New Volume: African Journal of International Economic Law

The latest volume of the African Journal of International Economic Law (Vol. 5, 2025) is out. Contents include:

• Keynote Article
• Joel M. Ngugi, TWAIL, Transformation, The National Judge, Academic and Municipal Lawyer
• Special Issue: The African International Economic Law 2023 Conference: International Economic Law in an Era of Multiple Crises: Opportunities and Challenges for Africa
• Titilayo Adebola, Regis Y. Simo, Suzzie O. Oyakhire, Tsotang Tsietsi, Harrison Mbori, & Ashimizo Afadameh-Adeyemi, Introduction to the Special Issue
• Richard Frimpong Oppong, International Economic Law in an Era of Multiple Crisis: Opportunities and Challenges for Africa (Keynote Address: African International Economic Law Network 2023 Conference)
• Obiora C. Okafor, African States’ Priorities for International Economic Law and Socio-Economic Prosperity on the Continent in this Era of Multiple Crises: Reflections on Some of the Themes in Richard F. Oppong’s Keynote Address
• Caroline B. Ncube, Cascading Crises Call for a Concerted and Inclusive Continental Response: Reflections on Richard F. Oppong’s Keynote
• Kathleen Mpofu, Assessing the Viability of Investor Liability Provisions in the Reform Agenda of International Investment Law
• Atupele Masanjala, Malawi’s Cotton Trade: Riding the Coattails of the Cotton-4
• Chido Teclar Mitchel Muza, Unlocking the Potential of Blockchain Technology for Secured Payments in International Commercial Transactions
• Mbakiso Magwape, AfCFTA and Revenue: Navigating Outstanding Fiscal Issues and Legal Framework to attain Agenda 2063
• Suzzie O. Oyakhire & Ohiocheoya Omiunu, Decolonising the Teaching of International Economic Law: A Critical Reflection of Two Global South Scholars Situated on Either Side of the North-South Divide
• John S. Nyanje, ‘Swahilinisation’ of the East African Court of Justice: Decolonising Through Language

New Issue: World Trade Review

The latest issue of the World Trade Review (Vol. 25, no. 1, February 2026) is out. Contents include:

• Mona Paulsen & Dan Ciuriak, The Case for WTO Collective Action
• Eloise Elizabeth Gluer, The Level Playing Field and Determining Trade Impact under Trade Agreements: Implications from the EU–UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement
• Xiu-qun Ye, Qin Guo, Changjin Liu, Miraj Ahmed Bhuiyan, & Da Wang, Can Pilot Free Trade Zones Improve Local Governance Quality? Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment in China
• Tianqi Gu, Friend-Shoring Critical Minerals: Investment Law at the Intersection of Geo–economics and Treaty Restraint
• Silvana Tarlea & Florian Weiler, What Drives International Cooperation? Evidence from WTO Negotiations
• Martina F. Ferracane, Simón González Ugarte, & Tomás Rogaler, Global Trends in Digital Trade Policies and Practices: Evidence from the Digital Trade Integration Database

Call for Submissions: Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law

The Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law has issued a call for submissions for its Volume 29 for contributions related to the "Law and Practice of the United Nations" and "Legal Issues Related to the Goals of the United Nations." The call is here.

Rachovitsa: AI and Human Rights

Mando Rachovitsa (Univ. of Nottingham - Law) has published AI and Human Rights (in Artificial Intelligence: Law and Regulation, Charles Kerrigan ed., 2nd ed., Edward Elgar Publishing 2025). Here’s the abstract:

This chapter positions the relevance of human rights law to risks associated with AI, AI systems and algorithmic decision-making. The discussion is informed by EU developments on protecting against the harmful effects of AI systems, under the AI Act and the Digital Services Act, as well as the Council of Europe Framework Convention on AI and Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law. The analysis addresses states’ human rights obligations within the lifecycle of AI systems by focusing on the challenges of algorithmic opacity and states’ responsibility to regulate AI systems via impact assessments. The discussion moves on to highlight how the regulatory framework evolves regarding non-state actors’ human rights duties. Business corporations increasingly find themselves being scrutinised by domestic courts in connection to human rights issues. The obligations, under the EU AI Act, to conduct a fundamental rights’ impact assessment for high-risk AI systems and, under the Digital Services Act, to conduct a risk assessment for systemic risks, which includes actual or foreseeable negative effects for the exercise of human rights, reposition the relevance of human rights in designing and deploying AI. The last part of the chapter engages with the incompatibility of certain AI systems with human rights law. The chapter concludes by reinforcing the value of human rights law to AI while interrogating its capacity to capture all novel algorithmic harms.

Cakal: Law and Torture: Widening the Apertures from the Doctrinal to the Critical

Ergün Cakal (Univ. of Copenhagen) has published Law and Torture: Widening the Apertures from the Doctrinal to the Critical (Cambridge Univ. Press 2025). Here's the abstract:

Contemporary understandings of torture are ruled by a medico-legal duopoly: the language of law (regulating definition and prohibition) and that of medicine (controlling understandings of the body in pain). This duopoly has left little space for contextual conceptualisation – of ideological, emotional and imaginational impulses which function in readily recognising some forms of violence and dismissing others. This book challenges the rigour of this prevailing duopoly. In its place, it develops a new approach to critique the central scripts of 'law and torture' scholarship (around progress, violence, evidence and senses). Drawing on socio-legal and critical-theoretical scholarship, it aims to 'widen the apertures' of the dominant dogmas to their interconnected social, political, temporal and emotional dimensions. These dimensions, the book advances, hold the key to more fully understanding not only the production of torture's definition and prohibition; but also its normative contestation – to better grasp whose pain gets recognised and redressed and why.

New Issue: International Organizations Law Review

The latest issue of the International Organizations Law Review (Vol. 22, no. 2, 2025) is out. Contents include:

• Symposium: EU Responsibility in the International System
• Vassilis Pergantis, The International Responsibility of the EU and its Member States: Anything New under the Sun?
• Lorenzo Gasbarri, Lex Specialis and Eurocentrism
• Vassilis Pergantis, The Road (to Hell) not Taken in the EU Accession to the ECHR: Automatic Attribution Clauses & Tertiary International Responsibility Rules as a Nostrum to the CFSP Roadblock?
• Cristina Contartese, The Contribution of the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee to the Debate on the Apportionment of Obligations between the EU and its Member States
• Vladyslav Lanovoy, Responsibility for Aid or Assistance in the Commission of an Internationally Wrongful Act: A Significant Risk for the European Union and its Member States?
• Kathleen Gutman, Are They Really So Far Apart? Reflections on Causation and Damage in the Internal and External Systems of EU Liability
• Esa Paasivirta, Some Reflections on the EU’s International Responsibility

Alves & Lixinski: Enforcing International Judgments Domestically: The Case of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

Ayla do Vale Alves (Adelaide Univ. - Law) & Lucas Lixinski (UNSW Sydney - Law) have published Enforcing International Judgments Domestically: The Case of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Brill | Nijhoff 2025). Here's the abstract:

This book broaches a hitherto unexplored subject. It is a systematic overview of the domestic implementation or enforcement of Inter-American Court of Human Rights Judgments across all the countries that accept its jurisdiction. This book urges (and allows) us to move beyond the discourse of "influence" of international courts, a discourse that, while helpful in some respects, also has limited usefulness for the victims of human rights violations in judgments. Comprehensive and theoretically sophisticated, this book sheds new light into how human rights law, international courts, and even international law more broadly can in fact be transformative on the ground.

Henrard & Duin: Research Handbook on Accountability for Human Rights Violations

Kristin Henrard (Brussels School of Governance) & Michelle Duin (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Netherlands) have published Research Handbook on Accountability for Human Rights Violations (Edward Elgar Publishing 2025). The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:

Despite the expansion of the human rights paradigm, not only in terms of the variety of rights recognized – both general rights and those for particular groups – but also in terms of available supervisory mechanisms and remedies, multiple challenges can still be identified for the realization of the effective enjoyment of fundamental rights.

This thought-provoking Research Handbook explores accountability for human rights violations in terms of international law from a rich spectrum of angles. A conceptual angle, investigating the broader understanding of ‘accountability’, is followed by explorations of the who (can be held accountable), for (the violation of) what (rights), how (following what supervisory mechanisms) and to what extent (leading to what remedies). These angles translate into the five main parts of the Research Handbook and are complemented by a sixth part with contemporary case studies whereby, in each case study, the focus will be placed on a particular accountability challenge.

Calls for Papers: ESIL Interest Groups Workshops Preceding ESIL Research Forum 2026

In the context of the ESIL Research Forum 2026 in Kraków, ESIL Interest Groups are inviting submissions for online workshops occurring in the days preceding the Forum. Here are the calls that are currently open:

• ESIL Interest Group on International Legal Theory and Philosophy – Call for Online Workshop “Normalizing Sustainability. Theoretical Perspectives on Stability and Change in International Law” (Deadline: 2 February 2026)
• ESIL Interest Group on International Business and Human Rights – Call for Online Workshop “Sustainability, Business & Human Rights: Evolutions from Soft to Hard Law” (Deadline: 9 February 2026)
• ESIL Interest Group on the Law of the Sea – Call for Online Workshop “To be or not to be: The sustainability of international law of the sea and the international law of sustainable seas” (Deadline: 15 February 2026)

AJIL Unbound Symposium: INTERPOL at 100: Improving the Organization’s Legal Framework

AJIL Unbound has posted a symposium on “INTERPOL at 100: Improving the Organization’s Legal Framework.” The symposium includes an introduction by Brian McGarry, and contributions by Benjamin Katzenberg and Ananya Kuthiala, Michael Wood, Machiko Kanetake, Laurence Boisson de Chazournes and Camille Letoublon, Kristina Daugirdas, and August Reinisch.

Call for Rapporteurs: Oxford International Organizations

Oxford University Press has issued a call for rapporteurs for its database Oxford International Organizations. Reporters have the task of providing a short legal commentary (headnote) on documents and materials relevant to the law and practice of international organizations. The call is here.