New Issue: International Affairs

The latest issue of International Affairs (Vol. 98, no. 6, November 2022) is out. Contents include:

• Roy Allison, Russia, Ukraine and state survival through neutrality
• Harald Edinger, Offensive ideas: structural realism, classical realism and Putin’s war on Ukraine
• Bernhard Blumenau, Breaking with convention? Zeitenwende and the traditional pillars of German foreign policy
• Kristen Hopewell, How China lost its wolf pack: the fracturing of the emerging-power alliance at the WTO
• Till Schöfer & Clara Weinhardt, Developing-country status at the WTO: the divergent strategies of Brazil, India and China
• Ryuta Ito, Hybrid balancing as classical realist statecraft: China’s balancing behaviour in the Indo-Pacific
• Maryanne Kelton, Michael Sullivan, Zac Rogers, Emily Bienvenue & Sian Troath, Virtual sovereignty? Private internet capital, digital platforms and infrastructural power in the United States
• Dana M. Landau & Lior Lehrs, Populist peacemaking: Trump’s peace initiatives in the Middle East and the Balkans
• Alise Coen, Localizing refugeehood: norms and the US resettlement of Afghan allies
• Gwilym David Blunt, The Gates Foundation, global health and domination: a republican critique of transnational philanthropy
• Lee Jones & Shahar Hameiri, Explaining the failure of global health governance during COVID-19
• Lucas ee Oliveira Paes, The Amazon rainforest and the global–regional politics of ecosystem governance
• Kristen A. Harkness, Security force assistance to Cameroon: how building enclave units deepens autocracy
• Matthew Dixon & George Lawson, From revolution and terrorism to revolutionary terrorism: the case of militant Salafism

New Volume: Israel Yearbook on Human Rights

The latest volume of the Israel Yearbook on Human Rights (Vol. 52, 2022) is out. Contents include:

• Kenneth Watkin, Exercising Self-Defence in 21st Century Shadow Wars
• Nicholas Rostow, Reflections on the Consequences of the U.S. Afghan Experience
• Yoram Dinstein, Coalition Warfare and Complicity
• Arne Willy Dahl, Legal Interoperability in Multinational Military Operations
• Koki Sato, The Belligerent Status of Vessels in Naval Warfare with Particular Reference to China’s Armed Forces
• Roni Katzir & Steve Fikhman, Prize Law and the Unique Nature of the Law of Naval Warfare: Comments on Recent Israeli Jurisprudence
• Kubo Mačák, The Role of International Human Rights Law in the Interpretation of the Fourth Geneva Convention
• Pnina Sharvit Baruch, The Israeli Law on the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Turns Twenty – An Appraisal
• Harry H. G. Post, The Courts on Climate Change and Fundamental Rights
• Arnon Gutfeld, Cantwell v. Connecticut: A Constitutional Milestone on the Road to Freedom of Religion in the United States
• Yoram Rabin & Yaniv Vaki, Stealing Food to Satisfy Hunger: The Case of Israel
• Marco Roscini & Riccardo Labianco, The Intersections between the Arms Trade Treaty and the International Law of Foreign Intervention in Situations of Internal Unrest
• Rein Müllerson, The Cold Monster Very Much Still Alive: The Rise and Fall and Rise of the Nation-State

New Issue: Cooperation and Conflict

The latest issue of Cooperation and Conflict (Vol. 57, no. 3, September 2022) is out. Contents include:

• Special Issue: Multiplicity
• Justin Rosenberg & Benjamin Tallis, Introduction: The international of everything
• Benjamin Tallis, Kraftwerk and the international ‘re-birth of Germany’: Multiplicity, identity and difference in music and International Relations
• Olaf Corry, What’s the point of being a discipline? Four disciplinary strategies and the future of International Relations
• Xavier Mathieu, Precarious multiplicity: France, ‘foreign fighters’ and the containment of difference
• Christian Scheper, Multiplicity, the corporation and human rights in global value chains
• Antje Wiener, Societal multiplicity for international relations: Engaging societal interaction in building global governance from below
• Nicholas Lees, Of Stag Hunts and secret societies: Cooperation, male coalitions and the origins of multiplicity
• Alejandro Colás, Food, multiplicity and imperialism: Patterns of domination and subversion in the modern international system

New Issue: Review of International Studies

The latest issue of the Review of International Studies (Vol. 48, no. 5, December 2022) is out. Contents include:

• Special Issue: Pluriversal Relationality
• Tamara Trownsell, Navnita Chadha Behera, & Giorgio Shani, Introduction to the Special Issue: Pluriversal relationality
• Tamara Trownsell, Recrafting ontology
• Milja Kurki, Relational revolution and relationality in IR: New conversations
• Giorgio Shani & Navnita Chadha Behera, Provincialising International Relations through a reading of dharma
• Jarrad Reddekop, Against ontological capture: Drawing lessons from Amazonian Kichwa relationality
• Amaya Querejazu, Cosmopraxis: Relational methods for a pluriversal IR
• Morgan Brigg, Mary Graham, & Martin Weber, Relational Indigenous systems: Aboriginal Australian political ordering and reconfiguring IR
• Chih-yu Shih, Role and relation in Confucian IR: Relating to strangers in the states of nature

New Issue: Journal of International Peacekeeping

The latest issue of the Journal of International Peacekeeping (Vol. 25, no. 3, 2022) is out. Contents include:

• Paul F. Diehl & Oliver P. Richmond, The Changing Face(s) of Peace Operations: Critical and Behavioral-Quantitative Paths for Future Research
• Andrew E. Yaw Tchie, Waging Peace, towards an Africa Union Stabilisation Strategy for Somalia
• Aishatu Morido Yanet, Civilian Dimensions of Peace Support Operations in Africa
• Kiran Mohandas Menon, Detaining the Short-Term: Assessing the Nature of “Interim” United Nations Peacekeeping Missions and Mandates

New Volume: Recueil des Cours

Volume 426 of the Recueil des Cours, Collected Courses of the Hague Academy of International Law is out. Contents include:

• Volume 426
• Pieter Jean Kuijper, Delegation and International Organizations; As Exemplified by the United Nations and the European Union
• Stephen C. McCaffrey, The Evolution of the Law of International Watercourses

New Issue: Leiden Journal of International Law

The latest issue of the Leiden Journal of International Law (Vol. 35, no. 4, December 2022) is out. Contents include:

• Editorial
• Machiko Kanetake, The Hawija airstrike: Reverberating effects on civilians under international humanitarian law
• International Legal Theory
• David Schneiderman, Hayek’s dream: International investment law and the denigration of politics
• Sanna S. Lehtinen, World Heritage as a subject of rights: A Hohfeldian analysis of Old Rauma
• Ali Hammoudi, International order and racial capitalism: The standardization of ‘free labour’ exploitation in international law
• International Law and Practice
• Benoit Mayer, The judicial assessment of states’ action on climate change mitigation
• Jinyuan Su, Legal status of abiotic resources in outer space: Appropriability, ownership, and access
• Nengye Liu & Jan Jakub Solski, The Polar Silk Road and the future governance of the Northern Sea Route
• Domenico Carolei, An International Ombudsman to make non-governmental organizations more accountable? Too good to be true …
• International Law & Practice: Symposium on the Effect of International Judges’ Personal Characteristics on Their Judging
• Gregor Maučec & Shai Dothan, The effects of international judges’ personal characteristics on their judging
• Lee Epstein & Jack Knight, How social identity and social diversity affect judging
• Loveday Hodson, Gender and the international judge: Towards a transformative equality approach
• Salvatore Caserta & Mikael Rask Madsen, The situated and bounded rationality of international courts: A structuralist approach to international adjudicative practices
• Gregor Maučec & Shai Dothan, Judicial Dissent at the International Criminal Court: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis
• International Criminal Courts and Tribunals
• Juliana Santos de Carvalho, The powers of silence: Making sense of the non-definition of gender in international criminal law
• international criminal courts and tribunals: international criminal tribunal for bangladesh
• Aldo Zammit Borda & Sajib Hosen, The challenges of long-delayed prosecutions in fighting impunity in Bangladesh

Webinar: International Law and the Nord Stream Leaks: An Academic Roundtable

On November 18, 2022, the Sasakawa Global Ocean Institute of the World Maritime University will hold a webinar on "International Law and the Nord Stream Leaks: An Academic Roundtable." Details are here.

Lecture: Hebie on "Investor-State Dispute Settlement and Disputed Territories"

On November 14, 2022, Mamadou Hebie (Leiden Univ. - Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies) will deliver a lecture as part of the 2022-2023 Essex Public International Law Lecture Series. The topic is: "Investor-State Dispute Settlement and Disputed Territories." Details are here.

Lecture Series: Histories of International Law: Chinese and Global Perspectives

The Centre for Chinese and Comparative Law of the City University of Hong Kong, in partnership with Wuhan University School of Law and Fudan University School of Law, has announced a lecture series on "Histories of International Law: Chinese and Global Perspectives." Details are here. The first lecture, by Ignacio de la Rasilla (Wuhan Univ. - Law), will take place on December 16, on the topic "China and the Turn to the National: Peripheral and Semi-Peripheral Histories of International Law." Details are here.

New Issue: International Theory

The latest issue of International Theory (Vol. 14, no. 3, November 2022) is out. Contents include:

• Forum
• Patricia Owens, Sarah C. Dunstan, Kimberly Hutchings, & Katharina Rietzler, Theorizing the history of women's international thinking at the ‘end of international theory’
• Adom Getachew, Duncan Bell, Cynthia Enloe, & Vineet Thakur, Theorizing the history of women's international thinking at the ‘end of international theory’
• Research Articles
• Ersel Aydinli & Onur Erpul, The false promise of global IR: exposing the paradox of dependent development
• Suwita Hani Randhawa, International criminalization and the historical emergence of international crimes
• Valentina Gentile & Megan Foster, Towards a minimal conception of Transitional Justice
• Eric Van Rythoven, Walter Lippmann, emotion, and the history of international theory
• Laura Considine, Narrative and nuclear weapons politics: the entelechial force of the nuclear origin myth
• Eric Heinze, Global libertarianism: how much public morality does international human rights law allow?

Conference: The War against Ukraine and IHL

On November 13-14, 2022, the Minerva Center for Human Rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem will host a conference on "The War against Ukraine and IHL." The probram is here. Registration is here.

Haque: The Inner Logic of International Law

Adil Ahmad Haque (Rutgers Univ. - Law) has posted The Inner Logic of International Law. Here's the abstract:

How does international law change? Must international law await change by external political intervention from outside the legal system? Or does international law provide reasons for its own development to those empowered to develop it? To address these questions, I will draw on an unlikely source. Joseph Raz was one of the greatest legal philosophers of all time. But he wrote relatively little about international law until the last decade of his life. Nevertheless, I will draw on Raz’s ideas to illuminate three pathways of international legal change: in the law of treaties, in customary international law, and in international adjudication.

Part I shows how the law of treaties distributes the task of developing law by way of interpreting texts. In national legal systems, this task primarily falls to courts exercising directed powers. Domestic courts have the legal power to clarify and develop the law, and are directed to do so through legal interpretation. In the international legal system, this task primarily falls to states themselves. States are directed to apply the general rule of treaty interpretation. This rule requires interpreting a treaty in light of its object and purpose, which may include promoting moral aims or respecting moral principles. As states converge on a sound purposive or teleological interpretation, that interpretation becomes legally conclusive through subsequent agreement and subsequent practice. Since international law, by design, gives States the ability to develop the law in this way, States enjoy a directed legal power to do so.

Part II shows how customary international law invites moral considerations into its formation and evolution. It does so not by actively incorporating morality, but simply by failing to exclude morality. Since moral considerations apply to states independently of the law, States are directed to develop customary law in light of moral considerations. This is by design. It is only by reflecting the group’s shared view of how its members should act that customary law can credibly claim the legitimate authority that all law necessarily claims. Once states arrive at a social rule reflecting a shared moral view, states enjoy a legal power to accept that social rule as law, conditional on the acceptance of a representative majority of states. As law, the rule is integrated into the international legal order and interlocked with its secondary rules.

Part III shows how legal reasoning by international courts can establish legal truth or legal justification. Valid reasoning from true legal and factual premises establishes legal truth—what the law is. Valid reasoning from true legal and moral premises establishes legal justification—what the law should be given the moral commitments already endorsed by the law. International courts reason to legal truth to apply existing law to existing facts in contentious cases or advisory proceedings. International courts reason to legal justification for two reasons. When one existing legal rule justifies another, the former illuminates the point or purpose of the latter, guides its interpretation, and assigns its normative weight in the event of conflict with other rules. When an existing legal rule justifies a rule that does not yet exist as law, the former provides a legal reason to create and apply the rule as law. International courts seldom openly engage in this last form of legal reasoning, and occasionally disavow it. But it is plausible that international courts in fact engage in this form of legal reasoning to avoid a non liquet in contentious cases, and that parties consent to have their disputes decided in this way. States are rationally committed to the moral implications of their legal positions, and this explains why states so often adopt the conclusions of a court’s legal reasoning and make them law.

New Issue: World Trade Review

The latest issue of the World Trade Review (Vol. 21, no. 5, December 2022) is out. Contents include:

• Erik van der Marel, Shifting into Digital Services: Does a Financial Crisis Matter and for Who?
• Chuanzi Cai, Lessons for International Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises from Counterfeiting Civil Litigations in China
• Belay Seyoum & Rebecca Abraham, US Trade Preference and Export Performance of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): Evidence from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA)
• Xinzhe Song & Xiaoyan Wang, Fair Use of Geographical Indications: Another Look at the Spirited Debate on the Level of Protection
• Research Note
• Giulia Claudia Leonelli, Carbon Border Measures, Environmental Effectiveness and WTO Law Compatibility: Is There a Way Forward for the Steel and Aluminium Climate Club?
• From the Trenches
• Bryan Mercurio & Pratyush Nath Upreti, From Necessity to Flexibility: A Reflection on the Negotiations for a TRIPS Waiver for Covid-19 Vaccines and Treatments

Durkee: The Pledging World Order

Melissa (MJ) Durkee (Univ. of Georgia - Law) has posted The Pledging World Order (Yale Journal of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

There is an emerging world order characterized by unilateral pledges within a legal or “legal-ish” architecture of commitments. The pledging world order has emerged in the international legal response to climate change as well as diverse sites that cross the public-private divide and blur the lines between them. Pledging as a legal technology is so far distinctly underwhelming. Pledging platforms facilitate incremental, non-disruptive action and do not remedy global justice problems. As a world order, pledging erodes distinctions between public and private, multilateralism and localism, law and not-law, and progress and stasis. The pledging order is both a symptom of and a contributor to the dismantling of the Westphalian and postwar orders. Nevertheless, the pledging approach may improve legitimacy and be the best available method to respond to important global commons problems like climate change, biodiversity loss, orbital debris, and other emerging issues.

This article makes three principal contributions: First, it identifies pledging as a treaty design choice and contrasts it with other forms of international lawmaking. Second, it casts pledging as a trans-regime, trans-substantive ordering device that appears inside and outside of law, in public and private sites, and at all levels of organization. Third, it identifies features of the world order that pledging reflects. Specifically, the pledging world order privileges function over status, departs from the top-down methods of deep cooperation common to the postwar legal order, and embraces a form of coordinated autonomy. Reformers might make design choices to improve this order, try to reclaim features of older orders, or reject both paths and turn to something new.

International Order & Justice Lecture Series

The Ghent Rolin-Jaequemyns International Law Institute and the Free University Brussels have announced the schedule for the fourth edition of the International Order & Justice Lecture Series. Details are here.

Conference: Russia-Ukraine: Full-Spectrum Conflict and International Law

On December 13-15, 2022, the Stockton Center for International Law will hold its 4th Annual Law of Armed Conflict Conference at the U.S. Naval War College. The topic is: “Russia-Ukraine: Full-Spectrum Conflict and International Law.” The program is here. Details and registration are here.

New Volume: Recueil des Cours

Volume 425 of the Recueil des Cours, Collected Courses of the Hague Academy of International Law is out. Contents include:

• Volume 425
• Brusil Miranda Metou, Le contrôle international des dérogations aux droits de l'homme
• Eduardo Silva Romero, Legal Fictions in the Language of International Arbitration

Linderfalk: The International Legal System as a System of Knowledge

Ulf Linderfalk (Lund Univ. - Law) has published The International Legal System as a System of Knowledge (Edward Elgar Publishing 2022). Here's the abstract:

International law is an underdeveloped branch of legal research: researchers still disagree over the proper understanding of several of its most fundamental issues, and genuinely so. This book helps to explain why. It brings clarity that will no doubt make international legal research more rational, which in turn vouches for a more productive legal discourse.

The author, together with invited contributors, builds an argument around theories of epistemological justification. As chapters contend, in international legal discourse, the construction of knowledge about international law presupposes some notion of an international legal system. International legal discourse accommodates several such notions. Each notion derives from a different conception of law. Thus, depending on whether a researcher endorses a legal positivist’s, a legal idealist’s or a legal realist’s conception of law, he or she will be constructing knowledge of international law under different epistemic conditions. The book sheds considerable light on these different conditions, with several chapters exploring how the different notions of an international legal system play out in the context of a series of concrete themes of legal practice. In doing so, the book helps to build a bridge between the practical and more philosophical aspects of this topic.

Gervasi: Prevention of Environmental Harm under General International Law: An Alternative Reconstruction

Mario Gervasi (Sapienza Univ. of Rome) has published Prevention of Environmental Harm under General International Law: An Alternative Reconstruction (Nomos 2021). Here's the abstract:

Prevention of environmental harm is commonly regarded as an obligation established by a customary rule of international law. However, many questions are still unanswered, including the exact content of such an obligation. This book attempts to address those questions by proposing a different reconstruction: it is argued that prevention of environmental harm amounts to a general principle of international law, rather than a customary rule. To this end, the book discusses the weaknesses of the classifìcation of prevention as a customary obligation. It then demonstrates that prevention of environmental harm has actually operated as a general principle, inspiring the formation of more specifìc rules and performing a guiding function within international case law. In light of this, the problem of the content of prevention under general international law is reformulated as one of identifying the customary rules embodying it. Since the dilution of prevention of environmental harm by the concept of sustainable development is apparent from the current trends within customary international law, the book concludes by exploring what role the principle of prevention might play in the future, particularly in a de-growth scenario.

Mitchell: Recentering the World: China and the Transformation of International Law

Ryan Martínez Mitchell (Chinese Univ. of Hong Kong - Law) has published Recentering the World: China and the Transformation of International Law (Cambridge Univ. Press 2022). Here's the abstract:

Recentering the World recovers a richly contextual, detailed history of Western-imposed legal structures in China, as well as engagements with international law by Chinese officials, jurists, and citizens. Beginning in the Late Qing era, it shows how international law functioned as a channel for power relations, techniques of economic domination, as well as novel forms of resistance. The book also radically diversifies traditionally Eurocentric accounts of modern international law's origins, demonstrating how, by the mid-twentieth century, Chinese jurists had made major contributions to international organizations and the UN system, the international judiciary, the laws of armed conflict, and more. Drawing on extensive archival research, this book is a valuable guide to China's often conflicted role in international law, its reception and contention of concepts of sovereignty, property, obligation, and autonomy, and its gradual move from the 'periphery' to a shared spot at the 'center' of global legal order.

Workshop: "International Law and the EU" and "The International Legal Order and the War in Ukraine" (Italian Yearbook)

On November 28-29, the Italian Yearbook of International Law and Roma Tre University will hold a workshop on the contents of the the Yearbook's Volume 32 (2022) in Rome and online (hybrid). Sessions will focus on "International Law and the EU" and "The International Legal Order and the War in Ukraine." Details are here.

Call for Papers: Combating Conflict-Related Sexual Violence – Comparative Insights on International and National Capacities

The Department of Law at the Freie Universität Berlin has issued a call for papers for a workshop on "“Combating Conflict-Related Sexual Violence – Comparative Insights on International and National Capacities," to take place May 12-13, 2023, in Berlin. The call is here.