Modirzadeh: “Violent, Vicious, and Fast”: LSCO Lawyering and the Transformation of American IHL

Naz K. Modirzadeh (Harvard Univ. - Law) has posted “Violent, Vicious, and Fast”: LSCO Lawyering and the Transformation of American IHL (Harvard National Security Journal, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

This article examines a phenomenon unfolding within the United States’ military legal establishment: an effort by a segment of military lawyers to define how the law of armed conflict (LOAC) applies to the wars they anticipate fighting in the future. I refer to this effort as LSCO lawyering: the development, advancement, and institutionalization of a vision of LOAC tailored to large-scale combat operations (LSCOs), understood here as multi-domain warfare against a peer adversary such as China. Through extensive engagement with military writings and conversations with current and former armed-forces legal advisers from the United States and allied or partner forces, I trace how LSCO lawyering reflects a diagnosis of crisis — a perceived mismatch between prevailing legal expectations and the operational realities of high-intensity war — and a response that aims not to dismantle LOAC but to restore it on terms seen as credible under conditions of existential conflict.

At the heart of this project lies a reconfiguration of what I call American IHL: the United States’ distinctive assemblage of interpretations, practices, normative commitments, and exceptions that shape its approach to LOAC. While LSCO lawyering is often framed as a modest clarification of existing law, I suggest that it functions as something more ambitious — a legal and institutional move to strip away what are described as counterterrorism-era overlays and to reassert a baseline vision of LOAC that privileges military necessity, internal discretion, and speed over external constraint or civilian protection. The result is not lawlessness but an attempt to ensure that legal interpretation does not, in the view of its proponents, impose normatively undue or operationally unsustainable limits on commanders preparing to fight — violent, vicious, and fast — in a war that is framed to be potentially existential.

Although this legal reasoning emerges from within the U.S. national-security context, its implications extend beyond American military and LOAC doctrine. The interpretive logic underpinning LSCO lawyering may find resonance with all states that seek to frame their approach to the conduct of hostilities as lawful. In this sense, LSCO lawyering is not necessarily only an American legal development. It is also a project with the potential to reorder certain expectations — including about what law requires, who interprets it, and how it should structure violence in war — far beyond the Pentagon.

Cohen: Outbound Investment Restrictions and International Law's Challenge

Harlan Grant Cohen (Fordham Univ. - Law) has posted Outbound Investment Restrictions and International Law's Challenge (Seattle University Law Review, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

The Outbound Investment Rule, restricting U.S. investment in certain Chinese advanced technology sectors, has largely been portrayed as an incremental measure, a modest extension to fill loopholes in the existing investment screening regime. But while perhaps the logical next step in the securitization of the economy, the Outbound Investment Rule actually reflects a momentous shift in the relationship between governments and business, one playing out in the United States and around the world and worth attention. Unlike traditional investment screening, the Outbound Investment Rule operates like a sanctions regime, designed not to protect the U.S. economy, but to hamper the advancement of another. And in so doing, the Outbound Investment Rule reveals a broader global shift to geoeconomic competition that existing international economic law rules are ill-suited to manage. New rules are needed to minimize and manage the inevitable conflicts.

Marks: Trucanini's Stare: Reconsidering Dignity in Theory and Practice

Susan Marks (London School of Economics and Political Science - Law) has published Trucanini's Stare: Reconsidering Dignity in Theory and Practice (Cambridge Univ. Press 2025). Here's the abstract:

A central concept in international human rights law and many national constitutions is human dignity. Departing from established approaches to dignity in philosophy and legal theory, Susan Marks takes dignity in everyday life ('dignified care', 'dignity in the workplace', etc.) as a starting point for reconsidering the concept's history and significance. The result is a highly original work which gives particular attention to colonial and post-colonial engagements with dignity, and emphasises the character of human dignity as not just an idea or abstract value, but also a lived experience that cannot be understood without reference to social structures and the inequalities and hierarchies they reproduce. If dignity is an attribute which all human beings possess purely by virtue of being human, Marks shows that it is also an element within the systemic operations of privilege and power.

Chesterman: Silicon Sovereigns: Artificial Intelligence, International Law, and the Tech-Industrial Complex

Simon Chesterman (National Univ. of Singapore - Law) has posted Silicon Sovereigns: Artificial Intelligence, International Law, and the Tech-Industrial Complex (American Journal of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Artificial intelligence is reshaping science, society, and power. Yet many debates over its likely impact remain fixated on extremes: utopian visions of universal benefit and dystopian fears of existential doom, or an arms race between the U.S. and China, or the Global North and Global South. What’s missing is a serious conversation about distribution — who gains, who loses, and who decides. The global AI landscape is increasingly defined not just by geopolitical divides, but by the deepening imbalance between public governance and private control. As governments struggle to keep up, power is consolidating in the hands of a few tech firms whose influence now rivals that of states. If the twentieth century saw the rise of international institutions, the twenty-first may be witnessing their eclipse — replaced not by a new world order, but by a digital oligarchy. This essay explores what that shift means for international law, global equity, and the future of democratic oversight in an age of silicon sovereignty.

New Issue: International Journal of Human Rights

The latest issue of the International Journal of Human Rights (Vol. 29, no. 5, 2025) is out. Contents include:

• Mari Huttunen, A tale of two sovereigns: the responsibility to protect and the competing notions of responsible sovereignty
• Katie Morris, Reconceptualising socioeconomic rights: a case for care ethics
• Marina Lostal, One-dimensional law: a critique of the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment
• Felipe Jaramillo Ruiz, Additive entanglement and intersectionality in UN human rights monitoring: examining the inclusion of disability
• Pierre Bosset, Cultural human rights as new foundations for interculturalist policies: a rights-based approach from Québec*
• Elke Evrard & Tine Destrooper, Learning from the past? How the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, civil society initiatives and survivor stories shape young Cambodians’ understanding of non-recurrence
• Steven Malby, Beyond sword and shield: the UN human rights system and criminal law
• Ling Han & Paolo De Stefani, Protecting fundamental values through the global human rights sanction regime: China's challenges to the EU's normative power

New Volume: Canadian Yearbook of International Law

The latest volume of the Canadian Yearbook of International Law (Vol. 61, 2023) is out. Contents include:

• Articles
• Camille Martini, From Fact to Applicable Law: What Role for the International Climate Change Regime in Investor-State Arbitration?
• Rémi Fuhrmann, Légitimités conflictuelles: le droit international humanitaire entre légitimité du statut et légitimité de la cause
• Anna Rahel Fischer & Bernard Duhaime, “The Purloined Letter”: Migrant Disappearances, Systematic Impunity, and States’ Risk Awareness
• Miriam Cohen & Renan Teles, L’appropriation de la transmission des traumatismes par le droit: le préjudice transgénérationnel dans la jurisprudence de la Cour pénale internationale
• Carol Dyck, Arctic Governance in the Face of Climate Change: A Case for “Inclusive Regionalism”
• Obiora Chinedu Okafor, Udoka Owie, Okechukwu Effoduh, & Rahina Zarma, Explaining the Comparatively Less Robust Human Rights Impact of the ECOWAS Court on Legislative and Judicial Decision-making, Process, and Action in Nigeria
• Godwin E.K. Dzah, The Interaction between International and Domestic Law, Aqua Nullius, and Water-mediated Claims in Canada
• Akinwumi Ogunranti, The Relationality of Community Development Agreements towards a Human Rights Due Diligence Good Faith Requirement
• Symposium on the African Financial Architecture and the African Multilateral Financial Institutions in Context
• Olabisi D. Akinkugbe, Preface
• Olabisi D. Akinkugbe, African Financial Architecture: Voice, Representation, Preferred Creditor Status, and the Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions
• Gertrude Amorkor Amarh, A New Dawn in Credit Rating for Africa? A Review of the Africa Credit Rating Agency
• Ohiocheoya (Ohio) Omiunu & Ayodele Olabiyi, Knowledge Production and the Global Energy Transition: A Critical Appraisal of the Influence of International Financial Institutions on African Multilateral Financial Institutions
• Otieno Mbori, The African Development Bank’s Role in Financing the Green Energy Transition Harrison
• Florence Shako, Towards Dismantling Colonial Continuities: The Role of the African Export-Import Bank in Climate Financing in Africa

New Issue: Questions of International Law

The latest issue of Questions of International Law / Questioni di Diritto Internazionale (no. 110, 2025) is out. Contents include:

• Regulating activities in the cyberspace: Open issues of International and European law
• Introduced by Gian Maria Farnelli
• Alessandra Sardu, Non-intervention and cyberspace
• Isabella Brunner, Attributing cyber operations under International law: Political and legal aspects
• Marco Argentini, Navigating Private Obligations in Cybersecurity: Perspectives from Private International Law
• Susanna Villani, Defending the security of the eu constitutional order against malicious cyber activity: reflections on the cyber targeted sanctions regime
• Victor Stoica, AI for good: the maintenance of international peace and security

Schefer, Polanco, & Sauvé: International Economic Law as Symphony: Thomas Cottier and the Harmonies of Trade

Krista Nadakavukaren Schefer (Swiss Institute of Comparative Law), Rodrigo Polanco (World Trade Institute; Swiss Institute of Comparative Law), & Pierre Sauvé (World Bank) have published International Economic Law as Symphony: Thomas Cottier and the Harmonies of Trade (Hart Publishing 2025). The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:

This open access book brings together some of the most eminent scholars of international trade to celebrate the scholarly, diplomatic, and institution-building achievements of Thomas Cottier, Professor Emeritus of International Economic Law at the University of Bern and founder of the World Trade Institute.

Over his half-century career, Thomas Cottier has promoted the development of international trade law by shaping our understanding of how multiple layers of law interact to form a global legal system. While multilateral trade law is the “melody” of the system, it is made fuller by a host of regional and national layers of harmonising – and sometimes discordant – legal rules.

Covering both general trade policy and the economic relations between Switzerland and the EU, the chapters examine Thomas Cottier's fundamental belief in the necessity of studying the interaction of every level of governance – local, national, and international – when considering the policies of economic exchange between countries, as well as his cosmopolitan belief in the need to foster a global community dedicated to bettering the lives of individuals around the world. The special relationship between the EU and Switzerland is addressed, honouring Professor Cottier's dedication to the political debates within Switzerland on the extent to which the country should participate in the European project, exemplifying the themes of multilayered governance and the common concerns of all people.

Call for Papers: Popular International Law Workshop

A call for papers has been issued for a workshop on "Popular International Law," to take place September 26, 2025, at the University of Cambridge. The call is here.

Kulamadayil: The Pathology of Plenty: Natural Resources in International Law

Lys Kulamadayil (Geneva Graduate Institute) has published The Pathology of Plenty: Natural Resources in International Law (Hart Publishing 2025). Here's the abstract:

This open access book critically examines the role international law plays in post-colonial countries, which primarily rely on the exploitation of their natural resources for economic and human development.

Since the 1990s, expressions such as the 'resource curse' and 'paradox of plenty' have been associated with unequal patterns of power and wealth distribution in post-colonial and neo-colonial countries. They have also been applied to the ecological and social costs of natural resources exploitation, and the planetary costs of mineral resources-based production and consumption patterns.

Taking various resource-curse and paradox-of-plenty theories as a starting point, the book illustrates how the law's role in resource-cursed countries is at once constitutive, preventive, remedial and punitive. It does so by engaging with various fields of public international law. The book revisits how rights and principles such as sovereignty over natural resources and economic self-determination were applied in decolonisation processes; studies the proliferation of international treaties protecting foreign property rights; and zooms in on various contract models used in the mineral resources sector to evaluate the distributional choices of cost and revenue.

Ioannides: The Predominant Interest Concept and Maritime Delimitation: Safeguarding Predictability and Enhancing Equitableness

Nicholas A. Ioannides (Univ. of Limassol - Law) has published The Predominant Interest Concept and Maritime Delimitation: Safeguarding Predictability and Enhancing Equitableness (Edward Elgar Publishing 2025). Here's the abstract:

Exploring how international jurisprudence has catalysed the development of maritime delimitation law, this accessible book explores the ‘predominant interest’ concept and analyses global case studies, as well as landmark legal proceedings. Nicholas A. Ioannides provides a comprehensive overview of the delimitation process, identifying the criteria used to determine how maritime areas are delimited.

The book highlights how international courts and tribunals in delimitation cases have mainly relied on geographical factors, disregarding non-geographical elements, although they are at the core of the continental shelf and Exclusive Economic Zone concepts. Ultimately, Ioannides suggests that non-geographical factors should be taken into account in maritime delimitation in aggregation under the cloak of ''predominant interest'' in order to reach an equitable result. Highlighting how predictability should be safeguarded, and equitability should be enhanced, Ioannides outlines the importance of, among others, fishing, security, defence and navigation interests for individual states arguing for control over maritime zones.

Conference: Towards a Global Ecological-Economic Legal Framework – Looking Ahead to Paris: Global Legal Dialogues for a Sustainable Future

On June 6-7, 2025, a conference will be held on “Towards a Global Ecological-Economic Legal Framework – Looking Ahead to Paris: Global Legal Dialogues for a Sustainable Future” at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Details are here.

Webinar: Transitional Justice for Israel-Palestine in Comparative Perspective

On June 5, 2025, the Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions, in collaboration with the Clinical Legal Education Center and the Fried-Gal Transitional Justice Program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, will host webinar on "Transitional Justice for Israel-Palestine in Comparative Perspective." Details are here.