Tuesday, June 14, 2022
Workshop: Redgwell on "What role for general principles in the international legal order?"
On June 22, 2022, the Athens PIL Discussion Group will host an online discussion with Catherine Redgwell (Univ. of Oxford - Law) on "What role for general principles in the international legal order?" Details are here.
Canefe: Crimes Against Humanity: The Limits of Universal Jurisdiction in the Global South
This volume considers how, based on the examination of cases pertaining to transitional justice settings that resort to local interpretations of crimes against humanity jurisprudence, fragmentation of international law and circumscribed applications of universal jurisdiction are necessary aspects of the grand enterprise to overcome the impasse of the tainted legacy of international criminal law in the Global South. If we are to proceed with adjudication of the most egregious and heinous crimes involving state criminality without facing the charge of neo-colonialist plotting, then we must reckon with localised and domesticated interpretations of international criminal law, rather than pursuing strict forms of legislative dictation of international criminal law.
Manulak: Change in Global Environmental Politics: Temporal Focal Points and the Reform of International Institutions
As wildfires rage, pollution thickens, and species disappear, the world confronts environmental crisis with a set of global institutions in urgent need of reform. Yet, these institutions have proved frustratingly resistant to change. Introducing the concept of Temporal Focal Points, Manulak shows how change occurs in world politics. By re-envisioning the role of timing and temporality in social relations, his analysis presents a new approach to understanding transformative phases in international cooperation. We may now be entering such a phase, he argues, and global actors must be ready to realize the opportunities presented. Charting the often colorful and intensely political history of change in global environmental politics, this book sheds new light on the actors and institutions that shape humanity's response to planetary decline. It will be of interest to scholars and advanced students of international relations, international organization and environmental politics and history.
New Issue: International Review of the Red Cross
- Ronald Alcala, Cultural evolution: Protecting “digital cultural property” in armed conflict
- Katayoun Hosseinnejad & Pouria Askary, The obligation to exercise “leniency” in penal and disciplinary measures against prisoners of war in light of the ICRC updated Commentary on the Third Geneva Convention
- Ana Beduschi, Harnessing the potential of artificial intelligence for humanitarian action: Opportunities and risks
- Russell Buchan & Nicholas Tsagourias, Hacking international organizations: The role of privileges, immunities, good faith and the principle of State sovereignty
- María Camila Correa Flórez, Andrés Felipe Martín Parada, & Juan Francisco Soto Hoyos, Punishment and pardon: The use of international humanitarian law by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace in Colombia
- Aaron Fellmeth & Emily Crawford, “Reason to know” in the international law of command responsibility
- Massimo Marelli, The SolarWinds hack: Lessons for international humanitarian organizations
- Anne Peters & Jérôme de Hemptinne, Animals in war: At the vanishing point of international humanitarian law
- Elizabeth Salmón & Juan-Pablo Pérez-León-Acevedo, Reparation for victims of serious violations of international humanitarian law: New developments
- Raphaël van Steenberghe, The impacts of human rights law on the regulation of armed conflict: A coherency-based approach to dealing with both the “interpretation” and “application” processes
- Ning Wang, Markus Christen, Matthew Hunt, & Nikola Biller-Andorno, Supporting value sensitivity in the humanitarian use of drones through an ethics assessment framework
- Priscilla Denisse Coria Palomino, A new understanding of disability in international humanitarian law: Reinterpretation of Article 30 of Geneva Convention III
- Harriet Macey, “Safe zones”: A protective alternative to flight or a tool of refugee containment? Clarifying the international legal framework governing access to refugee protection against the backdrop of “safe zones” in conflict-affected contexts
Conference: BIICL WTO Conference 2022
Kucik, Peritz, & Puig: Legalization and Compliance: How Judicial Activity Undercuts the Global Trade Regime
Jeffrey Kucik (Univ. of Arizona), Lauren Peritz (Univ. of California, Davis), & Sergio Puig (Univ. of Arizona) have posted Legalization and Compliance: How Judicial Activity Undercuts the Global Trade Regime (British Journal of Political Science, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:
The crisis facing the World Trade Organization illustrates the trade-off between legalization and compliance in international legal systems. Dispute bodies can sometimes “overreach” in their rulings, leading to resistance from member states. This article looks at one form of legal overreach: the extension of legal precedent. We argue that extending previous decisions can reduce the flexibility that states include deliberately in their agreements. We utilize original data on individual applications of precedent in the World Trade Organization's Appellate Body decisions from 1995 to 2015 and on policy responses to those decisions. We find strong evidence that extending precedent reduces on-time compliance. It also leads to longer delays before members comply. The results speak to the life cycles of international organizations, as well as questions of design and cooperation.
Conference: 29th Annual ANZSIL Conference
On June 30-July 2, 2022, the Australian and New Zealand Society of International Law will hold its 29th Annual Conference in Canberra and online. The theme is: "International Law and Global Inter-connectedness." Program and registration are here.
Webinar: Davies on "Legality, Life, and the Normativity of Nature"
On June 16, 2022, the Centre for Environmental Law at Macquarie University will host a webinar on "Legality, Life, and the Normativity of Nature" by Margaret Davies (Flinders Univ. - Law). This is part of the Centre's Biodiversity Law and Governance webinar series: Law & Nature Dialogues. Details are here. Recordings of this and all past Law and Nature Dialogues can be viewed on the Macquarie CEL YouTube account.
Monday, June 13, 2022
Kuhlmann: Resetting the Rules on Trade and Gender? A Comparative Assessment of Gender Approaches in Regional Trade Agreements in the Context of a Possible Gender Protocol Under the African Continental Free Trade Area
Katrin Kuhlmann (Georgetown Univ. - Law) has posted Resetting the Rules on Trade and Gender? A Comparative Assessment of Gender Approaches in Regional Trade Agreements in the Context of a Possible Gender Protocol Under the African Continental Free Trade Area. Here's the abstract:
At long last, gender and trade are together on the international agenda, with significant implications for women entrepreneurs and traders around the world. Alongside the landmark 2017 Joint Declaration on Trade and Women’s Empowerment, regional trade agreements (RTAs) have taken the lead on more tangible gender commitments. One such RTA is the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), in which gender appears as an express priority alongside sustainable and inclusive socio-economic development. Yet, this is only a starting point. A gender-focused protocol has been proposed under the AfCFTA framework, representing a significant opportunity to reassess RTA provisions on gender and consider more tailored approaches that could benefit women on the African continent and around the world.
This chapter will present a comparative assessment of approaches for evaluating and categorizing gender and trade approaches in RTAs. These include focus on gender responsiveness and incorporation of international and domestic legal design innovations and options for “inclusive law and regulation” (with particular examples from African regional and domestic law) in order to use RTAs to address concrete challenges facing women. In particular, the chapter focuses on how RTA rules could more actively support women’s work, reduce procedural hurdles facing women in the market, enhance access to finance and digital inclusion, and promote food security. The chapter shines light on how gender provisions could be shaped, reframed, and better implemented in practice, with implications for the AfCFTA and future RTAs beyond Africa as well.
Seixas-Nunes: The Legality and Accountability of Autonomous Weapon Systems: A Humanitarian Law Perspective
By adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the legality of the use of autonomous weapons systems under international law. It examines different arguments presented by States, roboticists and scholars to demonstrate the challenges such systems will create for the laws of war. This study examines how technology of warfare seeks to increase the dissociation of risk and communication between weapons and their human operators. Furthermore, it explains how algorithms might give rise to 'errors' on the battlefield that cannot be directly attributed to human operators. Against this backdrop, Dr Seixas-Nunes examines three distinct legal frameworks: the distinction between the legality of weapons and the laws of targeting; different mechanisms of individual accountability and the importance of recovering the category of 'dolus eventualis' for programmers and technicians and, finally, State responsibility for violations of the laws of war caused by weapons' software errors.
Glas & Laurence: Changing Norms in Practice: Noninterference in the UN and ASEAN
Aarie Glas (Northern Illinois Univ.) & Marion Laurence (Royal Military College of Canada) have published Changing Norms in Practice: Noninterference in the UN and ASEAN (Journal of Global Security Studies, Vol. 7, no. 2, June 2022). Here's the abstract:
Noninterference is a foundational governance norm for international and regional organizations. In the United Nations and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the norm has long undergirded the practice of interstate governance in fundamental ways. However, the noninterference norm has been understood and enacted in disparate ways between these organizations and over time within them. While theories of norm diffusion and contestation have long examined the variable understanding of norms within different contexts, we argue that they are inadequate to analyze cases—like those we examine in this article—where divergent practices do not spring from a conscious desire to contest a norm's relevance, meaning, or requirements. To understand dynamics of norm change, we argue that the growing literature on international practices should be placed in dialogue with both traditional accounts of norm diffusion and existing scholarship on norm contestation. We build on these literatures to offer a novel and productive framework to explore shifting beliefs about the competent enactment of norms within disparate communities over time. Empirically, we center attention on the recent United Nations (UN) peace operation in Côte d'Ivoire and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) response to the ongoing Rohingya crisis. In each case, we show that divergent interpretations of the noninterference norm are embedded in seemingly mundane practices that have the potential to transform that norm over the long term. We draw on detailed empirical evidence to illustrate the changing practice of the noninterference norm in each case, relying on seventy-six interviews with officials from both organizations.
Thursday, June 9, 2022
Hefti: Conceptualizing Femicide as a Human Rights Violation: State Responsibility Under International Law
This thought-provoking book conceptualizes femicide as a multifaceted human rights violation and proposes state responsibility for group-related risks of violence against women and girls. In doing so, it reassesses the concept of femicide, analysing it in view of the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, as well as several facets of human rights.
Angela Hefti challenges the common definition of femicide, extending it beyond the killing of women due to their gender to include elements of victim blame, sexual abuse, forced marriage and delayed investigations by authorities. Chapters address femicide in the context of the African, Inter-American and European regional and universal human rights systems. Case studies from Iraq, Nigeria and Mexico provide a fundamental understanding of the multidimensional and worldwide nature of femicide. Spanning several key academic debates, the book incorporates underlying feminist legal theory and approaches pertaining to the subordination of women and girls in society, arguing that femicide should qualify as an autonomous human rights violation.
Roehrlich: Inspectors for Peace: A History of the International Atomic Energy Agency
The International Atomic Energy Agency, which sends inspectors around the world to prevent states from secretly developing nuclear bombs, has one of the most important jobs in international security. At the same time, the IAEA is a global hub for the exchange of nuclear science and technology for peaceful purposes. Yet spreading nuclear materials and know-how around the world bears the unwanted risk of helping what the agency aims to halt: the emergence of new nuclear weapon states. In Inspectors for Peace, Elisabeth Roehrlich unravels the IAEA's paradoxical mission of sharing nuclear knowledge and technology while seeking to deter nuclear weapon programs.
Founded in 1957 in an act of unprecedented cooperation between the Cold War superpowers, the agency developed from a small technical bureaucracy in war-torn Vienna to a key organization in the global nuclear order. Roehrlich argues that the IAEA's dual mandate, though apparently contradictory, was pivotal in ensuring the organization's legitimacy, acceptance, and success. For its first decade of existence, the IAEA was primarily a scientific and technical organization; it was not until the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons entered into force in 1970 that the agency took on the far-reaching verification and inspection role for which it is now most widely known. While the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the Iran negotiations made the IAEA's name famous, the organization's remarkable history remains strikingly absent from public knowledge.
Drawing on extensive archival research, including firsthand access to newly opened records at the IAEA Archives in Vienna, Inspectors for Peace provides the first comprehensive, empirically grounded, and independent study on the history of the IAEA. Roehrlich also interviewed leading policymakers and officials, including Hans Blix and Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency's former heads. This book offers insight not only for students, scholars, and policy experts but for anyone interested in the history of the nuclear age, the Cold War, and the role of international organizations in shaping our world.
Wednesday, June 8, 2022
Call for Session Ideas: 2023 ASIL Annual Meeting
The American Society of International Law has issued a call for session ideas for its 117th Annual Meeting, which will take place March 29-31, 2023, in Washington, DC. The conference theme is: "The Reach and Limits of International Law to Solve Today's Challenges." The deadline is July 18, 2022. The call is here.
Tuesday, June 7, 2022
New Issue: London Review of International Law
- Articles
- Judy Fudge, Bad for business: the construction of modern slavery and the reconfiguration of sovereignty
- Alexis Alvarez-Nakagawa, Rituals of (dis)possession: appropriation and performativity in the early modern law of nations
- Henry Jones & Aoife O’Donoghue, History and self-reflection in the teaching of international law
- Christiane Wilk, Review Essay: Implicated in violence: Socio-legal approaches to international humanitarian law and international criminal law
- Books etc.
- Symposium: The Slave Trade, Abolition and the Long History of International Criminal Law: the recaptive and the victim by Emily Haslam
- Marie-Bénédicte Dembour, Critical legal thoughts
- Michael Lobban, International criminal law and the slave trade: the past and the present
- Christine Schwöbel-Patel, The precarious agency of racialised recaptives
- Emily Haslam, Writing the recaptive: a response
Call for Papers: Journal of International Economic Law Second Annual Junior Faculty Forum
The Journal of International Economic Law has issued a call for papers for its second annual Junior Faculty Forum to be held in hybrid or virtual format on September 23-24, 2022, on the sidelines of the American Society of International Law International Economic Law Interest Group Biennial Conference. The deadline is July 8, 2022. Information on eligibility and how to submit is here.
Agi: Zur Dogmatik des Verhältnismäßigkeitsgrundsatzes im Völkerrecht der bewaffneten Konflikte und im Völkerstrafrecht
Art. 8 II b) iv) IStGH-Statut sanktioniert den, der einen offensichtlich unverhältnismäßigen Angriff durchführt. Aber was ist, wenn nicht-erforderliche Angriffsmittel eingesetzt werden, obwohl militärischer Vorteil und Kollateralschaden in einem angemessenen Verhältnis zu einander zu stehen scheinen? Dieser Frage geht das Werk auf den Grund. Dabei wird zunächst die Prinzipientheorie auf das Konfliktsvölkerrecht angewandt und sodann die Entstehungsgeschichte des ZP I im Hinblick auf den Zusammenhang von Erforderlichkeit und Verhältnismäßigkeit im engeren Sinne analysiert. Die Ergebnisse beider Ansätze münden im Entwurf eines „targeting cycle“, aus dem sich ergibt, dass auch derjenige, der nicht-erforderliche Waffen einsetzt, ein Kriegsverbrechen begeht.
Launching a manifestly excessive attack is criminal according to Art. 8 II b) ICC-Statute. But what if non-necessary weapons are being used even though military advantage and collateral damage seem to be in proportion? The book explores this question. First, the theory of principles is applied to IHL and the legal-theoretical character of the rule of proportionality is examined. Then, the history of the development of AP I is analyzed with regard to the connection between necessity and proportionality in the narrow sense. Finally, the results of both approaches lead to a model of a "targeting cycle" from which it follows that those who use non-necessary weapons commit a war crime, too.
Call for Papers: Sustainable Banking and Financial Regulation in Asia: Principles, Practice and Innovation
The Centre for Commercial Law in Asia at Singapore Management University and the Herbert Smith Freehills China International Business and Economic Law Centre at UNSW Law & Justice have issued a call for papers for a conference at the SMU Yong Pung How School of Law and online in late August 2022. The theme is: “Sustainable Banking and Financial Regulation in Asia: Principles, Practice and Innovation.” The call is here.
Monday, June 6, 2022
Call for Papers: Children's Fights: Commonalities and Differences Across Time, Space and Place
Washington and Lee University, in collaboration with the University of Geneva and the Catholic University of Bukavu, has issued a call for papers for a conference, in the hybrid format, on "Children's Fights: Commonalities and Differences Across Time, Space and Place," to take place April 5-7, 2021, in Lexington. The call is here (English/Français).
Gallant: International Criminal Jurisdiction: Whose Law Must We Obey?
International Criminal Jurisdiction is a treatise for anyone conducting research into how domestic and international regimes create and enforce rules for personal and subject matter jurisdiction in transnational or international criminal cases. It is the only such treatise in English on this topic. Attorneys representing corporate executives in white collar criminal cases will be able to use this book to construct challenges to a foreign court's exercise of jurisdiction over those clients. Legal scholars wishing to critique foreign domestic courts for defying suppression treaties will find in this book information on how and why those courts are doing so. Law students will turn to this book for distinctions between international criminal tribunals and domestic courts in the exercise of personal jurisdiction over government officials. The book provides complete details on how domestic legislatures and the U.N. have created statutory and treaty-based rules expanding or even limiting courts' and tribunals' jurisdiction over certain crimes and certain categories of defendants. This research serves the book's function as a thorough guide to jurisdictional questions that arise when criminal acts or criminals cross borders. Questions include whether a defendant possesses standing to challenge an international tribunal's personal jurisdiction over him, what happens when a given domestic regime neglects to criminalize conduct prohibited by a new treaty, and why some domestic courts choose not to exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction.
Wang & Cheng: China’s Approach to International Law: From Traditional Westphalianism to Aggressive Instrumentalism in the Xi Jinping Era
Jiangyu Wang (City Univ. of Hong Kong) & Huaer Cheng (Beijing Institute of Technology Law School) have published China’s Approach to International Law: From Traditional Westphalianism to Aggressive Instrumentalism in the Xi Jinping Era (Chinese Journal of Comparative Law, Vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 140–153, April 2022). Here's the abstract:
China has been expanding its engagement with the international legal order for decades, yet its general approach to international law remains mysterious or at least hard to understand. This article provides a preliminary examination of China’s contemporary international legal stance. It argues that, although China has appeared to be a follower of the traditional Westphalianism, it is at heart an instrumentalist in terms of complying with international law. In the Xi Jinping era, China’s approach to international law can be characterized as ‘aggressive instrumentalism’, though Xi Jinping’s ‘Community of Shared Future for Mankind’ concept has arguably also demonstrated a certain degree of idealism.
Sunday, June 5, 2022
Marochkin & Bezborodov: The Shanghai Cooperation Organization: Exploring New Horizons
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is one of the most rapidly developing centres of the multipolar world, covering an enormous landmass including China, India, Russia and its southern Eurasian neighbours.
With both its eight member states and a growing group of observer states, the SCO’s activities have expanded beyond its initial focus on security and stability to broader cooperation with the UN and other groupings such as the G20, BRICS, NATO and ASEAN. Bringing together large and disparate nation-states with often rival geostrategic agendas means that it not only faces substantial structural challenges but also has great potential. The contributors to this volume, representing a range of the states within the SCO, evaluate the possibilities for the Organization, and the challenges it faces in achieving them through a prism of legal regulation. They evaluate the bloc’s prospects for economic, humanitarian, legal, trade, labour, migration, and environmental cooperation, as well as its more traditional concerns with security and defence. The authors, analyzing the quality of cooperation between states within the SCO, note the controversial character of this process: it demonstrates both efficiency and declarative and decorative nature of the SCO.
New Issue: Journal of International Arbitration
The latest issue of the Journal of International Arbitration (Vol. 39, no. 3, 2022) is out. Contents include:- Roger P. Alford, Crina Baltag, Matthew E.K. Hall, & Monique Sasson, Empirical Analysis of National Courts Vacatur and Enforcement of International Commercial Arbitration Awards
- Maxi Scherer & Ole Jensen, Empirical Research on the Alleged Invalidity of Arbitration Agreements: Success Rates and Applicable Law in Setting Aside and Enforcement Proceedings
- Loukas Mistelis & Giammarco Rao, The Judicial Solution to the Arbitrator’s Dilemma: Does the ‘Extension’ of the Arbitration Agreement to Non-Signatories Threaten the Enforcement of the Award?
- Laurence Shore, Vittoria De Benedetti, & Mario de Nitto Personè, A Pathology (Yet) to Be Cured?
- Cecilia Carrara, Conflicts of Interests
- Crina Baltag, Article V(1)(e) of the New York Convention: To Enforce orNot to Enforce Set Aside Arbitral Awards?
- Monique Sasson, Public Policy in International Commercial Arbitration
- Elina Mereminskaya, Latin America Isn’t ‘Going South’: A Qualitative Sampling Analysis
- Ioana Knoll-Tudor, Recognition or Enforcement and Annulment of Arbitral Awards in France: An Analysis of the Kluwer Research Results
- Arthur Dong & Alex Yuan, An Empirical Study on Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan Arbitral Awards in Mainland China
Muschik: Building States: The United Nations, Development, and Decolonization, 1945–1965
Postwar multilateral cooperation is often viewed as an attempt to overcome the limitations of the nation-state system. However, in 1945, when the United Nations was founded, large parts of the world were still under imperial control. Building States investigates how the UN tried to manage the dissolution of European empires in the 1950s and 1960s—and helped transform the practice of international development and the meaning of state sovereignty in the process.
Eva-Maria Muschik argues that the UN played a key role in the global proliferation and reinvention of the nation-state in the postwar era, as newly independent states came to rely on international assistance. Drawing on previously untapped primary sources, she traces how UN personnel—usually in close consultation with Western officials—sought to manage decolonization peacefully through international development assistance. Examining initiatives in Libya, Somaliland, Bolivia, the Congo, and New York, Muschik shows how the UN pioneered a new understanding and practice of state building, presented as a technical challenge for international experts rather than a political process. UN officials increasingly took on public-policy functions, despite the organization’s mandate not to interfere in the domestic affairs of its member states. These initiatives, Muschik suggests, had lasting effects on international development practice, peacekeeping, and post-conflict territorial administration.
Casting new light on how international organizations became major players in the governance of developing countries, Building States has significant implications for the histories of decolonization, the Cold War, and international development.
Pauwelyn, Maggetti, Büthe, & Berman: Rethinking Participation in Global Governance: Voice and Influence after Stakeholder Reforms in Global Finance and Health
International organizations and other global governance bodies often make rules and decisions without input from many of the individuals, groups, firms, and governments that are affected by them. The standards of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, for instance, developed by a small number of states, govern financial markets and the safety of bank deposits in over a hundred jurisdictions. Historically, the interests of developing countries, as well as non-commercial and diffuse interests within countries, have been excluded or disregarded in global governance. Scholars and practitioners have criticised this democratic deficit and called for greater participation of such marginalized stakeholders. Against this background, international institutions have introduced a variety of reforms with the goal of increasing and facilitating the participation of these excluded stakeholders.
This book brings together an expert group of scholars and practitioners to investigate the consequences of stakeholder participation reforms in the global governance of health and finance: What reforms have been introduced? Have these reforms given previously marginalized stakeholders a voice in global governance bodies? What effect have these reforms had on the legitimacy and effectiveness of global governance? To answer these questions, the book examines treaty-based intergovernmental organizations alongside newer forms of global governance such as trans-governmental regulatory networks, multi-stakeholder partnerships, and private standard setting bodies. Through a series of paired comparative analyses, the book provides insights into the experiences of large emerging and smaller or lower income developing countries (Brazil v. Argentina, China v. Vietnam, India v. the Philippines) in a diverse set of organizations, including the World Bank and the World Health Organization, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the International Accounting Standards Board, Codex Alimentarius Commission and more.
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