Call for Papers: Imagining New and Alternative Legal Internationalisms

A call for papers has been issued for a stream on "Imagining New and Alternative Legal Internationalisms," part of a conference on "Legal Imaginaries," organized by the Law, Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia. The conference will take place on December 16-18, 2024, and hosted by the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law. Here's the call:

The international legal order, as we knew it, has changed. Since the early 2000s, we have witnessed significant international changes, including an escalating environmental emergency, the emergence of new ways to wage armed conflicts, the proliferation of new technologies to convey international influence and power, the decline of ‘old’ international powers and the rise of ‘new’ or ‘emerging’ ones, as well as increasingly overt ‘backlash’ against the international institutions and legal norms of the post-WWII international legal order. While it is common for international lawyers to read these events in a register of anxiety and pessimism, this stream seeks to strike a more curious and perhaps even hopeful tone by opening up a conversation about the new and alternative internationalisms that are emerging. In a world where the old is dying and a new hegemonic order has not yet been born, we ask, how can we understand, challenge and re-imagine international law anew? Convenors: Claerwen O'Hara (La Trobe University) and Valeria Vázquez Guevara (University of Hong Kong). For call and submission instructions, please visit the website.

Call for Papers: General principles in EU external relations law

The T.M.C. Asser Institute has issued a call for papers for a conference on "General Principles in EU External Relations Law," to be held December 6, 2024, at the T.M.C. Asser Institute in The Hague. The call is here.

Workshop: Transnational Legal and Political Theory

On May 17-18, 2024, the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy at the School of Law, University at Buffalo, will host a workshop on "Transnational Legal and Political Theory," in person and online. Details are here.

Yip: Reconceptualizing Norm Conflict in International Law

Ka Lok Yip (Hamad Bin Khalifa Univ.) has posted Reconceptualizing Norm Conflict in International Law (Asian Journal of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

This article re-conceptualizes norm conflict in international law by uncovering the experiential dimension of its definition and the intentional dimension of its resolution, which have been missing from the traditional accounts. The article locates the basis of recognizing norm conflict in the experienced sense of incompatibility between norms in view of their contexts rather than in the pre-designated constellation of norms with contrary or contradictory functions according to their texts. Concomitantly, it argues that the justification for using certain legal techniques to resolve norm conflicts lies in the intended relationship deducible only between those norms that share the same regulatory purpose, rather than between norms merely applying to the same factual situation. This re-conceptualization generates a new typology of norm conflicts in light of the norms’ end goals and the means they provide to achieve them: “Ends Conflict”, “Means Conflict” and “Unexperienced Conflict”, and suggests apposite ways to tackle them.

New Issue: La Comunità Internazionale

The latest issue of La Comunità Internazionale (Vol. 79, no. 1, 2024) is out. Contents include:

• Articoli e Saggi
• Giuseppe Puma, Le sanzioni economiche unilaterali contro la Bielorussia nella recente prassi internazionale
• Fiammetta Borgia, Intelligenza artificiale, arte digitale e diritto d’autore: profili di diritto internazionale
• Laura Di Gianfrancesco, La funzione di accountability dell’Assemblea generale delle Nazioni Unite alla luce della risoluzione 76/262 sulla veto initiative
• Francesco Gaudiosi, One Health: A New Intersectoral Approach and its Legal Implications for Global Health Governance
• Osservatorio Diritti Umani
• Giorgia Bevilacqua, Innovazione tecnologica e interpretazione del diritto al gioco nella Convenzione ONU sui diritti del fanciullo
• Federica Falconi, Contrasto allo hate speech e responsabilità nella comunicazione politica online: note alla sentenza della Corte europea dei diritti umani Sanchez c. Francia
• Osservatorio Europeo
• Francesco Viggiani, La posizione asimmetrica della Corte di giustizia dell’Unione europea nel contesto “emergenziale” del fenomeno migratorio

Peat: Positivism and the Cognitive Turn

Daniel Peat (Leiden Univ. - Law) has posted Positivism and the Cognitive Turn (in International Legal Theory and the Cognitive Turn, A. van Aaken & M. Hirsch eds., forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Of all the strands of international legal theory that exist in contemporary international law scholarship, one might have thought that the cognitive turn would impact positivism the most. In this chapter, however, I want to paint a different picture. The caricature of positivism that many of us hold in our heads – as a theory that is formalist, voluntarist, state-centric, and detached from morals – no longer accords with the prevalent conception of the theory in much of the literature. Instead, I argue that the principal challenge to positivism comes from experimental jurisprudence, a nascent body of literature which shows that the general public fails to recognise a source-based concept of law. This challenges positivists to explain why their view is to be preferred to the so-called ‘folk’ concept of law.

Monebhurrun, Olarte-Bácares, & Velásquez-Ruiz: International Investment Law and Arbitration from a Latin American Perspective

Nitish Monebhurrun (Univ. Center of Brasilia), Carolina Olarte-Bácares (Pontificia Universidad Javeriana), & Marco A. Velásquez-Ruiz (Pontificia Universidad Javeriana) have published International Investment Law and Arbitration from a Latin American Perspective (Springer 2024). The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:

The book brings to light how Latin American States have traditionally stood before the field of International Investment Law and Arbitration. It delves into their posture of resistance to critically examine how their perspective has gradually changed and how they have adapted their investment agreements so as not to leave their position as players in the field of International Investment Law.

Rudall: Responsibility for Environmental Damage

Jason Rudall (Leiden Univ. - Law) has published Responsibility for Environmental Damage (Edward Elgar Publishing 2024). Here's the abstract:

Engaging with one of the most consequential issues of our time, this book provides a thoughtful analysis of responsibility for environmental damage under international law. It conceives of responsibility in a comprehensive way, tackling the legal responsibility, liability and accountability of state and non-state actors for harm they cause to the environment.

Responsibility for Environmental Damage traverses the primary and secondary rules of international law, the responsibility, liability and accountability of states, international organizations, corporations and individuals, as well as existing, new and emerging regulatory frameworks. It engages with the consequences of environmental harm, appraising both orthodox legal doctrines and cutting-edge questions like shared responsibility, equitable considerations, full reparation, response measures under liability regimes, corporate responsibility, ecocide and responsibility for climate change, amongst many others. In doing so, the book evaluates whether the law is equipped to deal with the novel challenges that environmental damage presents and argues that new legal tools are needed to effectively tackle some of the most significant threats to our planet.