Raustiala: Normative Contestation in the International Order: Is China Remaking Global Governance?

Kal Raustiala (Univ. of California, Los Angeles - Law) has posted Normative Contestation in the International Order: Is China Remaking Global Governance? (International Law Studies, Vol. 106, p. 301, 2025). Here's the abstract:

This essay explores China’s approach to global order. China’s remarkable rise has coincided with increasing engagement with the institutions of global governance. These institutions—in particular the United Nations—make up the core of what U.S. leaders have often referred to as the liberal world order or the rules-based order. Many U.S. officials see China as a deep threat intent on challenging, and perhaps even seeking to replace, this rules-based order. This essay, however, makes the case that China’s near-term goals for global governance appear more modest. Much of China’s behavior within institutions such as the UN suggests that what it seeks today is less a recasting of the existing order than a rebalancing and reinforcing of certain longstanding principles and features. China’s primary focus over the last decade has been to revitalize and reinforce long-standing principles of international law such as sovereignty, territorial integrity, and multilateralism while attacking the American concept of a rules-based order. Traditional concepts of sovereignty and international law provide an attractive frame to China. However, there are aspects of the international order China resists or even tries to undermine, such as the law of the sea and international human rights law. This essay explores how China’s approach to global governance has developed over the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first and examines what conclusions about the near future we may draw from this evolution.

New Issue: International & Comparative Law Quarterly

The latest issue of the International & Comparative Law Quarterly (Vol. 74, no. 1, January 2025) is out. Contents include:

• Articles
• Reece Lewis, The ‘Constitution for the Oceans’? The Law of the Sea Convention as a Living Treaty
• Sofia Galani, Human Rights Obligations in Maritime Search and Rescue
• Alberto Rinaldi & Sue Anne Teo, The Use of Artificial Intelligence Technologies in Border and Migration Control and the Subtle Erosion of Human Rights
• Matthew Parish, The Principle of Separation and the Law of Neutrality
• Federico Fabbrini, The Impact of the War in Ukraine on the Enlargement of the European Union: ‘Securing the Blessings of Liberty’ and its Challenges
• Frederick Cowell, Council of Europe Expulsion and the European Convention on Human Rights: The Foundations of Involuntary Treaty Withdrawal
• Philipp Janig, State Immunity from Non-Judicial Measures of Constraint
• Shorter Articles
• Olga Hrynkiv, Export Controls and the Green Agenda in the European Union
• Mark Konstantinidis, Intra-EU Investment Contract Arbitration after Achmea

Conference: 20th Annual Conference of the European Society of International Law

On September 11-13, 2025, the European Society of International Law will hold its 20th Annual Conference in Berlin. The theme is: "Reconstructing International Law." The program is here. Registration is here.

Peters: International Law and its Scholarship in the Time of Monsters

Anne Peters (Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law) has posted International Law and its Scholarship in the Time of Monsters. Here's the abstract:

In only three years, the international legal order suffered three shocks: Ukraine, Gaza, and Trump. These function as a looking glass that focalises pre-exiting more or less latently smouldering key challenges: north─south inequality; global warming and the mass extinction of species; and the dark side of digitalisation.

In combination, the abuse of the language of international law by Putin, the stretching of the rules of armed conflict by Israel, and the side-lining of international law by Trump risk to stall even the modest function of international as a language of international relations.A snapshot of the ongoing shift of the international legal order shows that it is not being reduced to an international law of co-existence, is not reverting to Westphalia (Eastphalia), is not becoming a concert of three (or two and a half) great powers, and is not mainly a decline of the West. Rather, the international legal order is reverting to a private law writ large; with geopolitics bending international legal principles, and with more authoritarian features. The biggest risk is closing down international law which means a loss even of its ideological function as an occasional hamstring of imperial power.

In this period of transition scholars should insist on bringing the legal perspective to bear on ongoing conflicts. They should not leave the legal turf to others, respond to the high-jacking of critical approaches by criminal leaders, combine an external with an internal critique of international law which also means renewing the international legal benchmarks. They should build bridges to practice and across the diverse methodological camps. Finally, scholars are well advised to espouse multiperspectivism in order to contribute to a grass-root universality of international law.

This will require not only rationalist reasoning but an engagement with emotions. The real “monsters” unleashed in this period of transition are the negative emotions of billions of individuals fomented and instrumentalised by socio-pathic leaders. The monsters are out of the bottle, but they can be tamed once they are better understood.

Couzens: The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and Domestic Courts

Meda Couzens (Western Sydney Univ. - Law) has published The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and Domestic Courts (Cambridge Univ. Press 2025). Here's the abstract:

This important contribution to children's rights scholarship brings fresh eyes to the complicated relationship between domestic law and international law in the practice of domestic courts. Through a critical assessment of the judicial application of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in four jurisdictions (Australia, France, South Africa and the United Kingdom), the book demonstrates that the traditional rules of reception remain an essential starting point in understanding how national courts apply the Convention but are unable to explain all forms of judicial engagement therewith. The book shows that regardless of the legal system (monist, dualist, hybrid), courts can apply the Convention meaningfully especially when the domestic structure of reception converges with it. The comparative international law perspective used in the book and the heterogenous sample of jurisdictions analysed enabled the author to distil insights valid for other jurisdictions.

Casey-Maslen: The Prohibition of Torture and Ill-Treatment under International Law

Stuart Casey-Maslen (Univ. of Johannesburg - Law) has published The Prohibition of Torture and Ill-Treatment under International Law (Cambridge Univ. Press 2025). Here's the abstract:

The first comprehensive analysis of domestic and international law defining and prohibiting torture and other forms of ill-treatment, this groundbreaking work reviews the law on torture in countries around the world. It considers how international law governs the use of force by police against suspects held in custody and during protests, and the practice and outlawing of torture both in peacetime and during armed conflict. The analysis also includes the application of universal jurisdiction, which is used in the attempt to prosecute and punish torture committed anywhere in the world. The application and execution of the death penalty are also discussed in detail.

Suedi: The Individual in the Law and Practice of the International Court of Justice

Yusra Suedi (Univ. of Manchester - Law) has published The Individual in the Law and Practice of the International Court of Justice (Cambridge Univ. Press 2025). Here's the abstract:

The cornerstone of the World Court's identity is its resolution of inter-state disputes. This insightful critique challenges the implication that individuals have little importance in such disputes as a result. Arguing for individuals' enhanced integration, it reveals their relevance in a myriad of disputes beyond those centred on violations of multilateral human rights treaties and unveils a multitude of procedural practices with unquenched potential. It also carefully unpacks and interrogates the Court's legal reasoning in various contexts such as territorial and maritime disputes, amongst others. Finally, it critically analyses and evaluates the legal and political underpinnings for the Court's approaches and state litigants' choices from a lens of social idealism. This pioneering study sheds light on the imbalance between individuals as key stakeholders in inter-state disputes and their treatment in law and practice.