The
British Yearbook of International Law has issued a call for submissions for a symposium on "The Iraq Inquiry Report," which will be featured in its 2016 volume. Here's the
call:
CALL
FOR
PAPERS
FOR A
SYMPOSIUM
The Iraq Inquiry Report
The 2016 volume of the British Yearbook of International Law
will feature a symposium examining the systemic issues that
arise from the Iraq Inquiry Report on questions of international
law, government and military decision-making, responsibility
and accountability and the conduct of British foreign
relations. By way of example, potential lines of inquiry could
include (but are not limited to) an examination of
-
the implications of the Report’s findings for
the legality of the 2003 invasion of Iraq;
- the consequences/effect of the absence
of direct consideration of international
law in the Report (what does this tell us
(if anything) about the role of domestic
inquiries and of international law?);
- the differences between the Report and
reports prepared in other states dealing
with some or all of the same issues, possibly
including reflection on the disparate
treatment of public international law;
- the ways in which ‘state intelligence’ is
handled by both those charged with making
a decision on whether to deploy armed forces
and by the authors of the Report itself;
- the relationship between policy and law
evinced by the Inquiry and the Report;
- how decisions were made in the lead up to
the final decision to deploy armed forces in
Iraq – what lessons can be drawn for decisionmaking
processes and foreign policy?
- how international lawyers – scholars, judges,
practitioners and legal advisers – should
approach questions of state decision-making
in light of the Report, and the potential
implications for analysing state practice in
international law;
- whether the inquiry process has achieved
some form of ‘responsibility’: what is the
likely effect of the Report in securing
responsibility and accountability? (Both
concepts to be broadly defined.) What does
the Inquiry process/Report tell us about
how a state deals with the fact that it may
have breached international law? Does the
domestic inquiry process help to secure
accountability, or does it obscure/diffuse it?
- the dynamic between the focus on specific
individuals in the Report (and the public
perception that such individuals should be
held accountable) and the notion of state –
i.e. collective – responsibility?
SUBMISSION
PROCESS
Abstracts of 500–1000 words are to be sent to the
Assistant Editors at BritishYearbookIL@gmail.com by
17:00 GMT on 9 December 2016.
Authors considering a submission are encouraged to
contact the Editors-in-Chief:
Professor Catherine Redgwell
catherine.redgwell@law.ox.ac.uk and
Professor Eyal Benvenisti
eb653@cam.ac.uk
or the Assistant Editors:
BritishYearbookIL@gmail.com
informally to discuss the scope of their submission.
The Editorial Team will conduct an initial review of abstracts and advise authors of their
decisions by the end of January 2017.
Full papers will then be due by 1 June 2017, via the ScholarOne system, with the final decision of publication made after
an editorial review. Full papers should be between 8,000 and 10,000 words (inclusive of
footnotes), in the style preferred by the Yearbook.
Full papers will be released online under the Advance Access scheme once editing is
complete, and the hard copy volume will appear in 2017.
