New Issue: Global Trade and Customs Journal

The latest issue of Global Trade and Customs Journal (Vol. 17, no. 10, 2022) is out. Contents include:

• Davide Rovetta, Customs Valuation in the European Union: Back to the Fifties Thanks to the Court of Justice of the European Union
• Yuliia Kucheriava, Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: A WTO Perspective
• Kadijatu Zainab Bangura & Abraham Zaqi Kromah, The WTO’s Fisheries Subsidies Agreement: What’s New and What’s Next?
• Andrea Maria Gonzalez & Aldina Sakhi, The Multi-party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement: An Update
• Surendar Singh & Utkarsh K. Mishra, Reliance on Non-tariff Measures for Self-Reliant India: An Analysis of India’s New Trade Policy Orientation

New Issue: European Journal of International Law

The latest issue of the European Journal of International Law (Vol. 33, no. 2, May 2022) is out. Contents include:

• Editorial
• Altneueland – European Law Open Published by Cambridge University Press: Welcome; In This Issue; In This Issue – Reviews
• Articles
• Hsien-Li Tan, Intergovernmental Yet Dynamically Expansive: Concordance Legalization as an Alternative Regional Trading Arrangement in ASEAN and Beyond
• Victor Crochet, Trade Defence Instruments: A New Tool for the European Union’s Extractivism
• Henning Lahmann, Infecting the Mind: Establishing Responsibility for Transboundary Disinformation
• Michael Ramsden, Strategic Litigation before the International Court of Justice: Evaluating Impact in the Campaign for Rohingya Rights
• EJIL: Debate Reply!
• Thomas D. Grant & F. Scott Kieff, Behavioural Economics and ISDS Reform: A Response to Maria Laura Marceddu and Pietro Ortolani
• EJIL: Debate!
• Nico Krisch, Jurisdiction Unbound: (Extra)territorial Regulation as Global Governance
• Roger O’Keefe, Cooperative National Regulation to Secure Transnational Public Goods: A Reply to Nico Krisch
• EJIL: Debate!
• Joost Pauwelyn & Krzysztof Pelc, WTO Rulings and the Veil of Anonymity
• Armin Steinbach, Are the Fingerprints of WTO Staff on Panel Rulings a Problem? A Reply to Joost Pauwelyn and Krzysztof Pelc
• Roaming Charges: Places with a Soul
• Michal Saliternik, Benedictine Monastery in Abu Ghosh
• Critical Review of Governance
• Ceren Zeynep Pirim, The Legal Effects of the New Presidential System on Turkey’s Treaty-Making Practice
• Aleydis Nissen, Not That Assertive: The EU’s Take on Enforcement of Labour Obligations in Its Free Trade Agreement with South Korea
• Critical Review of Jurisprudence
• Mathias Möschel, Jura Novit Curia and the European Court of Human Rights
• Ching-Fu Lin & Yoshiko Naiki, An SPS Dispute without Science? The Fukushima Case and the Dichotomy of Science/Non-Science Obligations under the SPS Agreement
• Review Essay
• Jean d’Aspremont, International Law and the Rage against Scienticism. Review of Anne Orford, International Law and the Politics of History
• Book Reviews
• Jade Roberts, reviewing Mira L. Siegelberg, Statelessness: A Modern History
• Jan Klabbers, reviewing Jens Steffek, International Organization as Technocratic Utopia
• Alexandra Hofer, reviewing Gavin Sullivan, The Law of the List: UN Counterterrorism Sanctions and the Politics of Global Security Law
• Paolo Palchetti, reviewing Hadi Azari, La demande reconventionnelle devant la Cour internationale de Justice
• Ingo Venzke, reviewing Sigrid Boysen, Die postkoloniale Konstellation: Natürliche Ressourcen und das Völkerrecht der Modern
• The Last Page
• JHHW, Hallelujah – Bathsheba’s Version

New Issue: Swiss Review of International and European Law

The latest issue of the Swiss Review of International and European Law (Vol. 32, no. 3, 2022) is out. Contents include:

• Stefan Schlegel, Die Verlockung einer Globalisierung ohne Forum – zu den Hintergrundbedingungen der Schweizer Europadebatte
• Laia Roxane Guardiola, Reconciling Equivalence and Non-discrimination under the SPS Agreement in Swiss–EU Relations
• Elena Brodeală & Marie-Hélène Peter-Spiess, Surrogacy and Same-Sex Parenthood before the European Court of Human Rights: Reflections in Light of Cases against Switzerland

New Issue: Questions of International Law

The latest issue of Questions of International Law / Questioni di Diritto Internazionale (no. 95, 2022) is out. Contents include:

• The ICJ’s first determination of war reparations: Practical challenges and legal solutions
• Introduced by Béatrice Bonafé
• Alice Ollino, Causality in the law of State responsibility: Considerations on the Congo v Uganda case
• Alessandro Bufalini, Remarks on the role of equity in determining war reparations before the International Court of Justice
• Bernardo Mageste, War reparations as a financial burden on the responsible State: The Congo v Uganda case
• Lucas Lima, The use of experts by the International Court of Justice in war reparations cases: lessons from Congo v Uganda

Lecture: Kohen on "International Adjudication in Times of Crisis"

On October 10, 2022, Marcelo Kohen (Graduate Institute) will deliver the opening lecture of the 2022-2023 Essex Public International Law Lecture Series. The topic is: "International Adjudication in Times of Crisis." Details are here.

New Issue: Journal of Human Rights and the Environment

The latest issue of the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment (Vol. 13, Special Issue, September 2022) is out. Contents include:

• Special Issue: Human Rights and the Planet
• Interview: P Sands (PS) in conversation with R Spano (RS) – 8 July 2021
• Natalia Kobylarz, Balancing its way out of strong anthropocentrism: integration of ‘ecological minimum standards’ in the European Court of Human Rights’ ‘fair balance’ review
• Jorge Calderón-Gamboa & Julie Diane Recinos, Inter-American approaches to the protection of the right to a healthy environment and the Rights of Nature and potential contributions to the European human rights system
• Irmina Kotiuk, Adam Weiss, & Ugo Taddei, Does the European Convention on Human Rights guarantee a human right to clean and healthy air? Litigating at the nexus between human rights and the environment – the practitioners’ perspective
• Christina Voigt, The climate change dimension of human rights: due diligence and states’ positive obligations
• Monica Feria-Tinta, The future of environmental cases in the European Court of Human Rights: extraterritoriality, victim status, treaty interpretation, attribution, imminence and ‘due diligence’ in climate change cases
• The Strasbourg Principles of International Environmental Human Rights Law – 2022

New Issue: Journal of Human Rights Practice

The latest issue of the Journal of Human Rights Practice (Vol. 14, no. 1, February 2022) is out. Contents include:

• Special Issue - The State of the International Human Rights System—Normativity and Compliance
• Thomas Kleinlein & Dominik Steiger, The State of the International Human Rights System—Normativity and Compliance: Introduction
• Ivana Jelić & Linus Mührel, The Human Rights Committee—Challenges and Prospects for Enhanced Effectiveness and Integration
• Stefan Kadelbach, The Human Rights Committee—Challenges and Prospects for Enhanced Effectiveness and Integration: A Comment
• Zdzisław Kędzia, The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights—The Power of Subjective Rights?
• Christina Binder, The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights—The Power of Subjective Rights: Comment with Special Focus on the Case Law of the Inter-American and the European Courts of Human Rights
• Renate Winter, The Committee of the Rights of the Child—Does Size Matter?
• Wouter Vandenhole, The Committee on the Rights of the Child—Size Matters Sometimes, Somewhat: A Comment
• Caroline Lichuma & Damjan Tatic, Human Rights Experimentalism in Action: The Potential of National Human Rights Institutions in Enhancing the Implementation and Monitoring of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
• Robert Uerpmann-Wittzack, The Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities—The Role of National Human Rights Institutions: A Comment
• Lorena González Pinto, The United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture: The Effects of Preventive Action
• Dominik Steiger, Enhancing Compliance and Fostering Normativity by Institutionalizing Dialogue—The Optional Protocol to the United Nations Convention Against Torture: A Comment
• Paul Lemmens, The European Court of Human Rights—Can there be too much Success?
• Stefanie Schmahl, The European Court of Human Rights—Can there be too much Success? A Comment
• Allan Rosas, The Court of Justice of the European Union: A Human Rights Institution?
• Mark Dawson, What Does it Mean to Say that the Court of Justice is not a Human Rights Institution? A Critical Appraisal
• Articles
• Gabriela Torres-Mazuera & Naayeli Ramírez-Espinosa, How a Legal Fight Against Monsanto Became an Indigenous Self-determination Claim in Mexico
• Nick Hardwick, Jane Marriott, Karl Mason, & Marie Steinbrecher, Human Rights and Systemic Wrongs: National Preventive Mechanisms and the Monitoring of Care Homes for Older People
• Veronika Bílková, COVID-19 and Older Persons—In Need of a Comprehensive Human Rights Approach
• Luka Glušac, Universal Periodic Review and Policy Change: The Case of National Human Rights Institutions
• Sahara Nankan, Bridging the Gender Participatory Gap in Water and Sanitation Rights Adjudication
• Monica Strømland, Marianne K Bahus, & Anders J W Andersen, Too Vulnerable to Participate? A Systematic Literature Review of the Gap between a Right to Participate and Participation, in Welfare Services
• Policy and Practice Note
• Julie A Tippens, Amleset Tewodros, Helen M Miamidian, Kara Kohel, & Alex Otieno, Church as NGO? Leveraging Religious Networks to Promote Health Rights for Urban-Displaced Refugees—Lessons from Tanzania

Casey-Maslen & Vestner: International Law and Policy on the Protection of Civilians

Stuart Casey-Maslen (Univ. of Pretoria) & Tobias Vestner (Geneva Centre for Security Policy) have published International Law and Policy on the Protection of Civilians (Cambridge Univ. Press 2022). Here's the abstract:

This is the first comprehensive treatment of international law and policy on the protection of civilians in armed conflict. In addition to international humanitarian and human rights law, jus ad bellum, disarmament law, and international criminal law are all critical to civilian protection. The book offers in-depth analysis and explanation of the normative framework while also outlining and discussing the policies of concerned States and international and humanitarian organisations. The role of the United Nations as a key actor is considered along with regional organisations such as the African Union, the European Union, and NATO. Particular attention is given to those at direct risk of harm during armed conflict, including children, women, persons with disabilities, and LGBTI persons.

New Issue: Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht

The latest issue of the Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht (Vol. 82, no. 2, 2022) is out. This is a special issue on "Jurisdiction - Who Speaks International Law?" Contents include:

• Comment
• Matthias Hartwig, Sleepwalking on the Road to War
• Abhandlungen
• Sué González Hauck, Franziska Herrmann, Julian A. Hettihewa, Dariush Kraft, Max Milas, Stephanie Springer, & Franka Weckner, Jurisdiction – Who Speaks International Law?
• Shaun McVeigh & Sundhya Pahuja, Thinking with Jurisdiction
• Shiri Krebs, Drone-Cinema, Data Practices, and the Narrative of IHL
• Max Noll, Limits to the Jurisdiction of States in Private Law Matters under International Law
• Júlia Miklasová, Post-Ceasefire Nagorno-Karabakh: Limits to the ECtHR’s Approach to Jurisdiction over Secessionist Entities under the ECHR
• Philipp Eschenhagen, When Perpetrators and Victims Meet Again
• Nicola Claire Strain, Invoking Systemic Ideals or Systemic Rules? Jurisdiction in WTO and Investor-State Dispute Settlement
• Walter Arévalo-Ramírez, Constitutions Challenging the International Court of Justice’s Jurisdiction to Adjudicate Territorial Disputes in Latin America
• Greta Reeh, Rejection at the Frontier and Human Rights – the UN Treaty Bodies and European Practice
• E. Tendayi Achiume, Race, Borders, and Jurisdiction

Call for Papers: 4th Annual Postgraduate Conference in International Law and Human Rights

The International Law and Human Rights Unit and Critical Approaches to International Criminal Law Unit of the School of Law and Social Justice at the University of Liverpool have issued a call for papers for the 4th Annual Postgraduate Conference in International Law and Human Rights, to take place March 27-28, 2023. The theme is: “Distortion, Distillation, Disorder: International Law and Critique Twenty Years After the Invasion of Iraq.” The call is here.

Call for Submissions: Military Law and the Law of War Review / Revue de Droit Militaire et de Droit de la Guerre

The Military Law and the Law of War Review / Revue de Droit Militaire et de Droit de la Guerre has issued a call for submissions for its volume 61. The deadline for submission is November 15, 2022. Here's the call:

The Editorial Board of The Military Law and the Law of War Review / Revue de Droit Militaire et de Droit de la Guerre (MLLWR) is pleased to invite submissions for the upcoming Volume 61, due for publication in 2023.

The Review's editorial board welcomes submissions that come within the broader scope of the Review, including military law, law of armed conflict, law on the use of force, as well as international criminal law and human rights law (inasmuch as related to situations of armed conflict).

The deadline for submission is November 15th, 2022. Submissions should be sent to mllwr@ismllw.org and will be subject to double-blind peer review.

Articles should normally not be longer than 15,000 words (footnotes included), although longer pieces may exceptionally be considered.

Inquiries as to whether a possible submission comes within the scope of the Review can be sent to the above mentioned email address.

Werner: Custom as Rewritten Law – The Text and Paratext of Restatement Reports

Wouter G. Werner (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Univ. of Curaçao) has posted an ESIL Reflection on Custom as Rewritten Law – The Text and Paratext of Restatement Reports.

Mackenzie-Gray Scott: State Responsibility for Non-State Actors: Past, Present and Prospects for the Future

Richard Mackenzie-Gray Scott (Univ. of Oxford) has published State Responsibility for Non-State Actors: Past, Present and Prospects for the Future (Hart Publishing 2022). Here's the abstract:

This book investigates how state responsibility can be determined for the wrongdoing of non-state actors. Every day, people, businesses and societies around the world pay a price arising from interactions between states and non-state actors. From insurrections that attempt to create new governments, to states arming belligerent proxies operating overseas, to companies damaging natural environments or providing suspect services, the impact of such situations are felt in numerous ways. They also raise many questions relating to responsibility. In answering these, State Responsibility for Non-State Actors provides a picture of what the law governing this area is, what it could be, and what it should be in light of past histories, present realities and future prospects.

Lecture Series: Ukraine?! Völkerrecht am Ende?

The Württembergische Landesbibliothek and Max-Planck-Institut für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht have announced a lecture series, in the hybrid format, on "Ukraine?! Völkerrecht am Ende?," starting on October 17, 2022, with a lecture by Anne Peters, and continuing to March 15, 2023. Details are here.

Johns: International Law and the Provocations of the Digital: The 2021 Annual Kirby Lecture in International Law

Fleur Johns (Univ. of New South Wales - Law) has posted International Law and the Provocations of the Digital: The 2021 Annual Kirby Lecture in International Law (Australian Year Book of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Based in Montevideo, and recently valued at US$5 billion, the payments platform DLocal enables companies such as Booking.com, Amazon and Uber to transact in local currencies in 29 countries. It specializes in the “emerging economies” of Latin America, the Asia Pacific, the Middle East and North Africa. Among international lawyers, however, Montevideo is best known for another form of international infrastructure. That is the 1933 Montevideo Convention, or at least its first article, standardizing the template of modern statehood. At the time, as scholars of international legal history have shown, this amounted to a radical reformatting of the fundaments of international law, driven by semi-peripheral states, as part of a widespread effort of reconstructive codification after the Great War. Today, DLocal’s Montevideo is emblematic of a very different kind of international legal reformatting now underway. A digital logic, and associated circuits of value and aggregations of power, are becoming embedded – even predominant – in many of international law’s most routine operations. To shed light on this phenomenon, this address – delivered as the 2021 Annual Kirby Lecture in International Law at the ANU in Canberra, Australia – will revisit each component of the Montevideo Convention’s well-known formula for statehood: permanent population; defined territory; government; and the conduct of international relations. Taking efforts of so-called digital humanitarianism as illustrative, it will examine how each of these Montevideo properties is being rerouted and recomposed digitally, often in tension with an analogue logic characteristic of international law. And in the ensuing dislocations sometimes in evidence between analogue and digital aspects of international legal work, it will identify some possibilities for collective reworking.

Call for Papers: Workshop on Race and International Relations

The International Race and Rights Lab at the University of Notre Dame has issued a call for papers for a workshop on "Race and International Relations," to take place March 31, 2023. The call is here.

Okeke: Human Trafficking and the “Commercial Activity” exceptions to International Immunities

Edward Chukwuemeke Okeke has posted an ASIL Insight on Human Trafficking and the “Commercial Activity” exceptions to International Immunities.

Sands: The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain’s Colonial Legacy

Philippe Sands has published The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain’s Colonial Legacy (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 2022). Here's the abstract:

After the Second World War, new international rules heralded an age of human rights and self-determination. Supported by Britain, these unprecedented changes sought to end the scourge of colonialism. But how committed was Britain?

In the 1960s, its colonial instinct ignited once more: a secret decision was taken to offer the US a base at Diego Garcia, one of the islands of the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, create a new colony (the ‘British Indian Ocean Territory’) and deport the entire local population. One of those inhabitants was Liseby Elysé, twenty years old, newly married, expecting her first child. One suitcase, no pets, the British ordered, expelling her from the only home she had ever known.

For four decades the government of Mauritius fought for the return of Chagos, and the past decade Philippe Sands has been intimately involved in the cases. In 2018 Chagos and colonialism finally reached the World Court in The Hague. As Mauritius and the entire African continent challenged British and American lawlessness, fourteen international judges faced a landmark decision: would they rule that Britain illegally detached Chagos from Mauritius? Would they open the door to Liseby Elysé and her fellow Chagossians returning home – or exile them forever?

Taking us on a disturbing journey across international law, THE LAST COLONY illuminates the continuing horrors of colonial rule, the devastating impact of Britain’s racist grip on its last colony in Africa, and the struggle for justice in the face of a crime against humanity. It is a tale about the making of modern international law and one woman’s fight for justice, a courtroom drama and a personal journey that ends with a historic ruling.

New Issue: International Journal of Human Rights

The latest issue of the International Journal of Human Rights (Vol. 26, no. 8, 2022) is out. Contents include:

• Cinthia Obladen de Almendra Freitas, Danielle Anne Pamplona & Dânton Hilário Zanetti de Oliveira, Duty to protect and responsibility to respect: data privacy violations in pandemic times
• Nicolas Parent, Commitments to forced migrants in African peace agreements, 1990–2018
• Jeffrey S. Bachman, US Congress and partisanship on Yemen among Democrats from Obama to Trump
• Ivana Radačić & Marija Antić, Criminalisation of sex workers: rethinking the public order
• Jasper Krommendijk & Kris van der Pas, To intervene or not to intervene: intervention before the court of justice of the european union in environmental and migration law
• Gabriel Pereira, Leigh A. Payne & Laura Bernal Bermúdez, Justice from below: corporate accountability in Argentina
• Cornelia C. Walther, Compassion for change. Nurturing the motivation of staff in UN institutions dedicated to the promotion of human rights
• Andreas von Staden & Andreas J. Ullmann, Seeking overlap and redundancy in human rights protection: reputation, consistency and the acceptance of the UN human rights treaties’ individual communications procedures

New Issue: Journal of Conflict Resolution

The latest issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution (Vol. 66, no. 9, October 2022) is out. Contents include:

• Special Feature: Citizens in Peace Processes
• Felix Haass, Caroline A. Hartzell, & Martin Ottmann, Citizens in Peace Processes
• Karin Dyrstad, Helga M. Binningsbø, & Kristin M. Bakke, Wartime Experiences and Popular Support for Peace Agreements: Comparative Evidence from Three Cases
• Sabine C. Carey, Belén González, & Christian Gläßel, Divergent Perceptions of Peace in Post-Conflict Societies: Insights from Sri Lanka
• Neophytos Loizides, Charis Psaltis, Edward Morgan-Jones, Laura Sudulich, Raluca Popp, & Tekin Baykiz, Citizens and Peace Mediations in Divided Societies: Identifying Zones of Agreement through a Conjoint Survey Experiment
• Vera Mironova & Sam Whitt, Due Process and Accountability Under Transitional Justice: Evidence from Mosul, Iraq
• Data Set Features
• David Cingranelli, Skip Mark, James B. Garvey, Jordan Hutt, & Yuri Lee, A Brutality-Based Approach to Identifying State-Led Atrocities
• Isak Svensson, Susanne Schaftenaar, & Marie Allansson, Violent Political Protest: Introducing a New Uppsala Conflict Data Program Data Set on Organized Violence, 1989-2019

Conference: 2022 ASIL Midyear Meeting

On November 10-12, 2022, the American Society of International Law will hold its Midyear Meeting in Miami. Program and registration are here.

Conference: International Law Weekend 2022

The American Branch of the International Law Association will hold International Law Weekend 2022 in New York City on October 20-22. The theme is "The Next 100 Years of International Law." The program is here.

Natarajan & Dehm: Locating Nature: Making and Unmaking International Law

Usha Natarajan (Columbia Univ.) & Julia Dehm (La Trobe Univ.) have published Locating Nature: Making and Unmaking International Law (Cambridge Univ. Press 2022). The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:

For those troubled by environmental harm on a global scale and its deeply unequal effects, this book explains how international law structures ecological degradation and environmental injustice while claiming to protect the environment. It identifies how central legal concepts such as sovereignty, jurisdiction, territory, development, environment, labour and human rights make inaccurate and unsustainable assumptions about the natural world and systemically reproduce environmental degradation and injustice. To avert socioecological crises, we must not only unpack but radically rework our understandings of nature and its relationship with law. We propose more sustainable and equitable ways to remake law's relationship with nature by drawing on diverse disciplines and sociocultural traditions that have been marginalized within international law. Influenced by Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), postcolonialism and decoloniality, and inspired by Indigenous knowledges, cosmology, mythology and storytelling, this book lays the groundwork for an epistemological shift in the way humans conceptualize the relationship between law and nature.

Hilpold: The Ukraine Crisis and the Nuclear Threat

Peter Hilpold (Univ. of Innsbruck) has posted The Ukraine Crisis and the Nuclear Threat. Here's the abstract:

The Russian aggression against Ukraine has unleashed new fears of a nuclear war, also due to direct and indirect threats by the Russian side. As a consequence, it seems appropriate to re-open the debate about the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons, a debate led to somewhat inconclusive results by the ICJ Opinion of 1996 on the “Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons”. If some elements of rationality are left in this war, nuclear weapons will not be employed in Ukraine. The major casualty of this rhetoric could, however, be the far-reaching de-legitimization of nuclear warfare achieved in the past. Therefore, time has come to re-examine the ICJ assessments of 1996 and to take a clearer stance in this regard which should be more appropriate as to the exigencies of modern international society. It is argued here that now the ICJ would come to different conclusions if seized again with the same questions as in 1996.

New Volume: Australian International Law Journal

The latest volume of the Australian International Law Journal (Vol. 27, 2020) is out. Contents include:

• Natalie Klein, Responding to Law of the Sea Violations
• Samuel Saunders, Untangling the High Court's Approach to Interpreting Domestic Statutes that Incorporate Treaties
• Britta Maunder, An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure: The Role for International Law in Preventing Pandemics
• Chloe Wood, Protecting Indigenous Rights at Home: A Comparative Analysis of the Way Forward for Domestic Implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
• Daniel Kang Wei-En, Adapting GATT Article XXI(b)(iii) to Climate Change Threats: An Overdue Rethinking of Security Blues for an Urgent Green Way Forward?
• Benjamin Mostyn, Interpreting the 1988 United Nations Drug Convention: Does it Allow Decriminalisation of Drug Possession?
• Georgia Hinds, A War Crime by Any Other Name: Domestic Prosecutions of Conduct Constituting War Crimes
• Gabriel Amvane, International Criminal Justice: Threat or Strength to State Sovereignty?
• Gregory Rose, Legal Considerations concerning Recognition of Israeli Sovereignty over the Golan Heights

Kulick: Corporations as Interpreters and Adjudicators of International Human Rights Norms – Meta‘s Oversight Board and Beyond

Andreas Kulick (Univ. of Tuebingen) has posted Corporations as Interpreters and Adjudicators of International Human Rights Norms – Meta‘s Oversight Board and Beyond (The Law and Practice of International Courts and Tribunals, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Social media platform corporations such as Meta (Facebook), Twitter etc. find themselves in a position having to interpret international human rights norms, in particular Article 19 of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) (freedom of expression). Millions or even billions of content moderation decisions need to be taken on the platforms each day that affect users’ human rights interests. Since content moderation is integral to the technical and commercial set-up of these platforms, corporate decision-making vis-à-vis human rights and thus corporate interpretation of international human rights norms is inevitable. Yet, corporations are flawed interpreters. Whereas they act, like a court or tribunal, as triadic decision-makers, they, unlike a court or tribunal, do not share the neutrality, impartiality and independence of the latter. In particular, they are responsible to their shareholders and they pursue commercial interests when moderating content. This article seeks to grapple with the theoretical and doctrinal implications of flawed but inevitable corporate human rights interpretation. Taking the early practice of the Oversight Board, a body established by Meta, Inc. (Facebook) in order to tackle the ‘hard cases’ of content moderation, as a case study, the pitfalls and challenges of corporate human rights interpretation become apparent. In the end, I submit a few suggestions in order to remedy what seems to be here to stay with us at least for as long as an important part of public discourse will be channelled through social media platforms.

Workshop: 2022 CIBEL Global Network Young Scholars Workshop

On September 28, 2022, the China International Business and Economic Law Centre at the University of New South Wales will host online its 2022 Global Network Young Scholars Workshop. The theme is: "Changes in international economic law: Digitalisation, sustainability and beyond." Details are here.

Finkelstein, Fuller, Ohlin, & Regan: Between Crime and War: Hybrid Legal Frameworks for Asymmetric Conflict

Claire Finkelstein (Univ. of Pennsylvania), Christopher J. Fuller (Univ. of Southampton), Jens David Ohlin (Cornell Univ.), & Mitt Regan (Georgetown Univ.) have published Between Crime and War: Hybrid Legal Frameworks for Asymmetric Conflict (Oxford Univ. Press 2022). The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:

The threat posed by the recent rise of transnational non-state armed groups does not fit easily within either of the two basic paradigms for state responses to violence. The civilian paradigm focuses on the interception of demonstrable immediate threats to the safety of others. The military paradigm focuses on threats posed by collective actors who pose a danger to the state's ability to maintain basic social order and, at times, the very existence of the state. While the United States has responded to the threat posed by non-state armed groups by using tools from both paradigms, it has placed substantially more emphasis on the military paradigm than have other states. While several reasons may contribute to this approach, one may be the assumption that a state must use each set of tools strictly according in accordance with the principles that underlie each paradigm. Implicit in this assumption may be the sense that the only alternative to the civilian paradigm is the unqualified military one.

The chapters in this book suggest, however, that we need not see the options as confined to this binary choice. It may be profitable to consider borrowing elements from each paradigm on some occasions to act more expansively than the conventional civilian paradigm allows, but less expansively than the conventional military paradigm would permit. At the same time, the mixing of the categories comes with its own ethical and legal risks that should be scrutinized.

Nakajima: The International Law of Sovereign Debt Dispute Settlement

Kei Nakajima (Univ. of Tokyo) has published The International Law of Sovereign Debt Dispute Settlement (Cambridge Univ. Press 2022). Here's the abstract:

The first two decades of the twenty-first century witnessed a series of large-scale sovereign defaults and debt restructurings, in which sovereigns struggled to negotiate with recalcitrant bondholders, particularly hedge funds. Also, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 heralded a bleak financial outlook for many developing and emerging market countries, requiring sovereign debt restructuring in times of great macroeconomic uncertainty. Given the absence of a multilateral mechanism for sovereign debt restructuring equivalent to domestic corporate bankruptcy system, however, defaulted sovereigns often suffer from holdout litigation wrought by bondholders. This book proposes ways in which such legal actions could be regulated without the undue expense of bondholders' remedies by exploring the mechanism of balancing bondholder protection and respect for sovereign debt restructuring at various stages of litigation and arbitration proceedings.