This Commentary provides the first comprehensive and holistic analysis of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (the Istanbul Convention). It offers a complete article-by-article guide to the Convention with reference to the explanatory report, the findings of the monitoring body (GREVIO) and relevant State practice.
Should deep seabed mining (DSM) stop or proceed? The international community is now facing a difficult choice. No matter what decision is made, environmental consideration is the core of the issue. This book tackles the compelling question of how to secure the marine environmental protection in DSM from an international law perspective. It deals with two major research questions: What are the international environmental requirements of participants – the contractor, the sponsoring State and the International Seabed Authority (ISA)? What are the legal consequences for them when environmental damage occurs? In doing so, it analyses the international DSM legal regime and general international environmental principles, observes the functioning of the ISA, and draws on law and practice of various environmental treaty mechanisms. The examination reveals the potential practical difficulties as well as fundamental obstacles in the application of international environmental rules and principles in the specific context of DSM.
Declared a 'game-changer' by the Hague Conference Secretary General, the 2019 Hague Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters has introduced international obligations of unprecedented sweep and power. Now, this authoritative treatise provides the diplomatic background and the historical context for the Convention, discussing the law on judgments recognition in the absence of the Convention's ratification. After recounting the twenty-seven-year history of the negotiations leading to the Convention's conclusion, it offers an article-by-article discussion of each provision. It also considers paths not taken, advancing possible solutions to address future pressures and developments.
The Roles of International Law in Development provides an in-depth analysis of the relationship between public international law and development. Unlike the existing body of literature on public international law, this book investigates how international law and development interact, and evaluates the significant and multifaceted roles that international law plays in development.
Bringing together a collection of perspectives from contributors working across multiple fields, the chapters explore the relevance and applicability of international law to particular sectors and issues implicated in development activities. This includes chapters on human rights, gender equality, race and discrimination, environmental law and climate change, forced displacement and migration, and international trade and investment. They analyse how international law rules and processes can influence procedural and substantive aspects of development policies as these regulate various forms of financial support, trade, technical assistance, and policy dialogue. They also explore whether, and how, development could be more effective and yield more equitable and sustainable outcomes if the relevant and applicable rules of international law were better understood, consistently incorporated, and appropriately applied to development activities. A foundational premise of this book is that development policy and practice should be grounded more systematically in international law, rejecting the notion that development law and policy comprise a 'self-contained' regime or that development is undertaken in a legal vacuum. The proposed systematic grounding in public international law would in turn help uphold international legal accountability in the context of development activities.
This book provides in-depth coverage and analysis of the international law, rules and principles that govern the use of force. Through a unique intra-disciplinary perspective, it examines how the law on the use of force functions within the international legal system and how it interacts with other relevant areas of the law. This includes arms control law, the law governing the use of the international commons, the law of armed conflict and human rights law, and the law of international responsibility. It offers an accessible guide to the law on the use of force to students and practitioners, alongside providing a unique perspective on the place and function of the law on the use of force within the wider legal landscape which will appeal to both academic professionals and others interested in how law regulates the use of force.
Since 1995 there has been intense debate about whether the WTO Agreement is just. Many observers point to the association of the treaty with intensive interdependence and the disruptive effects of globalization to assert that it is unjust. Nevertheless, justice in sovereign terms is different from justice in human terms. This book puts forward a theory of WTO law to explain the difference and its implications for the international trading system. It details how economic interdependence gives rise to an interdependent view of the relationship between different forms of justice and to interdependent obligations in WTO law. It also suggests how the WTO dispute settlement system might have a residual value as a locus for transformative outcomes despite contemporary concerns about the system's political acceptability. Taken together, such insights may assist in identifying elements of a general theory of law.
BRAZILIAN JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW
Call for Papers
Vol. 21 n. 2 2024
Deadline for submissions: 1st June 2024
SPECIAL ISSUE
The Brazilian Journal of International Law, a SCOPUS-indexed review, invites submissions for a special issue on “International Food Law” to be published in October 2024. The issue will be edited by Professors Marcílio Toscano Franca Filho (Federal University of Paraíba) and Ardyllis Alves Soares (University Centre of Brasilia).
The relationships between food, flavor, taste, palate and law are as old as they are broad. For many centuries, legal norms have been responsible for regulating our ways of eating, drinking, producing food and consuming it, including rules on health protection, labelling, geographical demarcations, authenticity, international trade, food safety, human rights to food, religion (kosher and halal foods) and gastronomic cultural heritage. Private international law, in turn, in addition to many types of contracts on the production, consumption and transport of food, also deals with the “duty of food”. In Europe and the United States, an autonomous branch of Law called Food Law has long been well established, a transdisciplinary field located somewhere between Economic Law, Administrative Law, International Law and Consumer Law. It is also important to mention international organizations related to specific products, such as the “Association Internationale des Juristes pour le Droit de la Vigne et du Vin” (AIDV), founded in 1985 to analyze legal issues relating to the international wine trade. All these circumstances denote the current nature of the debate on Law & Food and legitimize the production of a Dossier on "Food and International Law", in the Brazilian Journal of International Law, which could host texts by Brazilian and foreign colleagues on the following topics:
Formal aspects (requirements):
- Human Right to Food
- Food safety
- Labeling, risks, precautions and traceability
- New Foods (insects, flowers, GMOs, etc.) and international regulation
- Intellectual property and food
- ESG and international food trade
- International regulation of certain foods in kind such as sugar, coffee, wine, spirits and cheese
- International protection of food consumers
- SDGs and food
- Climate change and food
- The protection of animals
- Sanitary and phytosanitary measures
- International organizations with influence on the agri-food sector: FAO, UNESCO, WHO, Codex Alimentarius, World Organization for Animal Health (OIE).
1) Manuscripts should be written in Times New Roman, size 12, space between lines 1,0 throughout the manuscript (including all quotations, endnotes and references).
2) Minimum degree:
* Individual authorship: Doctor;
* Co-authorship: Master, being in co-authorship with a Doctor. If there are three or more authors, only one co-author must be a non-doctor with the aforementioned minimum degree (Master).
3) Footnote citation (author-date will be rejected without review);
4) Do not use Latin expressions on footnotes (id., ibid., op. cit, supra, note…). Repeat the whole reference and the referred pages.
5) Reference list at the end;
6) 15-25 pages, including the reference list at the end.Link: https://www.publicacoesacademicas.uniceub.br/rdi
Important remarks:Only International Law and Comparative Law approaches will be considered. National or majorly national approaches won't be considered.
International claims commissions (ICCs) are unique dispute resolution mechanisms designed to be highly flexible and responsive to international crises. This timely Research Handbook explores the history of ICCs, how and why states create them, and the role of states and secretariats within them.
Written by accomplished experts and past claims commission members to present a unique perspective on ICCs, this Research Handbook analyses past claims commissions including the Iran–US Claims Tribunal, the UN Compensation Commission, the Eritrea–Ethiopia Claims Commission and the Commission for Real Property Claims in Bosnia. Providing a comprehensive review of institutional design issues, this Handbook examines the challenges associated with mass claims processes, diplomatic protection, domestic liability, and enforcement, as well as how to address them. Looking ahead to the future, the contributing authors propose innovative ways in which claims commissions could be used to address contemporary challenges such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the construction of the wall in Occupied Palestinian Territory, climate change and environmental law disputes.
Assembling a series of voices from across the field, this book demonstrates how posthuman theory can be employed to better understand and tackle some of the challenges faced by contemporary international law.
With the vast environmental devastation being caused by climate change, the increasing use of artificial intelligence by international legal actors and the need for international law to face up to its colonial past, international law needs to change. But in regulating and preserving a stable global order in which states act as its main subjects, the traditional sources of international law – international legal statutes, customary international law, historical precedents and general principles of law – create a framework that slows down its capacity to act on contemporary challenges, and to imagine futures yet to come. In response, this collection maintains that posthuman theory can be used to better address the challenges faced by contemporary international law. Covering a wide array of contemporary topics – including environmental law, the law of the sea, colonialism, human rights, conflict and the impact of science and technology – it is the first book to bring new and emerging research on posthuman theory and international law together into one volume.
The gravity of a crime or case features in various international and national legal frameworks for the investigation and prosecution of international crimes. At the International Criminal Court (ICC), 'sufficient gravity' is a requirement for the admissibility of a case specified in Article 17(1)(d) of the Rome Statute. The open-textured nature of the provision leaves the manner of its application and, ultimately, its purpose in the context of the Prosecutor's decisions whether to investigate and prosecute, open to discussion.
Set against the backdrop of ongoing debates on how to justify selective investigations and prosecutions at the Court, Gravity at the International Criminal Court: Admissibility and Prosecutorial Discretion addresses the question of how the gravity criterion is to be applied in the context of the Prosecutor's respective decisions whether to investigate and prosecute. It argues that the purpose of the gravity criterion in this context is the allocation of investigative and prosecutorial resources.
First, identifying appropriate indicators of gravity, the book contends that the application of Article 17(1)(d) requires a subjective assessment that involves the exercise of discretion. Second, by clarifying the respective roles of the Prosecutor and the Pre-Trial Chambers of the Court in the assessment of gravity in different contexts, it argues in favour of wide prosecutorial discretion in the making of this assessment compared with the limited powers of judicial oversight conferred on the Pre-Trial Chamber.
Timely and thorough, Gravity at the International Criminal Court proposes a more coherent and persuasive application of the criterion, contextualizing and comparing the ICC's approach in relation to other courts and bodies of law including international human rights law, international investment law, and international trade law.
The international dispute settlement system is currently facing many challenges regarding the authority, effectiveness, and legitimacy of its methods and mechanisms and their coordination. These challenges cut across different fields of international law and relations such as investment, trade, human rights, water resources, the law of the sea, the environment, international peace and security, disaster law, space, and cyberspace. New technologies also impact on the scope of existing disputes and their settlement, which lead to the emergence of new disputes and ways of settling them. This book offers insightful reflections by academics and practitioners on such challenges and how they can be addressed as well as on how the international dispute settlement system should adapt to attain its aim of maintaining peace and international legality. It deals with many contemporary issues and is wide-ranging in scope. It is suitable for students, scholars, and practitioners of international dispute settlement, international law, and international relations.
The latest issue of Global Trade and Customs Journal (Vol. 19, no. 1, 2024) is out. Contents include:
Spend time at the International Criminal Court, and you will hear the familiar language of anti-impunity. Spend longer, and you will encounter the less familiar language of management – efficiency, risk, and performance, and tools of strategic planning, audit, and performance appraisal. How have these two languages fused within the primary institution of global justice? This book explores that question through an historical and conceptually layered account of management's effects on the ICC's global justice project. It historicises management, forcing international lawyers to look at the sites of struggle – from the plantation to the United Nations – that have shaped the court's managerial present. It traces the court's macro, micro and meso scales of management, showing how such practices have fashioned a vision of global justice at organisational, professional, and argumentative levels. And it asks how those who care about global justice might engage with managerial justice at an institution animated by forms, reforms, and the promise of optimisation.
The latest issue of the International Organizations Law Review (Vol. 20, no. 3, 2023) is out. Contents include:
International Tax Law is at a turning point. Increased tax transparency, the tackling of Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS), the reconstruction of the network of bilateral tax treaties, the renewed discussion about a fair and efficient allocation of taxing rights between States in a global, digitalized economy, and the bold push for minimum corporate taxation are some expressions of this shift. This new era also demonstrates the increased influence of international standard setters such as the OECD, the UN, and the EU. Each of these developments alone has the potential of being disruptive to the traditional world of international tax law, but together they have the potential to reshape the international tax system. The Oxford Handbook of International Tax Law provides a comprehensive exploration of these key issues which will shape the future of tax law.
Divided into eight parts, this handbook traces the history of international tax law from its earliest days until the present, including reflections on the developments that have characterized the last one hundred years. The second section places tax law within the broader international context considering how it relates to public and private international law, as well as corporate, trade, and criminal law. Sections three and four consider key legal principles and issues such as regional tax treaty models, OECD dispute resolution, and transfer pricing versus formulary apportionment. Subsequent analysis places these issues within their European and cross-border contexts providing an assessment of the role of the ECJ, state aid, and cross-border VAT. Section seven broadens the scope of this analysis, asking how trends in recent major economies and regions have helped shape the current outlook. The final section considers emerging issues and the future of international tax law.
This volume examines in an innovative and applied perspective the interdependence between the role of international organizations, the existence of global public goods and the need of sustainable development. Moreover, it is set within the context of current challenges in today’s world of dramatic transition and clearly responds to the need for filling the existing research gap in this area. It also demonstrates excellent knowledge of primary resources and a very good mastery of the various concepts and policy issues. Moreover, it offers an important added value to the theory, research and recent publications of the concerned broad study field.
This pioneering Research Handbook provides a comprehensive and in-depth scholarly overview of the field of soft law, exploring the scope of current thinking in the field as well as proposing future pathways for soft law research. Organized into four broad themes, the Research Handbook offers important and unique insights into the dynamic and complex nature of soft law. The first section delves into the conceptual history and development of soft law. Second, the Handbook explores the disciplinary understandings of soft law, examining how scholars from different fields investigate the topic. The third theme focuses on the public and private actors and institutions involved in soft law-making, providing a detailed analysis of the complex relationships that shape soft law. Finally, the fourth theme explores the role of soft law in addressing major global societal challenges, including among others climate change, gender inequality, and the regulation of artificial intelligence.
In this timely book, Alexandra Harrington examines the legal and policy terms contained in transitional justice mechanisms through the lenses of intergenerational equity and justice, and the impact on current and future generations. Based on these findings, she offers a new definition of transitional justice that focuses on generational incorporation to ensure a durable, equitable and just peace.
Proposing a more nuanced definition of transitional justice in the setting of internal armed conflict, chapters address both the histories and the analyses of different conflicts. Harrington reviews the core findings and their potential impacts for crafting transitional justice mechanisms that are inclusive of the needs of children and youth, current and future generations, intergenerational equity and intergenerational justice. The book also focuses on the variety of agreements and instruments adopted for peace through trend analysis and information gathering.
With contributions from over 30 international legal scholars, this topical Research Handbook on International Food Law provides a reflective and crucial examination of the rules, power dynamics, legal doctrines, societal norms, and frameworks that govern the modern global food system. The Research Handbook analyses the interlinkages between producers and consumers of food, as well as the environmental effects of the global food network and the repercussions on human health. Chapters explore the development of food law and governance strategies, the regulation of novel foods, including insects, and the application of technology and science in food production, such as genetically engineered food. The insightful contributions examine the legal challenges facing the global food system and suggest practical recommendations for future research and reform.
As one of the most important international organisations in the sphere of international trade law, UNCITRAL aims to further the progressive unification of the law of international trade. This comprehensive Companion delineates the range of issues considered at UNCITRAL, as well as assessing the potential for future work and reforms. Split into four key thematic sections, the book starts by providing an institutional background to UNCITRAL, before moving on to discuss the topic of dispute resolution, including contributions on international arbitration, mediation, and online dispute resolution. Further chapters then explore key topics in international contract law, especially relating to the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. The final section of the Companion consists of chapters on a variety of matters considered at UNCITRAL, namely, micro, small and medium-sized businesses; insolvency; secured transactions; negotiable instruments; public procurement; electronic commerce and transport law.
Since the mid-twentieth century, 'international law' and 'international development' have become two of the most prominent secular languages through which aspirations about a better world are articulated. They have shaped the both the treatment and self-understanding of the 'developing' world, often by positing the West as a universal model against which developing states, their citizens, and natural environments should be measured and disciplined. In recent years, however, critical scholars have investigated the deep linkages between the concept of development, the doctrines and institutions of international law, and broader projects of ordering at the international level. They have shown how the leading models de-radicalise, if not derail, initiatives to redefine development and pursue other forms of global well-being.
Bringing together scholars from both the Global South and the Global North, the contributions in this Handbook invite readers to consider the limits of common normative and developmentalist assumptions. At the same time, the Handbook demonstrates how disparate but still identifiable set of ideas, imaginaries, norms, and institutional practices - related to law, development and international governance - shape today's profoundly unequal material conditions, threatening the future of human and nonhuman life on the planet. The book focuses on five distinct areas: existing disciplinary frameworks, institutions and actors, regional theatres of international law and development, competing social and economic agendas, and alternative futures.
Purging the Odious Scourge of Atrocities explains the growth of a small body of human rights law that bans the use of violence against a state's own population when it is deemed a mass atrocity. These laws are binding on all states regardless of whether they have accepted it by signing treaties, or whether it is consistent with widespread state practice. Yet, this challenges the doctrine of consent, which has traditionally been the foundation of international law. Bruce Cronin argues that qualitative changes in the form of global governance are leading to an expansion in the theoretical underpinnings of international law and its role in contemporary world politics. Specifically, in limited and well-defined areas of international law, states have begun to recognize the authority of collective international consensus over individual state consent as the source of some legal rules.
Cronin supports this theory by examining the degree to which the international community has, via multilateral conferences among states, developed a consensus around the legal control of "excessive internal state violence"—that is, a level of coercive force that the international community considers to be disproportionate and illegitimate for pursuing state interests within its own borders. These practices, which the Genocide Convention refers to as an "odious scourge", include widespread, systematic attacks on civilian populations; violent persecution of defined groups (including genocide, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid); torture; and the violation of civilian immunity in internal armed conflicts. In these cases, state action is subject to general international law that overrides their consent. By allowing us to rethink the mechanisms that give international law actual force, Purging the Odious Scourge of Atrocities promises to reshape our understanding of why states are required to abide by human rights norms they never consented to by treaty or customary practice.
The latest issue of the Journal of International Peacekeeping (Vol. 26, no. 4, 2023) is out. Contents include:
Teaching International Law is a topic of great importance in international law academia. In the past renowned international lawyers and research institutions have dealt with this matter. This book brings together a larger number of established international lawyers who not only present the state of the art of this discipline but also their own vision and perspective. Traditionally, teachers of international law had considerable influence on the development and the understanding of this subject. The international legal system has profoundly changed but in time of enormous challenges for the survivel of mankind the voice of the teachers should again be heard.
The latest issue of the Chinese Journal of International Law (Vol. 22, no. 4, December 2023) is out. Contents include:
