Lecture: Kulamadayil on '"The Coloniality of Measuring Famine"

On Feburary 27, 2025, the Non/Human Law Research Group at Newcastle University will host a lecture, in-person and on Zoom, by Lys Kulamadayil (Geneva Graduate Institute) on "The Coloniality of Measuring Famine." Details are here.

Conference: 119th ASIL Annual Meeting

On April 16-18, 2025, the American Society of International Law will hold its 119th Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. The theme is: "Traditions and Transitions in International Law." Registration is now open, with the early bird discount ending on Feburary 3, 2025.

Derrig: The New Haven School: American International Law

Ríán Derrig (World Maritime Univ. - Sasakawa Global Ocean Institute) has published The New Haven School: American International Law (Oxford Univ. Press 2025). This book is available open access. Here's the abstract:

This book is an intellectual history of the ‘New Haven School’, a school of legal theory and practice associated with Yale Law School in the city of New Haven. New Haven School ‘policy-oriented jurisprudence’—so-called for its emphasis on using law to pursue acknowledged policy aims—was developed from the 1940s by Harold Lasswell, a central figure of twentieth-century American political science, and Myres McDougal, a prominent international lawyer. The book argues that the New Haven School style of argument was representative of mid-century American international law. Through the biographies and scholarship of Lasswell, McDougal, and New Haven School members, and using previously unexploited archival materials, the book explores how this body of legal theory was shaped and how it influenced the legal arguments made by McDougal and other members of the school in support of Cold War anti-communist policy positions and legal practice of the United States. The book shows that the New Haven School represented a specific anti-formalism and a collection of methods that characterized how American scholars and lawyers practised international law in the middle of the twentieth century, and still do today.

Call for Submissions: Lawfare and the Future of International Crimes

The journal Athena – Critical Inquiries in Law, Philosophy and Globalization has issued a call for submissions for a special issue on "Lawfare and the Future of International Crimes." The call is here.

Seminar: Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Strategically Moving Forward

On January 29, 2025, the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights will host a hybrid seminar and book launch on "Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Strategically Moving Forward." Details are here.

Workshop: In Search of Second World Approaches to International Law

On February 21-22, 2025, a workshop on "In Search of Second World Approaches to International Law" will be held at the Central European University, in Vienna. The program is here. Registration is here.

New Issue: Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht

The latest issue of the Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht (Vol. 84, no. 3, 2024) is out. Contents include:

• Nachruf
• Christian Calliess, In Erinnerung an Prof. Dr. Torsten Stein (1944-2024)
• Comment
• Roman Petrov, Christian Orthodoxy between Geopolitics and International Law. How the War in Ukraine Divided the Orthodox Church
• Vorträge
• Emily Crawford, Narratives and Counter-Narratives of International Law in the Gift Shops of the Peace Palace and United Nations
• Abhandlungen
• Gerd Winter, Climate Protection before the European Court of Human Rights: The KlimaSeniorinnen and Duarte Agostinho Cases in Perspective
• Lea Köhne, Well-Meant Is not Well-Done: The UN Treaty Bodies’ Approach to the Extraterritoriality of Human Rights
• Maria Xiouri, State Responses to the Introduction of the National Security Law in Hong Kong: A Case of Countermeasures against Serious Breaches of Erga Omnes (Partes) Obligations?
• Nathanael van der Beek, Parliamentary Visits to Places of Armed Conflict and Disputed Territories
• Carolyn Moser & Steven Blockmans, The Untapped Role of the European Parliament in Common Security and Defence Policy
• Lukas Hemmje, Ein Aggressionstribunal für Präsident Putin: (K)eine Europäische Lösung?

Romani: Belligerent Reprisals from Enforcement to Reciprocity: A New Theory of Retaliation in Conflict

Francesco Romani (Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights) has published Belligerent Reprisals from Enforcement to Reciprocity: A New Theory of Retaliation in Conflict (Cambridge Univ. Press 2024). Here's the abstract:

This book challenges the traditional understanding of belligerent reprisals as a mechanism aimed at enforcing the laws of armed conflict. By re-instating reciprocity at the core of belligerent reprisals, it construes them as tools designed to re-calibrate the legal relationship between parties to armed conflict and pursue the belligerents' equality of rights and obligations in both a formal and a substantive sense. It combines an inquiry into the conceptual issues surrounding the notion of belligerent reprisals, with an analysis of State and international practice on their purpose and function. Encompassing international and non-international armed conflicts, it provides a first comprehensive account of the role of reprisals in governing legal interaction during wartime, and offers new grounds to address questions on their applicability, lawfulness, regulation, and desirability.

New Issue: Arbitration International

The latest issue of Arbitration International (Vol. 40, no. 4, December 2024) is out. Contents include:

• Articles
• Luca G Radicati di Brozolo & Flavio Ponzano, How to assess the res judicata effects of international arbitral awards: giving concreteness to an autonomous approach
• Salim Moollan, KC, Robert Price, & Oliver Browne, Which law should govern the ‘arbitrability’ of a dispute in England?
• Nathan Tamblyn, Arbitration and the right to a fair trial
• Nicolò Minella, The conundrum of costs allocation in international investment arbitrations: a proposed practical solution to enhance predictability of costs decisions
• Zhizhou Dai & Zhixing Liu, Drawing the fuzzy line: arbitrability of dissolution-related disputes in China
• Purvi Nema, Arbitrability of cryptocurrency disputes in India
• Kanishka Bhukya, Threading between Scylla and Charybdis: developing a framework for arbitrating investor-state tax disputes
• Ali Al-Khasawneh & Vanessa Liborio Garrido de Sousa, The thorny intersection of personal opinion and arbitrator impartiality: lessons from Crescent Petroleum and other cases
• Stanley U Nweke-Eze, The participation of foreign counsel in Nigeria-seated arbitration proceedings

New Issue: International Organization

The latest issue of International Organization (Vol. 78, no. 4, Fall 2024) is out. Contents include:

• Articles
• Marika Landau-Wells, Building from the Brain: Advancing the Study of Threat Perception in International Relations
• Claudia Junghyun Kim, Status Hierarchies and Stigma Shifting in International Relations
• Frank Wyer, Peace Versus Profit: Rebel Fragmentation and Conflict Resurgence in Colombia
• Matthias Ecker-Ehrhardt, Lisa Dellmuth, & Jonas Tallberg, Ideology and Legitimacy in Global Governance
• Michael F. Joseph & Michael Poznansky, Secret Innovation
• Research Notes
• Omer Solodoch, The Effect of Education on Support for International Trade: Evidence from Compulsory-Education Reforms
• Yonatan Lupu & Geoffrey P.R. Wallace, The Laws of War and Public Support for Foreign Combatants
• Stephen Chaudoin, Sarah Hummel, & Yon Soo Park, Elections, War, and Gender: Self-Selection and the Pursuit of Victory

Nissel: Merchants of Legalism: A History of State Responsibility (1870–1960)

Alan Tzvika Nissel (Pepperdine Univ. - Law) has published Merchants of Legalism: A History of State Responsibility (1870–1960) (Cambridge Univ. Press 2024). Here's the abstract:

Since the United Nations finalised its Draft Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts in 2001, most of the attention has been on the codification history of the topic. Alan Nissel widens the historic lens to include the pre-United Nations origins, offering the first extensive study on the American contribution to the modern law of state responsibility. The book examines the recurring narrative of lawyers using international law to suit the particular needs of their clients in three key contexts: the US turn to international arbitration practice in the New World, the German theorisation of public law in the setting of its national unification, and the multilateral effort to codify international law within world bodies. This expanded historical framework not only traces the pre-institutional origins of the code, but also highlights the duality of State responsibility doctrines and the political environments from which they emerged.

New Issue: Transnational Legal Theory

The latest issue of Transnational Legal Theory (Vol. 15, no. 4, 2024) is out. Contents include:

• Critical legal approaches in EU Law
• Ivana Isailović, Introduction: critical legal approaches in EU law—reflections on new research directions
• Fernanda G. Nicola, Is a distributive analysis enough? A critical take on the case law of the European Court of Justice
• Ivana Isailović, Gender in political economy and EU law
• Floris de Witte, Finding space in EU law
• Janine Silga, ‘Out of the “basement”’: exploring positionality and reflexivity in EU migration law research
• Annette Schrauwen, Essential, invisible, discriminated and exchangeable: labour migrants in the EU
• Iris Goldner Lang, Security-centric approach in the use of digital technologies in EU migration and asylum policies
• Sanja Bogojević, The European Green Deal, the rush for critical raw materials, and colonialism
• Andrew Woodhouse, Commodity-form theory of law, the climate crisis, and the European Union
• Giacomo Tagiuri, The socio-legal and critical potential of EU economic law

New Volume: German Yearbook of International Law

The latest volume of the German Yearbook of International Law (Vol. 66, 2023) is out. Contents include:

• FOCUS – Russia, Imperialism, and International Law
• Angelika Nussberger, The ‘Near Abroad’ (Ближнее Зарубежьe) in Russian Rhetoric and Law
• Eric Loefflad, Blood of Nations, Blood of Empire: Pan-Slavism as a Critique of International Law in Late Imperial Russia and Beyond
• André-Philippe Oulett, Decolonisation and Self-Determination à Géométrie Variable: The Forgotten Vicissitudes of Post-Soviet Peoples
• Michael Riepl, ‘Peacekeeping or Keeping in Pieces’? – The Legacy of Three Decades of Russian-brokered Ceasefire Agreements in the South Caucasus
• Ferdinand Weber, Passportisation: From a Neglectable Phenomenon Under International Law to an Elusive Imperialist Strategy?
• Andrea Maria Pelliconi, Russia’s Use of Demographic Engineering to Affirm Sovereignty Over Adjacent Territories
• Yulia Ioffe, Forcible Transfers of Ukrainian Children: Indoctrination as a Tool of Russia’s Imperialism
• Soheil Ghasemi & Mohammadreza Eghbalizarch, Of Capitulations, Capital, and Collateral: Russian Imperial Banking in Late Qajar Persia (1891–1921)
• General Articles
• Thibault Moulin, Icarus’ Flight: The Paradoxes in the Contribution of International Law to Solar Power
• Sanya Samtani, The Human Right to Research in International Law
• Alexander Wentker & Clauss Kress, Inter-State Assistance in War Under International Law
• German Practice
• Lena Herzog, The Yazidi Genocide Before the German Federal Court of Justice
• Jasper Mührel & Linus Mührel, Germany’s Submission Practice to the International Law Commission on Topics Discussed and/or Concluded in 2022
• Rahel Alia Müller & Michael Frey, Experimentation Clauses as an Element of Cross-Border Friendly-Legislation – The Franco-German Treaty of Aachen as a Model for Future Cross-Border Cooperation in Germany’s Border Areas?
• Jasmin Oppermann, Germany’s Indo-Pacific Odyssey: Navigating Legal Challenges as a Champion of the Rules-Based Order
• Valérie v. Suhr, Federal Constitutional Court Develops the Right to Education with Reference to International Human Rights Law

Novak: Global Lawmaking and Social Change: The Varieties of Customary International Law

Gregor Novak has published Global Lawmaking and Social Change: The Varieties of Customary International Law (Hart Publishing 2024). Here's the abstract:

Customary international law is a widely-recognised modality of international lawmaking. It underpins all norms of international law and shapes all aspects of global society. Yet familiar approaches to customary international law struggle to answer basic questions about its role, operation, and prospects.

Pursuing an interdisciplinary approach, this book offers an alternative perspective on customary international law as a dynamic and multifaceted social phenomenon and idea. It explores customary international lawmaking in different social contexts, including the regulation of armed conflict, the treatment of the 'other', and the management of global environmental risks. Focusing on the 'varieties' of customary international law, it identifies four types of customary international law norms and explores their roles and implications.

Critically revisiting a classic topic of international law, the book provides a tool for understanding and shaping global lawmaking and social change in a rapidly changing international legal order.