damage: Reflections on the Costa Rica v. Nicaragua Compensation Case before the International Court of Justice
• Elliot Winter, The Geographical Reach of International Humanitarian Law in Transnational Armed Conflict
• Sondre Torp Helmersen, The Methodology of Formal Interpretations of Judicial Decisions by the International Court of Justice
• Alexander Lott, The MS Estonia Shipwreck Revisited: New Developments in the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage in the Northern Baltic Sea
• Ulf Linderfalk, Concepts as Tools of Legal Reasoning – How Pragmatics May Promote the Rationality of International Legal Discourse and the Work of Legal Scholars

Workshop: The Role of Interpretation in the Practice of Customary International Law: Interpretation as a Tool

On November 5, 2021, the project on "The Rules of Interpretation of Customary International Law" will hold a workshop, in a hybrid format, on "The Role of Interpretation in the Practice of Customary International Law: Interpretation as a Tool." The program is here. Registration is here.

Special Issue: On the Rohingya and the Andaman Sea Crisis: Six Years On

The latest issue of the Asia-Pacific Journal on Human Rights and the Law (Vol. 22, no. 1, 2021) focues on "On the Rohingya and the Andaman Sea Crisis: Six Years On." Contents include:

• Madeline Gleeson & Kelley Loper, Introduction
• Sumaiya Islam, Coline Schupfer, Zaid Hydari, Alexandra Zetes, & Kevin Cole, The Peril and Potential of Ambiguity: How National Laws and Policies Can Strengthen and Protect the Rights of Rohingya Refugees
• Brian Barbour, Lilianne Fan, & Chris Lewa, A Whole-of-Society Approach to the Rohingya Refugee Crisis: Strengthening Local Protection Capacity in South and South-East Asia
• Kate McMillan & Sriprapha Petcharamesree, Towards an ASEAN Model of ‘Responsibility-Sharing’ for Refugees and Asylum-Seekers
• Yunizar Adiputera & Antje Missbach, Indonesia’s Foreign Policy Regarding the Forced Displacement of Rohingya Refugees: Muslim Solidarity, Humanitarianism, and Non-Interventionism
• Authors: Natasha Yacoub, Nikola Errington, Wai Wai Nu, & Alexandra Robinson, Rights Adrift: Sexual Violence Against Rohingya Women on the Andaman Sea

Alter: The Promise and Perils of Theorizing International Regime Complexity in an Evolving World

Karen J. Alter (Northwestern Univ. - Political Science) has posted The Promise and Perils of Theorizing International Regime Complexity in an Evolving World (Review of International Organizations, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

As the world becomes more complicated, so too does global governance. The political consequences of the rising density of institutions, policies, rules and strategies to address global phenomena has been a central focus of the scholarship on international regime complexity. This conclusion to a special issue grapples with the promise and perils of theorizing about international regime complexity in a constantly evolving world. It discusses the special issue contributions while uniting the different conversations about the increasingly complex global governance space we refer to as international regime complexity. The goal is to bridge existing debates about global governance, to expand the scholarly conversation by drawing from and better connecting to IR debates, and to ensure that we can address practical and pressing global governance challenges.

Graduate Institute International Law Colloquium Fall 2021

The schedule for the Graduate Institute's International Law Colloquium for Fall 2021 is here.

New Issue: African Journal of International and Comparative Law

The latest issue of the African Journal of International and Comparative Law (Vol. 29, no. 4, November 2021) is out. Contents include:

• Paul Smit & Joaquin Grobler, Dismissal during Probationary Period of Employment in South Africa: An International Perspective
• John S. Ombella, Regulation of Natural Resources Located in Indigenous Communities Territory under the Principles of Consultation and Free, Prior-Informed Consent: Perspectives in Selected Countries
• Ndinawe Mtonga Ruppert, Kevin Sobel-Read & Blake Pepper, Law, Global Value Chains and Upgrading in the Mining Industry: A Case Study on Zambia
• Daniel Philemon Saredau, Law and Nigeria's Development: How to Strengthen the Efficacy of Law for Development in Nigeria
• Edith O. Nwosu, Edwin E. Arum & Oluchukwu P. Obioma, Promoting Sustainable Goals in Nigeria through the Kaleidoscope of the Social Protection Floor Initiative
• Funmi Alonge, Analysing the Effectiveness of the Nigerian Law and Policy in Promoting Renewable Energy and Expanding Access to Electricity
• Jonathan Heard & Emmanuel T. Laryea, Export Credit Agencies, International Investment Law and the Spectre of Unsustainable Developing Countries' Debts
• Georgios Pavlidis, The Troubling Shortcomings of International Asset Freezes: The Hunt for Gaddafi's Lost Billions
• Jamil Ddamulira Mujuzi, Discrimination on the Ground of Age in Uganda: Analysing Madrama Izama v. Attorney General (Constitutional Appeal No.01 of 2016) [2019] UGSC 1 (14 February 2019)

Conference: 2021 ASIL Midyear Meeting

On November 11-12, 2021, the American Society of International Law will hold its Midyear Meeting in a fully virtual format. Program and registration are here.

Lecture: Chimni on "Global South, Imperialism and International law: The Post Pandemic Era"

On November 5, 2021, the Collège de France will host a lecture by Bhupinder Chimni on "Global South, Imperialism and International law: The Post Pandemic Era." Details are here.

Workshop: Facial Recognition Technology: Challenges for International Collaboration & Governance

On November 17, 2021, Utrecht University will host a hybrid workshop on "Facial Recognition Technology: Challenges for International Collaboration & Governance." The program is here. Registration is here.

Lecture: Rae on "The Promotion of Transnational Human Rights: What Role for Canada at the UN?"

On October 20, 2021, the Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security will host an online lecture by Bob Rae (Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations) on "The Promotion of Transnational Human Rights: What Role for Canada at the UN?" Details are here.

Lecture: Prieto on "Blockchain infrastructures and changes in international lawmaking"

On October 20, 2021, the Institute of International Relations in Prague will host an online lecture by Gustavo Prieto (Ghent Univ.) on "Blockchain infrastructures and changes in international lawmaking." Details are here.

New Issue: International Studies Quarterly

The latest issue of the International Studies Quarterly (Vol. 65, no. 3, September 2021) is out. Contents include:

• Nicolas Jabko & Sebastian Schmidt, Paradigms and Practice
• Swati Srivastava & Lauren Muscott, How to Hold Unjust Structures Responsible in International Relations
• Dan Reiter, Gulliver Unleashed? International Order, Restraint, and The Case of Ancient Athens
• Quintin H Beazer & Daniel J Blake, Risk Is Relative: Heterogeneous Responses to Institutional Risks for Foreign Investment
• Aleksandra Conevska, International Cooperation and Natural Disasters: Evidence from Trade Agreements
• Desirée Nilsson & Isak Svensson, The Intractability of Islamist Insurgencies: Islamist Rebels and the Recurrence of Civil War
• Govinda Clayton & Valerie Sticher, The Logic of Ceasefires in Civil War
• Christopher M Faulkner, & Austin C Doctor, Rebel Fragmentation and the Recruitment of Child Soldiers
• Håvard Hegre, Håvard Mokleiv Nygård, & Peder Landsverk, Can We Predict Armed Conflict? How the First 9 Years of Published Forecasts Stand Up to Reality
• Jana Herold, Andrea Liese, Per-Olof Busch, & Hauke Feil, Why National Ministries Consider the Policy Advice of International Bureaucracies: Survey Evidence from 106 Countries
• Paula Castro & Marlene Kammerer, The Institutionalization of a Cleavage: How Differential Treatment Affects State Behavior in the Climate Negotiations
• Maria Martin de Almagro, Indicators and Success Stories: The UN Sustaining Peace Agenda, Bureaucratic Power, and Knowledge Production in Post-War Settings
• Jesse Dillon Savage, Common-Pool Hierarchy: Explaining the Emergence of Cooperative Hierarchies
• Huimin Cheng, Ye Wang, Ping Ma, & Amanda Murdie, Communities and Brokers: How the Transnational Advocacy Network Simultaneously Provides Social Power and Exacerbates Global Inequalities
• Ryan C Briggs, Why Does Aid Not Target the Poorest?
• Martin Roessler, Patrick Zwerschke, & Jonathan Old, Democracy and the Transnational Dimensions of Low-Level Conflict and State Repression
• Christopher P Willis, Sexual Violence by the State: The Role of Political Institutions in Sexual Violence Perpetration
• Lee Demetrius Walker, Melissa Martinez, & Christopher Pace, Gender, Internal Armed Conflict, and High Court Decision-Making in Transitioning Societies
• Daniel Silverman, Karl Kaltenthaler, & Munqith Dagher, Seeing Is Disbelieving: The Depths and Limits of Factual Misinformation in War
• Michael Tomz & Jessica L P Weeks, Military Alliances and Public Support for War
• John P Harden, All the World’s a Stage: US Presidential Narcissism and International Conflict
• Muhammet A Bas & Omer F Orsun, Regime Uncertainty and Interstate Conflict
• Peter Trubowitz & Kohei Watanabe, The Geopolitical Threat Index: A Text-Based Computational Approach to Identifying Foreign Threats

Lauterpacht Centre Friday Lunchtime Lecture Series for Michaelmas Term 2021

The schedule for the Lauterpacht Centre's Friday Lunchtime Lecture Series for Michaelmas Term 2021 is here. The series begins tomorrow, October 15.

Petersen: Hong Kong’s First Conviction for Incitement to Secession: What Role for the ICCPR?

Carole J. Petersen (Univ. of Hawaii - Law) has posted an ASIL Insight on Hong Kong’s First Conviction for Incitement to Secession: What Role for the ICCPR?

New Issue: International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics

The latest issue of International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics (Vol. 21, no. 4, December 2021) is out. Contents include:

• Mariana Rivera-Torres & Andrea K. Gerlak, Evolving together: transboundary water governance in the Colorado River Basin
• M. Pilar Latorre, Margarita Martinez-Nuñez, & Carmen Callao, Modelling and analysing the relationship between innovation and the European Regulations on hazardous waste shipments
• Ali Sabyrzhan, Gulnara Balgimbekova, & Viktor Shestak, Economic and legal regulation of the use and development of renewable energy sources
• Parita Shah & George Atisa, Environmental education and awareness: the present and future key to the sustainable management of Ramsar convention sites in Kenya
• Dan-Bi Um, Assigning a grass-root NGO role to legitimate organizations as resident watch-dogs in negotiating carbon benefits derived from multilateral funding
• Aigul Nukusheva, Guldana Karzhassova, & Kulbagila Baikenzhina, International nuclear energy legal regulation: comparing the experience of the EU and the CIS countries
• Benjamin M. Abraham, Ideology and non-state climate action: partnering and design of REDD+ projects
• Qinrun Zhang, China's policy and finding ways to prevent collapse in WEEE processing in the context of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal
• Joseph Earsom & Tom Delreux, Evaluating EU responsiveness to the evolution of the international regime complex on climate change

Markus: Rechtsvergleichung im Völkerrecht

Till Markus (Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung UFZ) has published Rechtsvergleichung im Völkerrecht (Mohr Siebeck 2021). Here's the abstract:

Till Markus untersucht die Bedeutung der Rechtsvergleichung für das Völkerrecht, insbesondere im Hinblick auf die Gestaltung, Bestimmung und Anwendung seiner drei primären Rechtsquellen. Aufbauend auf einer Rekonstruktion der Entscheidungspraxis verschiedener internationaler Gerichte sowie ausgewählter Arbeiten der Völkerrechtskommission entwickelt er den Grundriss einer Methodik der Rechtsvergleichung im Völkerrecht. Die Untersuchung basiert auf der Annahme, dass methodisch angeleitete Rechtsvergleiche einen Beitrag zur Effektuierung und Ordnung des Völkerrechts leisten, indem sie das Maß an Rationalität, dogmatischer Klarheit und Legitimität völkerrechtlicher Vertragsgestaltung und gerichtlicher Entscheidungsfindung steigern.

Call for Submissions: Special Issue on TWAIL (Indonesian Journal of International Law)

The Indonesian Journal of International Law has issued a call for submissions for a special issue on "Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL)," to be edited by Prabhakar Singh. The call is here.

Call for Papers: CyCon 2022

The NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence has issued a call for papers for the legal track of the 14th International Conference on Cyber Conflict (CyCon), to be held May 31-June 3, 2022 in Tallinn. CyCon is a multidisciplinary conference, combining academic research with high-level policy and strategy perspectives on cyber defence and security. The extended deadline is October 24, 2021. The call is here.

AJIL Unbound Symposium: Undoing Discriminatory Borders

AJIL Unbound has posted a symposium on "Undoing Discriminatory Borders." The symposium includes an introduction by Catherine Briddick & Cathryn Costello and contributions by E. Tendayi Achiume, Cathryn Costello & Michelle Foster, Liav Orgad, Anuscheh Farahat, Catherine Briddick, and Colm Ó Cinnéide.

Willemyns: Digital Services in International Trade Law

Ines Willemyns (Sidley Austin LLP) has published Digital Services in International Trade Law (Cambridge Univ. Press 2021). Here's the abstract:

Digitisation has significantly impacted international trade. This book explains the impact of digitisation on trade in services, the ensuing concept of 'digital services' and the different types of trade barriers these services face. This book establishes that the legal framework that applies to trade in services also applies to digital services. It elaborates on the scope of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and how to classify digital services. The relevant GATS obligations are subsequently applied to several case studies that illustrate the barriers to digital services trade. These case studies demonstrate the impact of the applicability of GATS to digital services on countries' international obligations. Finally, the book maps the electronic commerce-related provisions in in regional trade agreements (RTAs). Six extensive e-commerce RTAs are compared in depth and it is considered whether they add substantially to the existing multilateral obligations applicable to digital services trade.

Lenz: Interorganizational Diffusion in International Relations: Regional Institutions and the Role of the European Union

Tobias Lenz (Leuphana Univ. Lüneburg - International Relations) has published Interorganizational Diffusion in International Relations: Regional Institutions and the Role of the European Union (Oxford Univ. Press 2021). Here's the abstract:

How and under what conditions does the European Union (EU) shape processes of institution building in other regional organizations? Interorganizational Diffusion in International Relations: Regional Institutions and the Role of the European Union develops and tests a theory of interorganizational diffusion in international relations that explains how successful pioneer organizations shape institutional choices in other organizations by affecting the institutional preferences and bargaining strategies of national governments. The author argues that Europe's foremost regional organization systematically affects institution building abroad, but that such influence varies across different types of organizations. Mixing quantitative and qualitative methods, it shows how the EU institutionally strengthens regional organizations through active engagement and by building its own institutions at home. Yet, the contractual nature of other regional organizations bounds this causal influence; EU influence makes a distinguishable difference primarily in those organizations that, like the EU itself, rest on an open-ended contract. Evidence for these claims is drawn from the statistical analysis of a dataset on the institutionalization of 35 regional organizations in the period from 1950 to 2017 as well as detailed single and comparative case studies on institutional creation and change in the Southern African Development Community, Mercosur, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Daniel: Head of State Immunity under the Malabo Protocol: Triumph of Impunity over Accountability?

Kobina Egyir Daniel has published Head of State Immunity under the Malabo Protocol: Triumph of Impunity over Accountability? (Brill | Nijhoff 2021). Here's the abstract:

In Head of State Immunity under the Malabo Protocol: Triumph of Impunity over Accountability?, Kobina Egyir Daniel engages the subject of Head of State Immunity in international law against the backdrop of the African Union (AU)’s decision to create a Court with international criminal jurisdiction before which “Heads of State” or persons “entitled to act in such capacity” will have immunity during incumbency. The AU asserts - in justification - not only that it is standing up for itself against “neo-colonialist imperialist forces,” which have perverted international criminal justice and target African States through the International Criminal Court (ICC), but also that it is preserving the very soul of international criminal justice as well as customary international law on immunities.

Beyond the analysis to determine whether the immunity that the AU’s Malabo Protocol of 2014 confers represents a retrogression in international law norms that seek accountability for jus cogens crimes, Daniel provides valuable insights into the status-inspired dialectics and self-serving hero-villain polemics that fuel contestations of right between the AU and the ICC, and the worldviews that respectively seek to overturn/preserve the asymmetry of the international legal order. Through a review of legal history, case law from national and international tribunals, state practice and academic expositions, the book examines the evolution and practice of Head of State immunity as well as recent trends in the practice of the doctrine in light of the countervailing push to establish exceptions to immunity in order to ensure accountability under international human rights and international criminal law.

Mitchell & Sheargold: Principles of International Trade and Investment Law

Andrew D. Mitchell (Monash Univ. - Law) & Elizabeth Sheargold (Univ. of Wollongong) have published Principles of International Trade and Investment Law (Edward Elgar Publishing 2021). Here's the abstract:

This carefully crafted book discusses a wide range of important legal principles such as procedural fairness and reasonableness in the context of international trade and investment law. Using comparative methodology, the authors examine how those principles are reflected in treaties and how they are employed by adjudicators resolving disputes. Contributing to a growing and important body of scholarship, Principles of International Trade and Investment Law provides critical analysis of important topics in international economic law, including cross-border data transfers and prudential regulation. By identifying commonalities and divergences in how the two regimes treat key legal concepts, such as necessity testing and non-discrimination, the book provides insight into international trade and investment law while also furthering our understanding of the broader fields of international economic law and public international law.