Cyberspace constitutes an unstable environment, featuring rapid changes in the nature of the actors using it, the technologies applied and the inter-personal, governmental and commercial interactions facilitated thereby. The global COVID-19 pandemic exponentially accelerated the trend of digitalization in various fields of life, increasing even more the dependency on cyber-infrastructure and with it the potential for harmful cyber-attacks.
Traditionally, states have been cautious in invoking international law in the context of cyber-attacks, and they tended to refrain from denouncing attacks against them as violations of international law, or attributing it to other states. This state of affairs appears to be changing, however. While there are of disagreements as to the way that international law applies in the cyberspace, a common understanding had emerged about some key international law norms that apply in this field. States like Australia, France, Germany, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands have recently articulated their legal positions on how international law applies in cyberspace. In the same vein, states who fell victim to cyber-attacks are increasingly attributing them, as an international law matter, to other states, or non-state actors. Arguably, the increased role played by international law in cyberspace constitutes a reaction to the fact that cyber-attacks become more and more frequent, and dangerous, capable of shutting down critical infrastructure, including nuclear centrifuges and water pumping facilities.
This chapter will describe and critically evaluate the norms of international law which regulate cyber-operations, and discuss some of the policy considerations underlying them. Part I offers a short history of cyber-attacks. Part II presents the current international law framework governing cyber-attacks. Part III delves into the attribution challenge in cyberspace. Part IV concludes and suggests a way forward.
Saturday, February 26, 2022
Shany & Mimran: International Regulation of Cyber Operations
New Issue: Global Constitutionalism
The latest issue of Global Constitutionalism (Vol. 11, no. 1, March 2022) is out. Contents include:- Jacob Eisler, Jonathan Havercroft, Jo Shaw, Antje Wiener, & Susan Kang, The pendulum swings back: New authoritarian threats to liberal democratic constitutionalism
- Binendri Perera, The School Strike for Climate as people’s engagement in the transnational legal process and global constitutionalism
- Jacob O. Arowosegbe, Revisiting the legitimacy question of the Nigerian 1999 Constitution
- Fabio Wolkenstein, European political parties’ complicity in democratic backsliding
- Benjamin Alemparte, Towards a theory of neoliberal constitutionalism: Addressing Chile’s first constitution-making laboratory
- Alberto Coddou Mc Manus, A critical account of Ius Constitutionale Commune in Latin America: An intellectual map of contemporary Latin American constitutionalism
- Ilias Bantekas, The contractualization of fiscal and parliamentary sovereignty: Towards a private international finance architecture?
Friday, February 25, 2022
New Issue: Journal du Droit International
The latest issue of the Journal du Droit International ("Clunet") (Vol. 149, no. 1, Janvier-Février-Mars 2022) is out. Contents include:- Doctrine
- Gian Paolo Romano, Droit international dit « privé » et droit international dit « public » : éléments d'une théorie unitaire et humanisée du droit international
- Variétés
- Alejandra Blanquet, Le risque juridique au sein de la Convention de La Haye de 1980 : le cas des enlèvements internationaux d'enfants au Japon
- Élodie Kleider, Convention de Lugano, États tiers et CJUE : entre influence et ignorance, exemples venus de Suisse et de Norvège
Call for Submissions: The International Court of Justice at 75: an Assessment (Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law)
Special Issue: The Vitality of the NPT after 50
- Article Maria Rost Rublee & Carmen Wunderlich, The vitality of the NPT after 50
- Michal Smetana & Joseph O'Mahoney, NPT as an antifragile system: How contestation improves the nonproliferation regime
- Rebecca Davis Gibbons & Stephen Herzog, Durable institution under fire? The NPT confronts emerging multipolarity
- Marianne Hanson, Power to the have-nots? The NPT and the limits of a treaty hijacked by a “power-over” model
- Kjølv Egeland, A theory of nuclear disarmament: Cases, analogies, and the role of the non-proliferation regime
- Orion Noda, A wolf in sheep’s clothing? The NPT and symbolic proliferation
- Joelien Pretorius & Tom Sauer, When is it legitimate to abandon the NPT? Withdrawal as a political tool to move nuclear disarmament forward
- Jeffrey W. Knopf, Not by NPT alone: The future of the global nuclear order
McNeilly & Warwick: The Times and Temporalities of International Human Rights Law
This collection brings together a range of international contributors to stimulate discussions on time and international human rights law, a topic that has been given little attention to date. The book explores how time and its diverse forms can be understood to operate on, and in, this area of law; how time manifests in the theory and practice of human rights law internationally; and how specific areas of human rights can be understood via temporal analyses.
A range of temporal ideas and their connection to this area of law are investigated. These include collective memory, ideas of past, present and future, emergency time, the times of environmental change, linearity and non-linearity, multiplicitous time, and the connections between time and space or materiality. Rather than a purely abstract or theoretical endeavour, this dedicated attention to the times and temporalities of international human rights law will assist in better understanding this law, its development, and its operation in the present. What emerges from the collection is a future – or, more precisely, futures – for time as a vehicle of analysis for those working within human rights law internationally.
Call for Papers: Global Crisis and Global Constitutionalism
Call for Papers: Workshop to Mark Judge Giorgio Gaja’s Retirement from the ICJ (Early Career Researchers)
New Issue: Revue québécoise de droit international
Thursday, February 24, 2022
New Volume: Yearbook of International Disaster Law
- Thematic Section: Health and International Disaster Law
- Benjamin Mason Meier, Judith Bueno de Mesquita, & Caitlin R. Williams, Global Obligations to Ensure the Right to Health: Strengthening Global Health Governance to Realise Human Rights in Global Health
- Lorna McGregor, Regulating Digital and AI Technologies: Lessons from the Digitisation of Contact Tracing during the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Mutoy Mubiala, Africa and Pandemics: Towards a Regional Health Security Regime
- Thomas Mulder, Gabrielle Simm, & Sarah Williams, Regime Interaction and the Protection of Refugees during COVID-19
- Ingrid Nifosi-Sutton, Realising the Right to Health during the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Antidote to the Pandemic and the Catalyst for Fulfilling a Long-Neglected Social Right?
- Pedro A. Villarreal , Pandemic Risk and International Law: Laying the Foundations for Proactive State Obligations
- Alicia Ely Yamin, Stefania Negri, & Roojin Habibi, On Sea Monsters and Sandcastles, Revisiting International Legal Frameworks regarding Public Health and Human Rights in Global Health Emergencies
- General Section
- Patrícia Galvão Teles, Claire Duval, & Victor Tozetto da Veiga, International Cooperation and the Protection of Persons Affected by Sea-Level Rise: Drawing the Contours of the Duties of Non-affected States
- Margaretha Wewerinke & Melina Antoniadis, Vessel for Drowning Persons? The Standard-Setting Potential of International Human Rights Litigation in Addressing Climate Displacement
- Claire La Hovary, The International Labour Organisation and Disasters: The Contribution of ILO Recommendation No. 205 on ‘Employment and Decent Work for Peace and Resilience’ to International Disaster Law
- Mara Tignino, Technological Hazards during Armed Conflicts: The Case of the SAFER Oil Tanker in Yemen
- Silvia Venier, Rising from the Ashes, Once Again? The Beirut Port Explosion and International Disaster Law
- Giovanna Maria Frisso, Vulnerability, Arctic Indigenous Groups and Oil Spills: Potential Contributions to the Work of the Arctic Council
- Rhys Carvosso, The Role of Disasters in Investment Arbitration
New Issue: Journal of World Trade
The latest issue of the Journal of World Trade (Vol. 56, no. 2, 2022) is out. Contents include:- Gabrielle Marceau, Rebecca Walker, & Niki Koumadoraki, Silence in WTO
- Jean-Michel Marcoux & Andrea K. Bjorklund, Duty Evasion in Free Trade Agreements: Norm Emergence and Implications
- Rex J. Zedalis, Interpreting GATS Schedules: Saudi Arabia and Crude Oil Energy Services
- George A. Papaconstantinou & Luigi F. Pedreschi, Alternative Dispute Settlement and the Jurisprudential Legacy of the World Trade Organization’s Appellate Body
- Rodrigo Fagundes Cezar, Who Governs the Promotion of Social Objectives in EU’s Trade Policies?
- Thomas Dillon, TV Quotas Under the AVMS Directive After Brexit
- Qingxiu Bu, Between a Rock and a Hard Place Under China’s Anti-Sanction Law 2021: The Game- Theoretical Perspective
New Issue: Global Trade and Customs Journal
The latest issue of Global Trade and Customs Journal (Vol. 17, no. 2, 2022) is out. Contents include:- Maria R.U.D. Tambunan & Haula Rosdina, Transfer Pricing and Business Restructuring in the Manufacturing Industry: A Study of Korean and Indonesian MNEs
- Sergey O. Shokhin & Anna A. Volkova, Specific Features of Transboundary Movement of Intellectual Property Items in the EAEU
- Daria Boklan & Amrita Bahri, The WTO’s Collapsing Judicial and Legislative Wings: Is ‘Consensus’ the Real Elephant in the Room?
- Elisabeth Tuerk & Nadezhda Sporysheva, Promoting Circularity in Transition Economies: The Role of Trade and Economic Cooperation
Tuesday, February 22, 2022
New Issue: Cooperation and Conflict
- Federica Bicchi & Daniel Schade, Whither European diplomacy? Long-term trends and the impact of the Lisbon Treaty
- Philippe Beauregard, International emotional resonance: Explaining transatlantic economic sanctions against Russia
- Kathrin Bachleitner, Legacies of war: Syrian narratives of conflict and visions of peace
- Helen Berents & Caitlin Mollica, Reciprocal institutional visibility: Youth, peace and security and ‘inclusive’ agendas at the United Nations
- Katarzyna Jezierska, Incredibly loud and extremely silent: Feminist foreign policy on Twitter
- Iuliia Hoban, Militarization of childhood(s) in Donbas: ‘Growing together with the Republic’
New Issue: International Journal of Human Rights
The latest issue of the International Journal of Human Rights (Vol. 26, no. 3, 2022) is out. Contents include:- Theo Tsomidis, Freedom of expression in turbulent times – comparative approaches to dangerous speech: the ECtHR and the US Supreme Court
- Afroza Anwary, Sexual violence against women as a weapon of Rohingya genocide in Myanmar
- Rita Richter Nunes, Participation in child protection: empowering children in placement processes
- Alebachew Birhanu Enyew, Alemu Dagnew Feleke & Zewdu Mengesha Bashahider, The prevention of gender-based violence in Ethiopia in light of the three cycles UPR process
- Imad Antoine Ibrahim, Water as a human right, water as a commodity: can SDG6 be a compromise?
- John Duncan, The death of neoliberalism? UK responses to the pandemic
- Heroes and hierarchies: the celebration and censure of victimhood in transitional justice Cheryl Lawther
- Ken M. P. Setiawan, Struggling for justice in post-authoritarian states: human rights protest in Indonesia
Lecture: Kunoy on "Interrelationship of Inner and Outer Continental Shelf Entitlements"
Monday, February 21, 2022
Call for Ideas: International Law and Agent-based Modeling
Call for Papers: 11th Conference of the Postgraduate and Early Professionals/Academics Network of SIEL
New Issue: London Review of International Law
- Articles
- Kathryn Greenman, Protecting foreign investments in revolution and civil war: critiquing the contemporary arbitral practice
- Geoff Gordon, Engaging an infrastructure of time production with international law
- Mikkel Jarle Christensen, Celebrating international criminal justice: a sociology of the twentieth anniversary of the International Criminal Court
- Giovanna Lauria, A critical appraisal of the concept of climate migration
- Books etc.
- Anna Chadwick, Re-appropriating the Rights of Man: some reflections on A False Tree of Liberty by Susan Marks
- Ben Golder, In the present state of things
- Kasey McCall-Smith, The writing on the wall
- Susan Marks, The right to live: response to the commentators
Sunday, February 20, 2022
Workshop: Beyond Liberal Epistemologies in International Law
Newport Rules of Engagement Handbook
The Newport Rules of Engagement Handbook is published as a guide for the development of national and multinational rules of engagement for military operations. Its purpose is to assist users in the development of ROE for training, exercises, war games, and operations.
Saturday, February 19, 2022
Young: Human Rights Originalism
Are human rights to be found in living instruments and practices that adapt to changing circumstances, or must they be interpreted according to their original meaning? That question, so heavily debated in the context of the rights of the U.S. Constitution, was never seriously on the table until 2020. But when former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called for “fresh thinking” about human rights, and its connection with “our nation’s founding principles,” he brokered a return to two landmark instruments of human rights—the Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. His Commission on Unalienable Rights obliged, presenting the familiar tropes of fixed sources, venerated authorship, and national identity, in order to accomplish a drastically different presentation of the meaning of human rights. The end result is an act of fusion—the powerful political and cultural valence of America’s constitutional originalism, applied to the human rights of American foreign policy.
This Article identifies this innovation as “human rights originalism.” Although the Report of the Commission on Unalienable Rights has, at least for now, been shelved, human rights originalism may be one of the most enduring legacies of the Trump Administration. As an interpretive theory, human rights originalism promises many of the same benefits as its constitutional counterpart—simplicity, popular reach, and control of rights’ unruliness and proliferation—this time wrested from unaccountable United Nations institutions and experts rather than courts. As a substantive departure from contemporary human rights, human rights originalism elevates the importance of religious freedom and property rights, and provides a selective diminishment of women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and racial equality, mirroring and further cementing current trends in originalist constitutional doctrine. The four standard epistemic communities that supply “meaning” to human rights—in the international, comparative, transnational, and philosophical domains—are all rejected by originalism, just as those domains are themselves inimical to it.
This homegrown form of human rights argument is significant for human rights law and foreign policy, but so too is it significant for originalism itself. In propelling originalism into the uncompromisingly global domain of human rights, originalism’s proponents expose the nationalism and exceptionalism that are perhaps its most unsettling features. At the same time, originalism’s own malleability is highlighted in its adaptiveness to the modern administrative state and the promises of the postwar period.
New Issue: Journal of World Investment & Trade
- Editorial
- Thomas Cottier, Linking the Traits of International Economic Law
- Special Issue: Ocean Governance and Sustainable Development of the Blue Economy
- Tarique Faiyaz & Abdullah Al Arif, Towards a Blue Revolution in the Bay of Bengal: Tackling Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing Through Effective Regional Cooperation
- Lorena Carvajal-Arenas, The Blue Economy in Small-Scale Fisheries – An Ocean-Land Interface Perspective: The Case of Chile as Support for a Generalizable Analysis for Latin America
- Mariela de Amstalden, Seafood Without the Sea: Article 20 of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, the ‘Justifiability Test’ and Innovative Technologies in a Sustainable Blue Economy
- Leïla Choukroune & James J. Nedumpara, Blue Trade and Forced Labour: Breaking the Resounding Silence of International Economic Law
- Sam Luttrell, Matthew Di Marco, & Amelia Hirst, Deep Seabed Mining: Dispute Resolution Mechanisms for Non-State Actors
Friday, February 18, 2022
New Issue: International Journal of Transitional Justice
The latest issue of the International Journal of Transitional Justice (Vol. 15, no. 3, November 2021) is out. Contents include:- Editorial
- M Brinton Lykes & Hugo van der Merwe, Apologies for and Acknowledgements of Historical Violence and Struggles for Justice
- Articles
- Robin Hickey & Rachel Killean, Property Loss and Cultural Heritage Restoration in the Aftermath of Genocide: Understanding Harm and Conceptualising Repair
- Emily Willard, Beyond Transitional Justice: Learning from Indigenous Maya Mam Resistance in Guatemala
- Daniel Posthumus & Kelebogile Zvobgo, Democratizing Truth: An Analysis of Truth Commissions in the United States
- Nicolas Lemay-Hébert & Rosa Freedman, Appraising the Socio-Economic Turn in Reparations: Transitional Justice for Cholera Victims in Haiti
- Juliana González Villamizar & Pascha Bueno-Hansen, The Promise and Perils of Mainstreaming Intersectionality in the Colombian Peace Process
- Brigitte Herremans & Tine Destrooper, Stirring the Justice Imagination: Countering the Invisibilization and Erasure of Syrian Victims’ Justice Narratives
- Aminata Ndow, Knowing What I Know Now: Youth Experiences of Dictatorship and Transitional Justice in the Gambia
- Ciara Laverty & Dieneke de Vos, Reproductive Violence as a Category of Analysis: Disentangling the Relationship between ‘the Sexual’ and ‘the Reproductive’ in Transitional Justice
- Annika Björkdahl & Louise Warvsten, Friction in Transitional Justice Processes: The Colombian Judicial System and the ICC
- Kevin Hearty, Truth Beyond the ‘Trigger Puller’: Moral Accountability, Transitional (In)Justice and the Limitations of Legal Truth
- Review Essay
- Padraig McAuliffe, Complicity or Decolonization? Restitution of Heritage from ‘Global’ Ethnographic Museums
Rachovitsa: Léon Mugesera: A Convicted Genocidaire Seeking Justice before the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights?
This Article discusses the Léon Mugesera v. Republic of Rwanda judgment issued by the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACtHPR), in November 2020, concerning Léon Mugesera, a convicted genocidaire from Rwanda. In 2016, Mugesera was convicted by the Rwandan courts of incitement to genocide and sentenced to life in prison for giving the infamous Mugesera speech, an inflammatory anti-Tutsi speech which was broadcasted on public radio in November 1993, a few months before the outbreak of the genocide in Rwanda. He appealed the Rwandan decision in the Court of Appeal and also resorted to the ACtHPR alleging violations of the right to a fair trial, the right to the respect of the human dignity, the right to his physical and mental integrity, and the right to family under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR). A few months before the ACtHPR issued its judgment, the Rwandan Court of Appeal found Mugesera guilty of inciting ethnic hatred and persecution as a crime against humanity, among other crimes, and upheld the life sentence imposed on him.
The ACtHPR’s Mugesera judgment is of particular interest for three reasons. First, Léon Mugesera is the second case, following Ingabire Victoire Umuhoza v. Republic of Rwanda, in which the ACtHPR has found that Rwanda violated the ACHPR. Both cases involved aspects of Rwanda’s genocidal past. Second, Rwanda did not appear before the ACtHPR to defend itself and the Court had to address the difficulties posed by the respondent state’s absence with regard to deciding the merits of the case. Third, the ACtHPR awarded the applicant a considerable amount of money for pecuniary reparations, bringing to the fore the question of whether one’s prior conviction to inciting ethnic hatred and persecution as a crime against humanity could, or should, preclude such compensation.
This Article starts off with discussing the personal jurisdiction of the ACtHPR and it subsequently turns to explain the merits of the complaints raised by the applicant. The analysis proceeds to critically reflect upon the ACtHPR’s approach with regard to cases of non-appearance of the respondent state and awarding reparation for moral damages.
New Issue: International Organization
- Articles
- Chin-Hao Huang & David C. Kang, State Formation in Korea and Japan, 400–800 CE: Emulation and Learning, Not Bellicist Competition
- Cameron Ballard-Rosa, Layna Mosley, & Rachel L. Wellhausen, Coming to Terms: The Politics of Sovereign Bond Denomination
- Leonardo Baccini, Mattia Guidi, Arlo Poletti, & Aydin B. Yildirim, Trade Liberalization and Labor Market Institutions
- Robert Gulotty & Dorothy Kronick, The Arbitrage Lobby: Theory and Evidence on Dual Exchange Rates
- Kevin Russell & Nicholas Sambanis, Stopping the Violence but Blocking the Peace: Dilemmas of Foreign-Imposed Nation Building After Ethnic War
- Christopher W. Blair, Erica Chenoweth, Michael C. Horowitz, Evan Perkoski, & Philip B.K. Potter, Honor Among Thieves: Understanding Rhetorical and Material Cooperation Among Violent Nonstate Actors
- Review Essay
- Jorg Kustermans & Rikkert Horemans, Four Conceptions of Authority in International Relations
- Research Notes
- Randall W. Stone, Yu Wang, & Shu Yu, Chinese Power and the State-Owned Enterprise
- Tamar Mitts, Countering Violent Extremism and Radical Rhetoric
