New Issue: Stanford Journal of International Law

The latest issue of the Stanford Journal of International Law (Vol. 45, no. 2, Summer 2009) is out. Contents include:

• Christopher C. Joyner & Alexander Ian Parkhouse, Nuclear Terrorism in a Globalizing World: Assessing the Threat and the Emerging Management Regime
• James Kraska & Brian Wilson, The Pirates of the Gulf of Aden: The Coalition Is the Strategy
• Debra M. Strauss, The Application of TRIPS to GMOs: International Intellectual Property Rights and Biotechnology

Reisman & Eichensehr: Stopping Wars and Making Peace: Studies in International Intervention

W. Michael Reisman (Yale Univ. - Law) & Kristen Eichensehr have published Stopping Wars and Making Peace: Studies in International Intervention (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 2009). Here's the abstract:

During most of human history, war was a basic instrument of statecraft, considered, for the most part, a lawful, honorable, ennobling, and even romantic pursuit. By contrast, peacemaking remained a marginal and indeed incongruous interstate activity. A war would end when the belligerents ended it. The experience of the twentieth century’s two world wars has changed, at least, the official view. The introduction of ever more destructive weapons, the drastic escalation of civilian deaths, and the economic and environmental devastation that modern war brought combined to forge an international legal impulse to stop, if not prevent, wars, resolve ongoing conflicts, and build peace. Yet stopping a war, though a useful, if not indispensable, step toward making peace, does not lead ineluctably to peace. Nor does the international community’s interposition of “peacekeepers”; their title notwithstanding, peacekeepers only try to keep a stopped war stopped. Making peace is a separate operation, often applying some parts of the same armamentarium but in very different ways. International efforts at stopping wars and making peace, in the era in which such initiatives have become lawful and virtuous, have proved remarkably unsuccessful. Yet the proliferation of ever more destructive weapons, the growing sense of insecurity and expectation of violence, the increasing difficulty of containing wars within a single arena, the threat of breakdown of order, with the prospect of epidemics and mass migration, all work to intensify the demand to stop wars and to make peace. This volume explores these issues by analyzing the theoretical literature on stopping wars and making peace and its application to a number of concrete cases, including the Falklands, Nagorno Karabakh, Rwanda, Malaya, Thailand, and Mozambique. Each case examines one conflict and the efforts undertaken to stop it and transform it into a peace system. The case studies draw general lessons from the incidents studied, extracting guidelines and principles that might serve those called upon to stop wars and make peace and offering a number of instructive points.

Contents include:

• Christina Parajon, War-Stopping Techniques in the Falklands
• Nicholas W. Miller, Nagorno Karabakh: A War without Peace
• Tom Dannenbaum, War and Peace in Rwanda
• Colby E. Barrett, War-Stopping and Peacemaking during the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960)
• Jonathan Ross-Harrington, Separatist Insurgency in Southern Thailand: An Approach to Peacemaking
• Caroline A. Gross, War-Stopping and Peacemaking in Mozambique

Conference: Sustainable Development, Corporate Governance, and International Law

The American Branch of the International Law Association will host its International Law Weekend - Midwest, February 12-13, 2010, at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. The conference theme is "Sustainable Development, Corporate Governance, and International Law." The draft agenda is here.

Martínez Gutiérrez: Serving the Rule of International Maritime Law

Norman A. Martínez Gutiérrez (IMO International Maritime Law Institute) has published Serving the Rule of International Maritime Law: Essays in Honour of Professor David Joseph Attard (Routledge 2010). The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:

International maritime law is far from inert, everyday international affairs constantly test existing law and, in many occasions, require its development. Serving the Rule of International Maritime Law is thus not limited to a description of the current state of the law, but contains innovative studies on current issues and events that are testing the present state of international maritime law.

The book is intended as a Liber Amicorum to Professor David Joseph Attard. It celebrates his career in international law; he played a crucial role in establishing the IMO International Maritime Law Institute in 1988, the main purpose of which is to train lawyers in private and public international maritime law. Over the last twenty years he has continued to teach at the Institute and has played an important role in contributing to the work of international fora concerned with the development of international law.

Call for Submissions: Women and International Criminal Law

The International Criminal Law Review has issued a call for submissions for a special issue on "Women and International Criminal Law." Here's the call, courtesy of IntLawGrrls:

The International Criminal Law Review invites submissions for its 2010 special issue entitled "Women and International Criminal Law," to be guest-edited by IntLawGrrls Diane Marie Amann, University of California, Davis, School of Law; Jaya Ramji-Nogales, Temple University Beasley School of Law; and Beth Van Schaack, University of Santa Clara School of Law (bios below). This is the second event on international criminal law co-sponsored by IntLawGrrls, the first being the IHL Dialogue at Chautauqua last fall.

The Special Issue is dedicated to Judge Patricia M. Wald, a pathbreaker in international criminal law who has served as Chief Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, a Judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, a member of the Iraq Intelligence Commission, Co-Chair of the American Society of International Law Task Force on the International Criminal Court, and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Open Society Justice Initiative. (Bios of Judge Wald, an IntLawGrrls guest/alumna, are available here and here. All IntLawGrrls posts by and about her are here.)

This special issue is devoted to the topic of women and international criminal law. The majority of the articles have been solicited from prominent academics and practitioners in the field of international criminal law and feminist jurisprudence, such as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Prof. Jenny Martinez, Dean Martha Minow, Prof. David Luban, Prof. Naomi Cahn, Prof. Leila Nadya Sadat, and Lucy Reed. The editors have also reserved several slots for submissions in response to this call to papers. Submissions should be inspired by this theme statement:

Special Issue Theme: Women & International Criminal Law

The law, it has been noted, “has not always served women well.” The critique extends readily to international law. Until very recently, women were absent from the processes of international law formation and enforcement, and invisible within substantive law reflective of the male experience. Mirroring the public/private divide running through much of law and society, the law, and those with the power to use it, tended to treat all forms of gender violence as opportunistic, peripheral, or private crimes reflecting personal motives and desires unconnected to issues of international importance. Thanks to the tireless work of committed advocates, jurists, and diplomats, international criminal law now treats many forms of gender violence as prosecutable offences against the physical and mental integrity of the victim. With the promulgation of the Statute of the International Criminal Court and the voluminous jurisprudence of the ad hoc criminal tribunals, the law now sanctions the prosecution of gender crimes as war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture, and the predicate acts of genocide.

Women have stood front and center to push these developments. Other international institutions often are dominated by men. Yet women have served in top posts in all of the modern tribunals, as Presidents (Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, Navanethem Pillay, and Renate Winter), Registrar (Dorothée de Sampayo Garrido-Nijgh), Chief Prosecutors (Louise Arbour and Carla Del Ponte), Deputy Prosecutors (Fatou Bensouda), Gender Advisors (Patricia Viseur Sellers and Catharine MacKinnon), Chefs de Cabinet (Susan Lamb), and in many other judicial, prosecution, defense, and administrative capacities.

The tribunals are approaching gender parity in staffing, although women remain concentrated in the lower professional grades. International criminal law is thus one area of international law in which women have made headway in terms of substantive law and institutional access; still, significant obstacles remain to ensure a robust system of gender justice in the face of continued violations.

The field of international criminal law nears a watershed moment, as ad hoc tribunals wind down and the International Criminal Court becomes fully operational. This opportune time invites reflection on whether international criminal law should be considered a feminist project. Accordingly, this volume offers sustained study of how international criminal law affects women and how women have affected international criminal law.

We welcome submissions on the following topics:

• Can, and has, international criminal law improved the material conditions of women’s lives and promoted the dignity of women?
• Is participation in international criminal justice liberating and transformative, or alienating and regressive?
• What legal reforms, procedural devices, advocacy strategies, and institutional arrangements can be employed to ensure that women experience the former and not the latter?
• Does fixation on criminal penalties constrain imagination and implementation of other ways to respond to the needs, demands, and aspirations of women in situations of armed conflict, mass violence, abuse, and repression?
• How have women – as activists, victims, lawyers, and perpetrators – changed the field?
• How has the gender jurisprudence advanced, or impeded, the development of international criminal law?
• Has international criminal law changed the way we think about violence against women?

This volume looks beyond sex crimes to consider multiple ways that women experience war and repression, as agents of change, peacemakers, as victims, and as perpetrators. The study adopts critical perspectives to challenge conceptual boundaries – between and within public international law, international criminal law, international humanitarian law, and international human rights – that tend to eclipse the intersectionalities of women’s identities and to fragment women’s experiences with violence, based upon whether violence occurs in a time of war or peace, whether it occurs at home or in a detention center, or whether the perpetrator is a state actor or a private person.

Our hope is that the new perspectives presented in this collection will advance our thinking about gender and international law across a number of disciplines. We welcome your participation in this historic effort to examine the impact of international criminal law on women, and vice versa.

Special Issue Logistics

The volume will be published in spring 2011. Judge Wald and other contributors will present their works at a roundtable hosted at the American Society of International Law’s Tillar House in Washington, D.C., on October 29, 2010 – days before the tenth anniversary of the first U.N. Security Council resolution (1325) on Women, Peace and Security.

To ensure anonymity in the selection phase, please submit a solid draft essay or article, in the range of 5,000 to 10,000 words, with all identifying information redacted, to Kathleen A. Doty, by way of an e-mail attachment in Word format (kadoty@ucdavis.edu), by April 15, 2010. Please note the paper’s title (which should match exactly the title of the redacted paper) and your name and contact information in the body of the e-mail.

Once papers have been selected, they will be subject to a full edit and peer review in advance of the October roundtable. The final draft of the paper will be due no later than March 1, 2011, and should adhere to the International Criminal Law Review style sheet, which is available here.

About the Editors

Diane Marie Amann is Professor of Law and Director of the California International Law Center at King Hall, University of California, Davis, School of Law; a founding contributor to the IntLawGrrls blog; and a Vice President of the American Society of International Law. Her scholarship examines the interaction of national and international legal regimes in efforts to combat atrocity and cross-border crime.

Jaya Ramji-Nogales is Assistant Professor of Law at Temple University's Beasley School of Law; a regular contributor to IntLawGrrls blog; and a member of the Board of Legal Advisors to the Documentation Center of Cambodia. Her scholarship examines transitional justice mechanisms, and includes the volume Bringing the Khmer Rouge to Justice: Prosecuting Mass Violence Before the Cambodian Courts (2005), co-edited with Beth Van Schaack.

Beth Van Schaack is Associate Professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law and Visiting Scholar (2009-2010) at the Center on Democracy, Development & The Rule of Law, Stanford University, as well as a regular contributor to IntLawGrrls blog. Prior to joining the law faculty, she was Acting Executive Director and Staff Attorney with The Center for Justice & Accountability, San Francisco, and a law clerk with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Her scholarship is in the area of international criminal law, and she is the co-author with Ron Slye of a leading casebook and hornbook on the topic.

New Issue: Journal of World Intellectual Property

The latest issue of the Journal of World Intellectual Property (Vol. 13, no. 1, January 2010) is out. Contents include:

• Sigrid Sterckx, Is the Non-Patentability of "Essentially Biological Processes" Under Threat?
• Heba Wanis, Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights and Access to Medication: Does Egypt Have Sufficient Safeguards Against Potential Public Health Implications of the Agreement
• Maurice Schellekens, Patenting Nanotechnology in Europe: Making a Good Start? An Analysis of Issues in Law and Regulation

Hoffmann: The Gentle Humanizer of Humanitarian Law – Antonio Cassese and the Creation of the Customary Law of Non-International Armed Conflicts

Tamás Hoffmann (Corvinus Univ.) has posted The Gentle Humanizer of Humanitarian Law – Antonio Cassese and the Creation of the Customary Law of Non-International Armed Conflicts (in Future Perspectives on International Criminal Justice, Carsten Stahn & Larissa van den Herik eds., forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

This chapter focuses on the role of Antonio Cassese in the development of the customary law of non-international armed conflicts. Analyzing the situation before the decision of the Appeals Chamber of the ICTY in Tadić, the author submits that there was no general acceptance of a body of customary norms applicable to internal conflicts but the existence of such rules received widespread recognition after the ruling. The central thesis of this paper is that this judgment was opportunistically used by Cassese as a vehicle to ‘humanize’ humanitarian law, i.e. to extend the regulatory framework of international armed conflict to non-international armed conflicts. Following an examination of the process of successful completion of this project, this chapter concludes with the examination of the potential merits and pitfalls of such an endeavour.

NYU Investment Law Forum - Spring 2010

The New York University School of Law's Institute for International Law and Justice will sponsor the NYU Investment Law Forum this spring. Here's the schedule:

• January 11: Joseph Weiler (New York Univ. - Law), National Treatment and the Public Interest: the Hermeneutics of the Unwritten Exception
• February 8: Robert Howse (New York Univ. - Law), Custom as a Source International Investment Law: Reflections on Glamis Gold and other developments
• March 8: Jose Alvarez (New York Univ. - Law), Revisiting the Necessity Defense in the Argentina Cases
• April 19: Round Table on Investment Contracts and Umbrella Clauses in BITS. Convenor, Donald Donovan (Debevoise & Plimpton)

OJ Book Discussion: When Cooperation Fails: The International Law and Politics of Genetically Modified Foods

Today, Opinio Juris will host a one-day discussion of Mark A. Pollack & Gregory C. Shaffer's When Cooperation Fails: The International Law and Politics of Genetically Modified Foods (Oxford Univ. Press 2009). Rebecca Bratspies and Sungjoon Cho will provide commentary. Check it out!

New Issue: Archiv des Völkerrechts

The latest issue of Archiv des Völkerrechts (Vol. 47, no. 4, December 2009) is out. Contents include:

• Abhandlungen
• Sigrid Boysen, Demokratische Selbstbestimmung? Zum Verhältnis von staatlicher Integrität und Gruppenrechten im Völkerrecht
• Andreas von Arnauld, Die moderne Piraterie und das Völkerrecht
• Andreas Fischer-Lescano & Lena Kreck, Piraterie und Menschenrechte: Rechtsfragen der Bekämpfung der Piraterie im Rahmen der europäischen Operation Atalanta
• Besprechungen
• Jan Neumann, Jurisdiktionskonflikte in Mehrebenensystemen
• Niels Petersen, Das Verhältnis von Völkerrecht und Landesrecht. Eine kritische Betrachtung alter und neuer Lehren unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Europäischen Menschenrechtskonvention
• Liv Jaeckel, Responsibility to Protect. Ein neuer Ansatz im Völkerrecht zur Verhinderung von Völkermord, Kriegsverbrechen und Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit
• Frank Schorkopf, Demokratie als teleologisches Prinzip
• Marcus Schladebach, Anwendbarkeit des humanitären Völkerrechts im Israel-Palästina-Konflikt

New Issue: Indian Journal of International Law

The latest issue of the Indian Journal of International Law (Vol. 48, no. 4, October-December 2008) is out. Contents include:

• Haitham A. Haloush & Bashar H. Malkawi, The Implications of Trade Agreements between the U.S. and Arab Countries with Particular Reference to Jordan: A Critique of the Current Legal Framework
• Sanjay Parikh & Binda Preet Sahni, Nuclear and Radioactive Safety: Is State Secrecy about the Environment and Human Health Reasonable?
• B.C. Nirmal, The Eradication of Poverty in the Era of Globalization: A Human Rights Perspective

Lyck: Peace Operations and International Criminal Justice

Majbritt Lyck has published Peace Operations and International Criminal Justice: Building Peace after Mass Atrocities (Routledge 2010). Here's the abstract:

This new volume provides the first thorough examination of the involvement of peace enforcement soldiers in the detention of indicted war criminals.

The book firstly addresses why peace enforcement missions need to be involved in detaining indicted war criminals. This discussion includes an analysis of how the securing of justice and transitional justice is incorporated into the UN’s approach to peace-building. It also explores IFOR’s, SFOR’s and KFOR’s activities aimed at detaining indicted war criminals, before turning to an analysis of how the detaining of indicted war criminals is incorporated into peace enforcement doctrines, mandates and rules of engagement. The book then outlines the mechanisms that need to be established in order to enable peace enforcers to effectively arrest war criminals in the areas where they are deployed. It concludes with a discussion of the prospects for the involvement of peace enforcement soldiers in the detention of indicted war criminals, and of what lessons future peace enforcement missions can learn from the experience of IFOR, SFOR and KFOR.

O'Neill: Verification in an Age of Insecurity: The Future of Arms Control Compliance

Philip O'Neill (Edwards, Angell, Palmer, and Dodge) has published Verification in an Age of Insecurity: The Future of Arms Control Compliance (Oxford Univ. Press 2010). Here's the abstract:

Verification in an Age of Insecurity takes the reader into some of the most urgent arms control issues facing the world community, including the nuclear activities of rogue states and threats from sophisticated non-state actors. In the book, national security expert Philip D. O'Neill, Jr. identifies and addresses issues from the resuscitated disarmament agenda, from the comprehensive test ban to fissile material and biological weapons. O'Neill examines the need for shifts in verification standards and policy suitable for our volatile era and beyond it. He surveys recent history to show how established verification procedures fail to produce the certainty necessary to meet today's threats. Verification in an Age of Insecurity goes beyond a discussion of rogue states like North Korea to offer suggestions on how best to bring compliance policy up to date with modern threats.

Roberts: Power and Persuasion in Investment Treaty Interpretation: The Dual Role of States

Anthea Roberts (London School of Economics - Law) has posted Power and Persuasion in Investment Treaty Interpretation: The Dual Role of States (American Journal of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

A key problem in the investment treaty field is that the balance of interpretive power between treaty parties and tribunals is askew. States entering into investment treaties establish dual roles for themselves as treaty parties (with an interest in interpretation) and actual or potential respondents in investor-state disputes (with an interest in avoiding liability). By viewing states primarily as respondents rather than also as treaty parties, investment tribunals often overlook or undervalue the relevance of the treaty parties' subsequent agreements and practice. This article seeks to redress this imbalance by proposing an interpretive approach that takes better account of such evidence.

ILR: 2009 Report

A short report on the blog over the past year.

First, statistics. During 2009, the blog had 1318 posts, 174,989 visitors, and 247,649 page loads. That works out to 3.6 posts, 479 visitors, and 678 page loads per day. These were good gains over the previous year, but those numbers don't fully describe the overall trajectory. At the height of the fall semester, readership averaged approximately 800 visitors and over 1000 page loads per weekday, new highs. An informal survey indicates that ILR is one of the most popular international law blogs, perhaps second only to Opinio Juris (at least based on the numbers).

Second, content. Regular readers will have noted that I am no longer posting on cases and similar developments. Plenty of other blogs cover these matters, and these posts, though useful and fun to write, were always somewhat peripheral to the core mission of the blog - scholarship. I am thankful to the many readers who send me information on publications and scholarly events. Please continue doing so.

As we move into the new year, I welcome, as always, your suggestions for the blog's improvement.

New Issue: New York University Journal of International Law and Politics

The latest issue of the New York University Journal of International Law and Politics (Vol. 41, no. 4, Summer 2009) is out. Contents include:

• Symposium: The Normalizing of Adjudication in Complex International Governance Regimes: Patterns, Possibilities, and Problems
• Cesare P.R. Romano, Deciphering the Grammar of the International Jurisprudential Dialogue
• Andrea K. Schneider, Bargaining in the Shadow of (International) Law: What the Normalization of Adjudication in International Governance Regimes Means for Dispute Resolution
• Anne-Charlotte Martineau, The Politics of Normalization
• Stephen Vasciannie, The Decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the Lambert Watson Case from Jamaica on the Mandatory Death Penalty and the Question of Fragmentation
• Laurence R. Helfer & Karen J. Alter, The Andean Tribunal of Justice and Its Interlocutors: Understanding Preliminary Reference Patterns in the Andean Community
• Eyal Benvenisti & George W. Downs, Court Cooperation, Executive Accountability, and Global Governance
• Ruti Teitel & Robert Howse, Cross-Judging: Tribunalization in a Fragmented But Interconnected Global Order
• José E. Alvarez, Three Responses to "Proliferating" Tribunals

Symposium: International Criminal Court

The current two issues of the New Criminal Law Review (Vol. 12, nos. 3 & 4, Summer & Fall 2009) contain a symposium on the International Criminal Court. Contents include:

• Kevin Jon Heller, Introduction
• Neil Boister, Treaty Crimes, International Criminal Court?
• Roger S. Clark, Building on Article 8(2)(b)(xx) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court: Weapons and Methods of Warfare
• Robert Cryer, Royalism and the King: Article 21 of the Rome Statute and the Politics of Sources
• Jens David Ohlin, Joint Criminal Confusion
• Elies van Sliedregt, Article 28 of the ICC Statute: Mode of Liability and/or Separate Offense?
• Mohamed Elewa Badar, Dolus Eventualis and the Rome Statute Without It?
• Olympia Bekou, A Case for Review of Article 88, ICC Statute: Strengthening a Forgotten Provision
• Ilias Bantekas, The Need to Amend Article 12 of the ICC Statute: Remedying the Effects of Multilateral Treaties upon Third Parties
• Cedric Ryngaert, The International Criminal Court and Universal Jurisdiction: A Fraught Relationship
• Héctor Olásolo, Systematic and Casuistic Approaches to the Role of Victims in Criminal Proceedings Before the International Criminal Court
• Michael Bohlander, Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility? A Pragmatic Proposal for the Recruitment of Judges at the ICC and Other International Criminal Courts
• Kai Ambos, Confidential Investigations (Article 54(3)(E) ICC Statute) vs. Disclosure Obligations: The Lubanga Case and National Law
• Alexander Zahar, International Court and Private Citizen
• Göran Sluiter, “I Beg You, Please Come Testify”—The Problematic Absence of Subpoena Powers at the ICC

UPDATE (8:48AM): I just noticed that shortly before I posted the above last night Kevin Jon Heller posted on Opinio Juris an explanation of the genesis of this symposium, which he edited.

New Issue: Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The latest issue of the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law (Vol. 42, no. 5, November 2009) is out. Contents include:

• N. Jansen Calamita, Sanctions, Countermeasures, and the Iranian Nuclear Issue
• Kristen E. Eichenseher, Treason in the Age of Terrorism: An Explanation and Evaluation of Treason's Return in Democratic States
• Simon Chesterman, UNaccountable? The United Nations, Emergency Powers, and the Rule of Law
• Rafael Domingo, The Crisis of International Law

Curci: The Protection of Biodiversity and Traditional Knowledge in International Law of Intellectual Property

Jonathan Curci has published The Protection of Biodiversity and Traditional Knowledge in International Law of Intellectual Property (Cambridge Univ. Press 2010). Here's the abstract:

The relationships between international intellectual property treaties, the United Nations international environmental treaties (first and foremost the Convention on Biological Diversity), the relevant customary norms and soft law form a complex network of obligations that sometimes conflict with each other. The first set of treaties creates private rights while the latter affirms the sovereignty rights of States over genetic resources and related knowledge and creates international regimes of exploitation of the same. Jonathan Curci proposes solutions to the conflicts between treaties through the concept of ‘mutual supportiveness’, including the construction of a national-access and benefit-sharing regime, mandatory contractual provisions in relevant international contracts, a defensive protection when genetic resource-related traditional knowledge is unjustly patented through the analysis of the concepts of ‘ordre public and morality’, ‘certificate of origin’ in the patent application and ‘novelty-destroying prior art’ and positive protection through existing and sui generis intellectual property rights and misappropriation regimes.

Lavranos: On Misguided Judicial Deference by the ECJ and ECRTHR

Nikos Lavranos (The Hague Univ. - Law) has posted On Misguided Judicial Deference by the ECJ and ECRTHR (in Dispute Resolution, C. Baudenbacher ed., German Law Publishers, 2009). Here's the abstract:

This contribution analyzes several cases in which both the ECJ and ECrtHR showed a misguided deference by not actually deciding the case but rather rendering unconvincing judgments. It is argued that in highly sensitive case, courts should instead refuse to be abused by parties for resolving disputes that should rather be solved by political decisions.

Delassus: Du droit applicable à bord de la Station Spatiale Internationale

Sylvain Delassus has published Du droit applicable à bord de la Station Spatiale Internationale (Persée 2009). Here's the abstract:

Le droit de la Station Spatiale Internationale est inscrit dans " l'Accord entre le Gouvernement du Canada, les membres de l'Agence Spatiale Européenne, le Gouvernement du Japon, le Gouvernement de la Fédération de Russie et le Gouvernement des Etats-Unis d'Amérique sur la coopération relative à la Station Spatiale Internationale Civile ". Daté de 1988, cet Accord ne sera finalisé qu'en 1998 et concrétisé en 2004. Ce droit - d'essences intergouvernementale et conventionnelle - se place dans la lignée du droit onusien d'inspiration juridique maritime, ou sous l'édiction de droits nationaux variés.

Milanović: The Human Rights Committee’s Views in Sayadi v. Belgium: A Missed Opportunity

Marko Milanović (Belgrade Centre for Human Rights) has posted The Human Rights Committee’s Views in Sayadi v. Belgium: A Missed Opportunity (Goettingen Journal of International Law, Vol. 1, No. 3, p. 519, 2009). Here's the abstract:

The article provides a critical review of the Human Rights Committee's views in Sayadi v. Belgium, a case dealing with United Nations Security Council (UNSC) terrorist blacklists. The case raised many complex issues of international law, most notably the question whether UNSC resolutions can prevail over human rights treaties by virtue of Art. 103 of the UN Charter. This issue – one of truly fundamental importance – has cropped up in several important recent cases which either addressed it or avoided it, including Kadi before the courts of the European Union, Al-Jedda before the UK House of Lords, and Behrami before the European Court of Human Rights. Regrettably, the Committee's decision did not do justice to the complexity and the gravity of the matters raised before it, as it failed to tackle the norm conflict issue head on and ignored the Charter's supremacy clause altogether. Such an approach advances neither the cause of human rights, nor the coherence of international law as a legal system.

Martha: Tax Treatment of International Civil Servants

Rutsel Silvestre J. Martha (General Counsel, International Fund for Agricultural Development) has published Tax Treatment of International Civil Servants (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 2010). Here's the abstract:

What sets the tax treatment of the international civil servants apart are the legal considerations derived from public international law. Often the matter is approached from the perspective of privileges and immunities. However, when regarded as a concern with the equal pay for equal work it boils down to employment conditions that need to be satisfied by international organisations due to the peculiar legal setting in which international civil servants discharge their duties. By adding a perspective from the jurisprudence of international (administrative) tribunals to the current scholarship, the present study – the first of its kind - purports to contribute to a better understanding of the matter of taxation of the salary, emoluments and pensions of employees of international organizations.

New Issue: International Journal of Human Rights

The latest issue of the International Journal of Human Rights (Vol. 13, no. 5, 2009) is out. Contents include:

• S. Eban Ebai, The right to self-determination and the anglophone Cameroon situation
• Omer Yousif Elagab, Indicting the Sudanese President by the ICC: Resolution 1593 revisited
• Sonja Grover, Child rape as a crime against humanity: challenging the United States Supreme Court reasoning in Kennedy v. Louisiana
• Ron House, The death penalty and the Principle of Goodness
• Mike A. Yanou, The local courts, decentralisation and good governance: the case of the English speaking provinces of Cameroon
• Emilie Secker, Expanding the concept of participatory rights
• Biswajit Ghosh, Trafficking in women and children in India: nature, dimensions and strategies for prevention

Stewart & Sanchez Badin: The World Trade Organization and Global Administrative Law

Richard B. Stewart (New York Univ. - Law) & Michelle Ratton Sanchez Badin (FGV - São Paulo Law School) have posted The World Trade Organization and Global Administrative Law (in Constitutionalism, Multilevel Trade Governance and Social Regulation, Christian Joerges & Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann eds.). Here's the abstract:

In response to demands for greater accountability and responsiveness in global regulatory governance, global administrative law (GAL) decision-making mechanisms of transparency, participation, reason giving, and review have emerged in many global regimes, the WTO system. This paper shows how three aspects of the WTO regime can fruitfully be understood and evaluated in terms of administration and administrative law. With respect to the WTO’s internal governance, the paper argues that simultaneously strengthening the WTO administrative bodies and subjecting them to GAL procedural disciplines would establish better internal institutional balance and enhance the organization’s effectiveness and legitimacy. With respect to the vertical relation between the WTO and its members, it shows how the WTO has secured far reaching adoption of GAL disciplines by domestic regulatory administrations, to the benefit of foreign but also of domestic interests. With respect to the horizontal dimension of the WTO’s relation with other global standard-setting bodies, it argues that the WTO should make compliance with GAL procedures a condition for according WTO recognition to such bodies’ regulatory standards. The paper concludes that, overall, the application of GAL mechanisms to these different facets of trade regulatory decision making will promote accountability and responsiveness to a broader range of interests and a more cosmopolitan normative perspective. It further concludes, from the perspective of legal theory, that GAL is a more suitable and productive conceptual framework for addressing the legal dimensions of global regulatory governance than constitutionalism and other alternatives.