Call for Papers: Legal Aspects of Interactions between International Organizations and the Private Sector

The PRIVIGO project (“International Organizations between Mission and Market”), sponsored by the European Research Council and located at the Erik Castrén Institute, has issued a call for papers for a workshop on "Legal Aspects of Interactions between International Organizations and the Private Sector," to take place May 23, 2025, in Helsinki. The call is here.

New Issue: Journal of Global Health Law

The latest issue of the Journal of Global Health Law (Vol. 1, no. 2, 2024) is out. Contents include:

• Articles
• John Coggon, Defining global health law
• Lisa Forman, The evolving international law standards governing restrictions of economic, social, and cultural rights during public health emergencies
• Luciano Bottini Filho, Interpreting the international right to health in global health priority-setting (or what lies beyond a fair procedure)
• Belinda Reeve & Roger Magnusson, Reducing unhealthy food and beverage advertising to children: a framework for strengthening performance, transparency and enforcement
• Essay
• Jennifer J. Prah, Theoretical and normative foundations for global health law
• Commentary
• Pedro A. Villarreal, The World Health Organization and the International Health Regulations of 2005: from emergency management to public health risk governance

Orrego Vicuña: International Law in Search of Rebalance

Francisco Orrego Vicuña has published International Law in Search of Rebalance (Brill | Nijhoff 2025). Here's the abstract:

Is the nature of international law today essentially different from the past five centuries, or does it reflect a gradual transformation within certain basic principles that remain unaltered? This book considers the profound structural changes of international law, in line with the requirements of globalization, and tracks the law’s evolution over the centuries with special regard to the dichotomy between idealism and pragmatism.

International law was the vocation and passion of Francisco Orrego Vicuña, who dedicated his life to the observation, study, teaching and practice of this important legal discipline. He was a privileged witness of the great advances and changes that international law has undergone in the last 50 years, and this book – with an Introduction by Rüdiger Wolfrum and Michael Wood and the assistance of Simon C. Milnes - is the result of years of work and research. It is, posthumously, his magnum opus.

Workshop: Virtual Workshop on the Law and Practice of International Organizations

On February 17, 2025, the International Organizations Interest Groups of the American Society of International Law and the European Society of International Law will hold their biannual virtual workshop of academic works-in-progress addressing the law or practice of international organizations. The plenary, with papers by Kristina Daugirdas/Tom Ginsburg and Charlotte Steinorth and Jacob Katz Cogan as the discussant, is open to the public. Workshop details are here. Please contact dpickard@debevoise.com or igioesil@gmail.com with any questions.

New Issue: Global Responsibility to Protect

The latest issue of Global Responsibility to Protect (Vol. 17, no. 1, 2025) is out. Contents include:

• Kartik Kalra, Conceptualising Responsibility Comprehensively to Facilitate Internal Resolution – twail Perspectives to an icj-Routed r2p
• Hesam Rahmani, Decolonising the Selectivity Debate in Military Humanitarian Intervention
• Jenni Rall, Julia Heinle, & Bernhard Stahl, British Foreign Policy and the Silencing of Mass Atrocity Crimes against the Rohingya, the Uyghurs, and in Yemen

Morris: The Silent Peacemaker: Intellectual Property Rights and the Interwar International Legal Order, 1919–1939

P. Sean Morris (Univ. of Helsinki - Law) has published The Silent Peacemaker: Intellectual Property Rights and the Interwar International Legal Order, 1919–1939 (Brill | Nijhoff 2024). The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:

This collection of essays explores the role intellectual property played in the interwar period and the expansion and protection of intellectual property rights. The geographical scope of the book is global so as to give perspectives from different regions on how intellectual property law developed. The topics covered range from a synopsis of intellectual property in Jewish works confiscated by the Nazis to how intellectual property can be understood as part of the evolution of inventors’ moral rights. This volume’s aim is to develop new narratives on the ideas and structures of intellectual property during the interwar period and on how those ideas and structures were held together by the competing forces of markets, ownership and political ideals of the international legal order at that time.

van Aaken, d'Argent, Mälksoo, & Vasel: The Oxford Handbook of International Law in Europe

Anne van Aaken (Univ. of Hamburg - Law), Pierre d'Argent (Univ. of Louvain - Law), Lauri Mälksoo (Univ. of Tartu - Law), & Johann Justus Vasel (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf - Law) have published The Oxford Handbook of International Law in Europe (Oxford Univ. Press 2024). The editors' introduction is here. Here's the abstract:

This handbook provides a comprehensive account of how international law is understood and practised in Europe, broadly defined for the purposes of the book as Council of Europe countries in the past and in the present. Its parts cover Europe’s values, intellectual traditions, and institutions as well as the approaches of individual European countries. A diverse group of leading scholars and practitioners of international law are led by three overarching questions: the successes and failures of the pacifying effect of international law; the diversity of international legal experiences and traditions within Europe; and the impact of European ideas on international law globally. By examining these questions, the book inevitably also discusses Europe’s changing role in the world and the impact of global influences on the understanding of international law in European countries. The book is a study of regionalism in international law but also a study of the impact of a region which, at least historically, has had an overwhelming influence on the development and interpretations of international law.

New Issue: Nordic Journal of Human Rights

The latest issue of the Nordic Journal of Human Rights (Vol. 42, no. 4, 2024) is out. Contents include:

• R2P and Atrocity Prevention at the United Nations: The Role of Small States
• Ellen Emilie Stensrud & Martin Mennecke, On the 20th anniversary of the responsibility to protect: Can small states save R2P from failure and oblivion?
• Ellen E. Stensrud, Bringing Realism to the Idealism of Small States: Norway and Atrocity Prevention at the UN Security Council
• Martin Mennecke, The UN Human Rights Council, Denmark, and R2P—the Perfect Match?
• Hanna Tuominen, Finland’s role in the promotion of Responsibility to Protect at the United Nations
• Jonas Fritzler, R2P Niche Diplomacy and Norm Development in Times of Politicization: A Look at Denmark, the Netherlands, and Sweden
• Sarka Kolmasova, The Czech Republic: Human Rights Defender, Yet No R2P Champion
• Vasilka Sancin, UN Security Council Membership as a Litmus Test for Slovenia’s Commitment to R2P
• Frank Okyere Osei, Small States as Norm Entrepreneurs: Unveiling Ghana's Agency in Atrocity Prevention
• George Okoth-Obbo, The role of Small States in advancing the Responsibility to Protect: personal reflections of a former United Nations mandate holder

Event: Protection of the Environment under International Law during Occupation

On February 5, 2025, Westminster Law School and the International Law at Westminster Research Group will host a discussion of Waad Abualrob's book Protection of the Environment under International Law during Occupation. Details are here.

Call for Papers: Towards a Global Ecological-Economic Legal Framework

The ESIL Interest Groups on International Environmental Law, on the European and International Rule of Law, and on International Economic Law are jointly organising a conference on “Towards a Global Ecological-Economic Legal Framework,” to take place June 6-7, 2025, at École Normale Supérieure – Paris Sciences et Lettres. The call is here.

New Issue: World Trade Review

The latest issue of the World Trade Review (Vol. 23, no. 5, December 2024) is out. Contents include:

• Special Issue: Package Treaties
• Charlotte Sieber-Gasser & Noémie Laurens, Introduction to the Special Issue on Package Treaties
• Joost Pauwelyn & Charlotte Sieber-Gasser, Addressing Negative Effects of Trade Liberalization: Unilateral and Mutually Agreed Flanking Policies
• Richard Baldwin, Giovanni Donato, & Camille Reverdy, Identifying Spillovers of Trade Agreements through Impact Assessments: A New Database
• Kathleen Claussen, Operationalizing Package Treaties: A US Case Study
• Timothy Meyer, Second-Generation Flanking Policies: Addressing Extraterritorial and Non-Economic Costs of Trade Liberalization
• Gregory Shaffer, Addressing the Negative Externalities of Trade: Flanking Policies and the Role of Package Treaties
• Layna Mosley, B. Peter Rosendorff, A Domestic Political Economy of Package Treaties

Event: Marking the Publication of "The Incoherence of Human Rights in International Law"

On Feburary 27, 2025, the Manchester International Law Centre will host, in-person and online, a celebration of the publication of The Incoherence of Human Rights in International Law: Absence, Emergence and Limitations and its dedication to Surya P. Subedi. Details are here.

Call for Papers: Intellectual Property and Technical Cooperation in Africa: Law, Policy and Path

A call for papers has been issued for a conference on "Intellectual Property and Technical Cooperation in Africa: Law, Policy and Path," to take place August 20—21, 2025, at the University of Turku Faculty of Law. The call is here.

Rosenzweig & Pacholska: The use of facial recognition for targeting under international law

Ido Rosenzweig (Univ. of Haifa - Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions) & Magdalena Pacholska (Univ. of Haifa - Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions) have posted The use of facial recognition for targeting under international law (International Review of the Red Cross, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

In the quest for “identity dominance” over the enemy, armed forces are increasingly leveraging biometrics for a variety of purposes. This paper focuses on the combat employment of one of them – facial recognition, which, unlike other biometrics, does not appear to have been widely utilized for targeting purposes yet. With the purchasing patterns of advanced militaries suggesting that such a development is around the corner, this paper assesses the compliance with international humanitarian law (IHL) of the use of facial recognition technologies for targeting purposes. It peruses the applicable legal framework to demonstrate that IHL is neutral towards the use of new technologies and that the right to privacy under international human rights law does not preclude the use of biometrics in hostilities. The analysis zooms in on two specific use cases in which facial recognition is likely to be employed on the battlefield, namely (1) targeted killings against combatants and (2) targeted killings against civilians directly participating in hostilities. The paper closes with an acknowledgment that while facial recognition does have obvious operational benefits, it also has the potential to exacerbate targeting practices that stretch the limits of IHL.

New Volume: African Journal of International Economic Law

The latest volume of the African Journal of International Economic Law (Vol. 4, 2024) is out. Contents include:

• Wojciech Giemza, Moonlighting Revisited: International Court of Justice Judges as Adjudicators in Investment Arbitration
• Stanley U. Nweke-Eze, Promoting African States as Seats of International Arbitration
• Adaeze Agatha Aniodoh & Abubakri Yekini, Prospects and Pitfalls of BITs and the Quest for a Multilateral Framework in Africa
• Morris K. Odeh, Rethinking the Pharmaceutical Knowledge- Economy: Patents, the TRIPS Agreement, and Skewed Utilitarianism in the Evolving Ideological Paradigms
• Annabel Nanjira & Nwamaka Okany, African Practice in International Economic Law 2022-2023

New Issue: Ethics & International Affairs

The latest issue of Ethics & International Affairs (Vol. 38, no. 3, Fall 2024) is out. Contents include:

• Roundtable: Solar Geoengineering: Ethics, Governance, and International Politics
• Danielle N. Young, Who Can Govern from a House on Fire? International Order, State Responsibility, and the Problem of Solar Radiation Modification
• Duncan McLaren, “It's Not the Climate, Stupid”: Exploring Nonideal Scenarios for Solar Geoengineering Development
• Stacy D. VanDeveer, Frank Biermann, Rakhyun E. Kim, Carol Bardi, & Aarti Gupta, Three Pathways to Nonuse Agreement(s) on Solar Geoengineering
• Jeroen Oomen, Producing the Inevitability of Solar Radiation Modification in Climate Politics
• Roundtable: Russia's War against Ukraine: The Limits of Ethical Theorizing
• Hilary Appel & Rachel A. Epstein, Introduction: Russia's War Against Ukraine
• Milada Anna Vachudova & Nadiia Koval, Ukraine's Challenge to Europe: The EU as an Ethical and Powerful Geopolitical Actor
• Oxana Shevel, Some Lessons from the Post-Soviet Era and the Russo-Ukrainian War for the Study of Nationalism
• Charli Carpenter, The Ethics of Human Rights Advocacy in the Ukraine War
• Feature
• Dan Boscov-Ellen, Climate Migration and the Right to Exclude

Colloquium: International Adjudication – Peace Through Law in our Times

On May 9-10, 2025, the Walther Schücking Institute for International Law at Kiel University will host a colloquium to commemorate the 150th birthday of Walther Schücking. The theme is: "International Adjudication – Peace Through Law in our Times." The program is here. Registration is here.

Powers: Arbitrating Empire: United States Expansion and the Transformation of International Law

Allison Powers (Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison - History) has published Arbitrating Empire: United States Expansion and the Transformation of International Law (Oxford Univ. Press 2024). Here's the abstract:

Arbitrating Empire offers a new history of the emergence of the United States as a global power-one shaped as much by attempts to insulate the US government from international legal scrutiny as it was by efforts to project influence across the globe. Drawing on extensive archival research in the United States, Mexico, Panama, and the United Kingdom, the book traces how thousands of dispossessed residents of US-annexed territories petitioned international Claims Commissions between the 1870s and the 1930s to charge the United States with violating international legal protections for life and property.

Through attention to the consequences of their unexpected claims, Allison Powers demonstrates how colonized subjects, refugees from slavery, and migrant workers transformed a series of tribunals designed to establish the legality of US imperial interventions into sites through which to challenge the legitimacy of US colonial governance. One of the first social histories of international law, the book argues that contests over meanings of sovereignty and state responsibility that would reshape the mid-twentieth-century international order were waged not only at diplomatic conferences, but also in Arizona copper mines, Texas cotton fields, Samoan port cities, Cuban sugar plantations, and the locks and stops of the Panama Canal.

Arbitrating Empire uncovers how ordinary people used international law to hold the United States accountable for state-sanctioned violence during the decades when the nation was first becoming a global empire-and demonstrates why State Department attempts to erase their claims transformed international law in ways that continue to shield the US government from liability to this day.

Davis: Prosecutorial Discretion in International Criminal Justice

Cale Davis (The Hague Univ. of Applied Sciences) has published Prosecutorial Discretion in International Criminal Justice (Edward Elgar Publishing 2025). This is the latest volume in the Elgar International Law series. Here's the abstract:

For many years, hidden from view in the secure corridors of The Hague, Arusha, and Freetown, international prosecutors have worked to bring those accused of international crimes to justice. Drawing on first-hand interviews with prosecutors, this book reveals what motivated their decisions – from opening investigations and selecting charges, right through to deciding whether to appeal.

The book explores the motivations and assumptions that underpin prosecutorial decision-making using in-depth analysis of interviews with current and former senior prosecutors from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL), and the International Criminal Court (ICC). The author examines the diverse factors that have informed discretion by treating it as a practice. Cale Davis advances our understanding of discretion and exposes the importance of different roles in decision-making.

New Issue: International Journal of Human Rights

The latest issue of the International Journal of Human Rights (Vol. 29, no. 1, 2025) is out. Contents include:

• Kaius Tuori & Iida Karjalainen, The European far right and human rights language
• Lu Binyang, A review of the legitimacy of FIFA’s participation in Qatar’s human rights governance
• Roos van der Haer & Kathleen J. Brown, The effect of war exposure on children; an exploration of conflict and post-conflict gendered experiences
• Albert Doja, How to think about the instrumental politics of mass rape: a critical appraisal of feminist approaches
• Dalitso Ruwe, Can Black males be subjects of human rights violations?
• Omri Grinberg & Sarai B. Aharoni, The human rights archival gap: ethno-archiving the silencing of radical activism and Israel’s violence against Palestinian women
• Wanqiang Li, Wei He & Caiting Yang, Home country regulates outbound investment to fulfill human rights obligations-taking China as an example
• Srabonty Das Gupta & Juan Francisco Escudero Espinosa, Displacing the displaced: the response to the protracted precarious situation of Syrian refugees in Türkiye during the Covid-19 pandemic

Call for Papers: New Voices in International Law (Postgraduate Conference)

Trinity College Dublin School of Law has issued a call for papers for a conference on "New Voices in International Law," directed at PhD candidates and early career researchers from universities across the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. The conference will take place May 8, 2025. The call is here.

New Issue: International Journal of Transitional Justice

The latest issue of the International Journal of Transitional Justice (Vol. 18, no. 3, November 2024) is out. Contents include:

• Articles
• Frank Afari, Snapshots of Ghana’s Contested Restorative Justice Programme
• Güneş Daşlı, Victim Agency, Relational Autonomy and Transitional Justice: Experience of Saturday Mothers
• Kathryn Sikkink, Helen Clapp, Daniel Marín-López, & Averell Schmidt, Gender and Transitional Justice: Explaining Global Trends
• Eric Belgorodski, Situating Reparations for Ukraine within a Broader Transitional Justice Process
• Line Jespersgaard Jakobsen, Colombia as the ‘Laboratory’ for Transitional Justice: Consolidation and Innovation of Global Formulas
• Parwez Besmel, The Dilemma of Justice: The International Criminal Court’s Political Maneuver
• Pau Perez-Sales, Mandy Tatiana Arrieta-Betancourt, Gabriela López-Neyra, Andrea Galán-Santamarina, & Esther Fraile-Julián, Torturing Environment in the Documentation of Human Rights Violations in the Case of the Indigenous Rama-Kreol Communities in Nicaragua
• Nuno Garoupa, Purging Disloyal Courts in Democratic Transitions and Judicial Preferences
• Notes from the Field
• Ron Dudai, ‘Co-Conspirators in Murder’: Dirty Wars, Meta-Conflicts and Bipartisan Transitional Justice
• Review Essay
• Gabriela Távara, Beyond Seeing and Listening: Children Born from Conflict-Related Sexual Violence

New Issue: Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Institutions

The latest issue of Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Institutions (Vol. 30, nos. 3-4, July-December 2024) is out. Contents include:

• Special Forum on Summit of the Future
• Maya Ungar, Relevance and Reform: The Crisis of Confidence in the United Nations
• Hylke Dijkstra, The UN Summit of the Future: Leadership, Layering, and the Limits of Liberal International Order
• Richard Ponzio & Nudhara Yusuf, The Summit of the Future: Past, Present, and a Future for All Generations
• Articles
• Nina Reiners & Sara Kahn-Nisser, A Voice or an Echo? Women in the UN Human Rights Expert Bodies
• Agnieszka Szpak, Cities’ International Law-Shaping or Making and the Normative Value of Its Effects
• The Global Forum
• Adekeye Adebajo, Noblesse Oblige: The Enduring Legacy of Boutros Boutros-Ghali
• ACUNS Lecture in Honour of Kofi Annan
• Volker Türk, Reclaiming the Right to Peace

New Issue: International Review of the Red Cross

The latest issue of the International Review of the Red Cross (Vol. 106, no. 926, 2024) is out. Contents include:

• Julien Antouly, Vincent Leger, Camille Raillon, & Virginie Troit, The challenges of research in the humanitarian sector: An evolving relationship
• Raj Balkaran & A. Walter Dorn, Exploring Hindu ethics of warfare: The Purāṇas
• Christian Via Balole & Raphaël van Steenberghe, Enhanced labour protection for prisoners of war
• Sultan Barakat, Niche small States in humanitarian diplomacy: Qatar's positionality in the protection ecosystem
• Hugo Cahueñas Muñoz & Juan Felipe Idrovo Romo, Is Ecuador facing a non-international armed conflict against organized crime groups? Reality, inconsistencies and jurisprudential developments
• Darlington Tshuma, African customs and traditions and the indigenization of international humanitarian law in armed conflict
• Ignacio de la Rasilla, “The Spanish Henri Dunant” of the Institut de Droit International, Nicasio Landa (1830–1891)
• Chris Dolan, Lucy Hovil, & Laura Pasquero, Translating survivor-centredness into pedagogical approaches to training on sexual violence in conflict and emergency settings: A case study
• Daniel C. Hinck, Jonas J. Schöttler, Maria Krantz, Niklas Widulle, Katharina-Sophie Isleif, & Oliver Niggemann, A next-generation protective emblem: Cross-frequency protective options for non-combatants in the context of (fully) autonomous warfare
• Jonathan Kwik, Is wearing these sunglasses an attack? Obligations under IHL related to anti-AI countermeasures
• Edward Madziwa, Advancing honour and dignity in death for victims of armed conflicts: Exploring the challenges and opportunities of AI and machine learning in humanitarian forensic action under IHL
• Maria Dolores Morcillo Mendez, Strengthening the medicolegal system: Fulfilling international law obligations during conflicts and disasters to prevent and resolve issues of humanitarian concern
• Bailey Ulbricht & Joelle Rizk, How harmful information on social media impacts people affected by armed conflict: A typology of harms
• Ido Rosenzweig, “When you have to shoot, shoot!” Rethinking the right to life of combatants during armed conflicts
• Mina Radončić & Ashley Stanley-Ryan, Pro patria mori: When States encourage civilian involvement in armed conflict
• Sylvain Vité & Isabelle Gallino, Decentralized armed groups: Can they be classified as parties to non-international armed conflicts?
• Charlotte Mohr, Civility, Barbarism, and the Evolution of International Humanitarian Law: Who Do the Laws of War Protect? Edited by Matt Killingsworth and Tim McCormack
• George Dvaladze, Equality and Non-Discrimination in Armed Conflict: Humanitarian and Human Rights Law in Practice

Call for Papers: International Courts and Tribunals Interactions and Challenges (Early Career Workshop)

The European Society of International Law and Leuphana University have issued a call for papers for an early career workshop on "International Courts and Tribunals: Interactions and Challenges," to be held June 19-20, 2025, in Lüneburg. The call is here. The deadline is January 30, 2025.