New Issue: Journal of Human Rights

The latest issue of the Journal of Human Rights (Vol. 22, no. 4, 2023) is out. Contents include:

• Shanshan Lian & Amanda Murdie, How closing civil society space affects NGO-Government interactions
• Yuan Zhou, Ghashia Kiyani & Charles Crabtree, New evidence that naming and shaming influences state human rights practices
• Hans Morten Haugen, A decade of revitalizing UN work concerning freedom of religion or belief (2010–2020)
• Demet Yalcin Mousseau & Michael Mousseau, The economic origins of democratic civil liberties: A cross-country analysis
• Gina R. Rosich & Elba Caraballo, Perceptions of a human rights lens in relation to the training of social work field educators
• Douaa Sheet, On conceptions of time in human rights studies: The afterlife, Islam, and reparative justice in post-uprising Tunisia
• Marie Claire Van Hout & Jakkie Wessels, #ForeignersMustGo versus “in favorem libertatis”: Human rights violations and procedural irregularities in South African immigration detention law
• Elizabeth J. Kolbe, The right to work? For whom? Exploring international migration for tourism employment and its effects on local workers through phenomenology

Parrish & Ryngaert: Research Handbook on Extraterritoriality in International Law

Austen Parrish (Univ. of California, Irvine - Law) & Cedric Ryngaert (Utrecht Univ. - Law) have published Research Handbook on Extraterritoriality in International Law (Edward Elgar Publishing 2023). The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:

By engaging with ongoing discussions surrounding the scope of cross-border regulation, this expansive Research Handbook provides the reader with key insights into the concept of extraterritoriality. It offers an incisive overview and analysis of one of the most critical components of global governance.

Authored by central voices in the global extraterritoriality debate, the Research Handbook on Extraterritoriality in International Law offers legal, interdisciplinary, and regional perspectives on this evolving field. It covers a variety of issues, such as the economics of extraterritorial crime, judicial extraterritoriality, and extraterritorial human rights obligations.

Freeman & Taylor: Research Handbook on International Child Abduction: The 1980 Hague Convention

Marilyn Freeman (Univ. of Westminster - Law) & Nicola Taylor (Univ. of Otago - Law) have published Research Handbook on International Child Abduction: The 1980 Hague Convention (Edward Elgar Publishing 2023). The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:

With a focus on the 1980 Hague Convention, this cutting-edge Research Handbook provides a holistic overview of the law on international child abduction from prevention, through voluntary agreements and Convention proceedings, to post-return and aftercare issues.

Discussing the repercussions of abduction from the perspectives of both abducted children and the therapeutic and family justice professionals engaged in their cases, chapters consider the contributions of the many professionals and key agencies involved in the field. Identifying the 1980 Hague Convention as the principal global instrument for dealing with child abduction, the Research Handbook traces its role, history, development and impact, alongside the mechanisms required for its effective use. Evaluating current trends, areas of concern in legal/judicial practice and various regional initiatives, it also considers alternatives to high-conflict court proceedings in international child abduction cases. The Convention’s strengths, successes, weaknesses and gaps are discussed, and the Research Handbook concludes by addressing how best to tackle the challenges in its future operation.

New Issue: International Community Law Review

The latest issue of the International Community Law Review (Vol. 25, no. 5, 2023) is out. Contents include:

• Ergün Cakal, Law and Torture: Contemporary Legal Scholarship on Torture, from the Doctrinal to the Critical
• Ulf Linderfalk, Neither Fish, Nor Fowl: A New Way to a Fuller Understanding of the lex specialis Principle
• Imad Antoine Ibrahim, Redefining the Principle of Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Resources from a Geographical Perspective: A Case Study of Transboundary Aquifers
• Sondra Faccio, The World Health Organization’s Response to the Health Emergency and its Impact on Investment Arbitration and Human Rights Case Law
• Tarcisio Gazzini, International Community? What International Community?

Tzanakopoulos: The Master's Tools and the Master's House: Marxist Insights for International Law

Antonios Tzanakopoulos (Univ. of Oxford - Law) has posted The Master's Tools and the Master's House: Marxist Insights for International Law (in The Oxford Handbook of International Law in Europe, Anne van Aaken, Pierre d'Argent, Lauri Mälksoo, & Johann Justus Vasel eds., forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Audre Lorde wrote a text in 1979 to which she gave the title: ‘The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House’. In it, she argued that using the tools of racist patriarchy to examine the fruits of that very same racist patriarchy would only allow the narrowest parameters of change, if any. This is, in a way, the predicament faced by any Marxist approach to (international) law. This chapter traces the impact of Marxist thought on international law by focusing on structural aspects of international law, grouping them under the structure of the (international) legal relation, aka ‘the legal form’ (section III); the content of the legal relation with particular emphasis on interpretation (section IV); and the justification of the legal relation through ideology (section V). The chapter traces that impact without aspiring to be comprehensive; but aspiring to avoid as much as possible the jargon that tends to alienate (pun intended) non-specialist (in Marxism!) readers, thereby rendering the debate esoteric.

New Issue: Journal of Conflict Resolution

The latest issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution (Vol. 67, nos. 7-8, August-September 2023) is out. Contents include:

• Special Feature: Ceasefire in Civil Wars
• Govinda Clayton, Håvard Mokleiv Nygård, Siri Aas Rustad, & Håvard Strand, Ceasefires in Civil Conflict: A Research Agenda
• Govinda Clayton, Håvard Mokleiv Nygård, Siri A. Rustad, & Håvard Strand, Costs and Cover: Explaining the Onset of Ceasefires in Civil Conflict
• Corinne Bara & Govinda Clayton, Your Reputation Precedes You: Ceasefires and Cooperative Credibility During Civil Conflict
• Magnus Lundgren, Isak Svensson, & Dogukan Cansin Karakus, Local Ceasefires and De-escalation: Evidence From the Syrian Civil War
• Jessica Maves Braithwaite & Charles Butcher, Muddying the Waters: The Anatomy of Resistance Campaigns and the Failure of Ceasefires in Civil Wars
• Allard Duursma, Peacekeeping, Mediation, and the Conclusion of Local Ceasefires in Non-State Conflicts
• Data Set Feature
• Govinda Clayton, Håvard Mokleiv Nygård, Håvard Strand, & Siri A. Rustad, Introducing the ETH/PRIO Civil Conflict Ceasefire Dataset
• Articles
• Justin Melnick & Alastair Smith, International Negotiations in the Shadow of Elections
• Omer Zarpli, When Do Imposed Sanctions Work? The Role of Target Regime Type
• Graeme AM Davies, Kingsley Edney, & Bo Wang, Modelling Chinese Youth Support for Military Intervention in the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands: Beyond Nationalism and Militarism
• Joshua Alley, Elite Cues and Public Attitudes Towards Military Alliances
• Christoph V. Steinert & Christoph Dworschak, Political Imprisonment and Protest Mobilization: Evidence From the GDR
• Michael Freedman & Esteban F. Klor, When Deterrence Backfires: House Demolitions, Palestinian Radicalization, and Israeli Fatalities
• Ashlyn W. Hand & Nilay Saiya, Democracy’s Ambivalent Effect on Terrorism

New Issue: Cooperation and Conflict

The latest issue of Cooperation and Conflict (Vol. 58, no. 3, September 2023) is out. Contents include:

• Leslie E Wehner, Stereotyped images and role dissonance in the foreign policy of right-wing populist leaders: Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump
• Petr Kratochvíl, Political economy of Catholicism: The case of the sacred-market network at World Youth Day in Panama
• Linus Hagström, Charlotte Wagnsson, & Magnus Lundström, Logics of Othering: Sweden as Other in the time of COVID-19
• Jan Karlas, State commitments and inhumane conventional weapons: An explanatory analysis of treaty ratification
• Daniel Sobelman, Re-conceptualizing triangular coercion in International Relations
• Kristin Haugevik, United clubs of Europe: Informal differentiation and the social ordering of intra-EU diplomacy
• Joanne McEvoy & Jennifer Todd, Constitutional inclusion in divided societies: Conceptual choices, practical dilemmas and the contribution of the grassroots in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland

Kleinheisterkamp: The Myth of Transnational Public Policy in International Arbitration

Jan Kleinheisterkamp has published The Myth of Transnational Public Policy in International Arbitration (American Journal of Comparative Law, Vol. 71, no. 1, pp. 98–141, Spring 2023). Here's the abstract:

This Article traces the concept of transnational public policy as developed in the context of international arbitration at the intersection between legal theory and practice. The emergence of such a transnational public policy, it is claimed, would enable arbitrators to safeguard and ultimately to define the public interests that need to be protected in a globalized economy, irrespective of national laws. A historical contextualization of efforts to empower merchants and their practices in Germany and the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries highlights their reliance on the mythical lex mercatoria that shaped English commercial law. Further contextualization is offered by the postwar invocation of “general principles of law recognized by civilized nations,” to keep at bay the application of supposedly less civilized, parochial legal orders, and by the consequent emergence of the “new” lex mercatoria as conceptualized especially in France. These developments paved the way, on the theory side, for later conceptualizations of self-constitutionalizing law beyond the state, especially by Gunther Teubner, and, on the practice side, for the notion of transnational public policy developed by arbitrators, especially by Emmanuel Gaillard, culminating in jurisprudential claims of an autonomous arbitral legal order with a regulatory dimension. In all these constructions, the recourse to comparative law has been a crucial element. Against this rough intellectual history, the Article offers a critique of today’s construction of transnational public policy by probing into its constitutional dimension and the respective roles of private and public interests. This allows, in particular, to draw on parallels to historic U.S. constitutional debates on the allocation of regulatory powers in federalism.

Webinars: Legal History Talk Series

This fall, the Centre for International Law at BML Munjal University will host the "Legal History Talk Series," comprised of five webinars. Details are here.

New Issue: Ethics & International Affairs

The latest issue of Ethics & International Affairs (Vol. 37, no. 2, Summer 2023) is out. Contents include:

• Book Symposium: The Ethics of Espionage and Counterintelligence
• Juan Espindola, Introduction: Probing the Limits of Ethical Espionage
• Ross W. Bellaby, The Ethics of Economic Espionage
• Ron Dudai, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Informer: Revisiting the Ethics of Espionage in the Context of Insurgencies and New Wars
• Alex Leveringhaus, Technology in Espionage and Counterintelligence: Some Cautionary Lessons from Armed Conflict
• Rhiannon Neilsen, Cyber Intelligence and Influence: In Defense of “Cyber Manipulation Operations” to Parry Atrocities
• Juan Espindola, Facial Recognition in War Contexts: Mass Surveillance and Mass Atrocity
• Cécile Fabre, Reply to Critics
• Feature
• Thana C. de Campos-Rudinsky, Multilateralism and the Global Co-Responsibility of Care in Times of a Pandemic: The Legal Duty to Cooperate
• Review Essay
• Zeynep Pamuk, Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Judgment

Titi: Investment Treaty Arbitration Caught in the Public-Private Law Divide

Catharine Titi (CNRS; Univ. Paris II Panthéon-Assas) has posted Investment Treaty Arbitration Caught in the Public-Private Law Divide (Michigan Journal of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

The ongoing reform of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) underlines the pertinence of an old question that has received various and conflicting answers: is investment arbitration a public or a private method of dispute settlement? A key criticism levelled at investment treaty arbitration is that public interest disputes are decided by a system of private justice. This article critically reviews the dominant interpretations of investment treaty arbitration as public, private, or hybrid and argues that their subjective nature means that none of them can be definitively adopted. Rather, the real arguments in favor of or against arbitration lie beyond the traditional debate. The article shows that investment arbitration displays important commonalities with international court systems, its presumed unique features – including party autonomy – appearing a little less unique on closer inspection. Ultimately, a system is what states make it, irrespective of whether its particular features are described as public or private.

New Issue: Revista Costarricense de Derecho Internacional

The latest issue of the Revista Costarricense de Derecho Internacional (No. 11, 2023) is out. Contents include:

• Valentina Vera-Quiroz, Human Rights Implications of Face Recognition and Other Biometric Technologies
• Alejandro Muñoz Thuel, Challenges and Opportunities Originated from the Incorporation of Basel III in the Development of Public Infrastructure in Costa Rica and Latin America
• Stefan Haeussler Vesco, The Straight Bill of Lading: A Straight Document in Rough Waters
• Juan Carlos Caita-Moreno, Subjetividad internacional de los estados: el caso de Palestina, entre la autoderminación y el reconocimiento

New Issue: Chinese Journal of International Law

The latest issue of the Chinese Journal of International Law (Vol. 22, no. 2, June 2023) is out. Contents include:

• Articles
• Rodoljub Etinski, Evolutive (Dynamic) Interpretation and Informal Modification of Constituent Instruments of International Organizations
• Miguel Lemos, The Appeals Chamber’s Jurisdictional Judgment in Abd-Al-Rahman and the Issue of Applicable Law at the International Criminal Court
• Comments
• Jinyuan Su, Outer Space: From Sanctuary to Warfighting Domain?
• Bradly J Condon, How Cultural Cognition Informs Differential Treatment in WTO Law and the Climate Regime

Call for Papers: The Province of International Law: Space, Time, and Representation in International Legal History

a call for papers has been issued for a workshop on "The Province of International Law: Space, Time, and Representation in International Legal History," tenatively scheduled to take place in May 2024 at the Graduate Institute. The call is here.