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.

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.

New Issue: Global Constitutionalism

The latest issue of Global Constitutionalism (Vol. 13, no. 3, November 2024) is out. Contents include:

• Hinako Takata, Separation of powers in a globalized democratic society: Theorizing the human rights treaty organs’ interactions with various state organs
• Angelo Jr Golia, Critique of digital constitutionalism: Deconstruction and reconstruction from a societal perspective
• Virgílio Afonso da Silva, Balancing may be everywhere, but the proportionality test is not
• Tore Vincents Olsen & Juha Tuovinen, Between militant democracy and citizen vigilantism: Using citizens’ assemblies to keep parties democratic
• Lucas Henrique Muniz Da Conceição, A constitutional reflector? Assessing societal and digital constitutionalism in Meta’s Oversight Board
• Nicholas Aroney, George Duke, & Stephen Tierney, A theory of plural constituent power for federal systems
• Alan Greene, Hegemonic constituent power: Fear of the people and lessons for Irish reunification
• Giuliano Espino, Which global constitution? The illiberal globalism of the US Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision
• Janne Mende, Liberal-democratic norms under contestation: Norm relations and their decoupling in the US Supreme Court’s decisions on abortion