The latest issue of the Virginia Journal of International Law (Vol. 63, no. 1, Fall 2022) is out. Contents include:
This chapter examines the genocide findings made by some Argentinian courts as a result of the widespread and severe human rights violations that occurred during the military dictatorship of 1976-1983. Based predominantly on a narrow selection of the travaux préparatoires and other documents predating the Genocide Convention (1948), as well as a decision from Spain’s Audiencia Nacional, Argentinian judges have held that the physical destruction of ‘political groups’ as such or effectively as a part of a national group falls within the definition of genocide as included in said Convention. This chapter reviews the travaux préparatoires of the Genocide Convention (1948) relevant to the protected groups and shows that the drafters did not envisage genocide against political groups directly or indirectly as part of a national group. Accordingly, these Argentinian cases do not withstand close academic scrutiny.
The relationship of African States with the permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) is critical to the continued success of the ICC and the development of international criminal law. One of the main criticisms of the ICC, by some African States, has centered on the question of how best to sequence peace with justice, or justice with peace, in situations of ongoing conflict such as in Uganda and Sudan. This paper examines the history of the peace-justice clash on the African continent in the context of the 2019 Assembly of States Parties mandated process of ICC reform, taking into account the ICC Office of the Prosecutor’s (OTP) policy paper on the interests of justice. Regrettably, despite the longstanding African State Party concern about the peace-justice interface, the September 2020 ICC independent expert report produced for the Assembly of States Parties missed the opportunity to expressly address this important issue. The author submits that, while the OTP appears to have embraced a more nuanced view of the interests of retributive justice and how they relate to the interests of sustainable peace, it maybe timely for the formal ICC review process to consider how to bring further clarity to resolution of this issue in the context of the ongoing ICC reform discussions. Formally giving the OTP some guidance on how to balance the interests of justice considerations after it begins a formal investigation into a situation should help limit some of the criticisms directed towards the ICC as it engages in the challenging task of dispensing justice for victims of atrocity crimes in Africa and other parts of the world.
This book offers a unique insight into the inner workings of international courts and tribunals. Combining the rigour of the essay and the creativity of the novel, Tommaso Soave narrates the invisible practices and interactions that make up the dispute settlement process, from the filing of the initial complaint to the issuance of the final decision. At each step, the book unravels the myriad activities of the legal experts running the international judiciary – judges, arbitrators, agents, counsel, advisors, bureaucrats, and specialized academics – and reveals their pervasive power in the process. The cooperation and competition among these inner circles of professionals lie at the heart of international judicial decisions. By shedding light on these social dynamics, Soave takes the reader on a journey through the lives, ambitions, and preoccupations of the everyday makers of international law.
The latest issue of Transnational Environmental Law (Vol. 11, no. 3, November 2022) is out. Contents include:
The latest issue of the International Journal of Refugee Law (Vol. 34, no. 2, June 2022) is out. Contents include:
This essay takes up the question of what it is to teach international law ‘in context’, drawing on experiences of teaching undergraduate survey courses in the US and UK, and designing a new LLM module on Histories of International Law. The essay begins with an exploration of teaching as a particular context of its own – one with constraints which might also function as foils for creativity. It then sketches some aspects of what teaching international law ‘in context(s)’ might involve, including the ways in which contexts of different kinds put in question one's theory of law, and vice versa. It turns, finally, to an examination of the promise and limits of interdisciplinarity – particularly recourse to history as a discipline – in illuminating contexts.
O livro Direito Internacional dos Direitos Humanos e as pessoas em situação de vulnerabilidade (vol. 3) aborda questões atuais relacionadas com a proteção global e geral dos direitos humanos, a proteção específica dos migrantes, a proteção regional dos direitos humanos, bem como o impacto do direito internacional dos direitos humanos no âmbito doméstico. Trata-se uma obra que conta com 21 artigos científicos, de autoria de discentes da graduação e pós-graduação em Direito da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), além de artigos, entre outros, de professores/pesquisadores do Centro Universitário do Estado do Pará (CESUPA), da Universidade Federal do Maranhão (UFMA), da Universidade Federal da Paraíba (UFPB), da Universidade Estadual de Londrina (UEL), da Universidade Federal de Uberlândia (MG), da Universidade Municipal de São Caetano do Sul (USCS), do Centro Universitário Antônio Eufrásio de Toledo de Presidente Prudente e da Universidade Lusófona do Porto (Portugal).
Recent studies on international law and liberalism have shown convincingly that both liberal internationalism and international law have played a central role in the international politics of Latin America and that Latin American countries have contributed to the consolidation of multilateralism and the Liberal International Order (LIO). Yet, the connections between the institutionalisation of international law and the rise of liberal internationalism in the region have tended to be overlooked. This article examines the genealogy of these connections, focusing on the emergence of two contending legal traditions, a solidarist liberal internationalist tradition and a pluralist and political one. The article argues that the emergence of these opposing legal traditions across the region have had a contradictory impact on the formation of the LIO, contributing to its emergence and consolidation by promoting multilateralism, and to challenging and revising some of its fundamentals when stressing a strong attachment to absolute non-intervention.
The latest issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution (Vol. 67, no. 1, January 2023) is out. Contents include:
The latest issue of The Law and Practice of International Courts and Tribunals (Vol. 21, no. 3, 2022) is out. Contents include:
The latest issue of the International Organizations Law Review (Vol. 19, no. 2, 2022) is out. Contents include:
This article develops a new conceptual framework designed to critically study how locality and transversal power relations structure activity and developments in the global field of international criminal justice. The framework is built around the concept of “justice sites,” defined as localities in which organized and social labor—in this case, working with international criminal justice—takes place. The potential effects of social labor performed in specific sites of justice are structured partly by their locality and the resources to which it gives access and partly by their structural position in wider transversal chains of cooperation and competition that cut across different globalized and national fields. In addition to structuring the connections between justice sites, transversal power relations link sites of justice to “practice sites” embedded in other fields in which localized, social labor is not routinely engaged with international criminal justice. Such linkages demonstrate how the framework, developed to study how locality and transversal relations shape the fight against atrocity crimes, can also be used to investigate sites engaged in and across other globalized and national fields of justice, law, governance, and security.
Créée par le Statut de Rome de 1998, la Cour pénale internationale est une institution permanente ayant compétence pour juger les auteurs des crimes les plus graves affectant l’ensemble de la communauté internationale. Si la mise en place de cette juridiction à vocation universelle suscita de grandes espérances, sa légitimité et son efficacité comme cadre stratégique majeur de lutte contre l’impunité a été régulièrement scrutée et questionnée. Elle a été discréditée pour sa sélectivité, ses lenteurs, son coût et son maigre bilan, et soumise à de vives tensions avec certains hauts responsables politiques, si ce n’est à des sanctions sous l’Administration américaine Trump. Face à l’imprévisibilité de la poursuite sereine de son travail dans certaines situations, face parfois à un déficit de confiance marqué par une coopération problématique des États, la jurisprudence de la Cour pénale internationale a permis peu à peu de poser d’importants jalons, notamment en matière de complémentarité avec la justice nationale, des droits de la défense et des réparations des victimes. À cet égard, le franchissement du cap du vingtième anniversaire de l’entrée en vigueur du Statut de Rome en 2002 - marqué par un besoin de réenchanter la justice pénale internationale - constitue un contexte temporel idoine pour dresser un état des lieux. Cet ouvrage esquisse ainsi les défis et les résiliences de cette institution dans l’aéropage de la justice au niveau universel. Il porte également un regard appuyé sur l’Afrique, centre de gravité de la pratique de la Cour pénale internationale, en invitant à une odyssée au cœur des relations entre ce continent et cette juridiction, qui ont conduit à l’échafaudage d’une future cour régionale et à des expérimentations de justice hybride et transitionnelle.
This chapter undertakes a comparative law tour of the domestic channels to express consent to be bound that underlie international law-making. We first explore the field of comparative domestic treaty law before we map the channels of consent in more detail. We then distinguish between formal representation of the state in treaty-making and substantive treaty powers in order to analyse domestic rules on parliamentary approval of treaties. We learn about the functions of parliamentary consent and about the modes and scope of parliamentary participation and its challenges. We then turn to the consequences of the applicable procedure on the status of treaties in domestic law. We will not miss to take a brief look at domestic channelling systems to express consent to be bound that also encompass the consent of the people (via referenda) and substate entities (in federal states). A final outlook will reflect on how shifts in the international legal order—informalisation and both populist and authoritarian tendencies—will impact on the domestic channels to express consent to be bound that we visited on our tour.
AdvertisementThis book explores how the European Convention on Human Rights operates and influences on the global stage.
AdvertisementThe ECHR and its interpretation by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) considerably echo in and outside Europe. To what degree has that influence translated into its norms, doctrines and methods of interpretation being exported into equivalent systems which also enact the protection of fundamental rights? This book answers that question by exploring the judicial dialogue of the ECHR system with comparable legal orders.
AdvertisementThrough a horizontal and multifaceted study of regional and global systems, the book identifies the impact of the ECHR within the confines of their jurisprudence to provide scholars in the field of international human rights law with an essential text. Discussing the extent to which the ECHR penetrates into the judicial production of the most affected legal systems, the book mostly focuses on the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Committee. It also investigates whether there is room for cross-fertilisation between them and finally, moves on to explore the legal consequences of the interplay of these mechanisms with the ECtHR and what it means for the overall functioning of international human rights law.
The latest issue of the International Journal of Transitional Justice (Vol. 16, no. 3, November 2022) is out. Contents include:
Volume 427 of the
Recueil des Cours, Collected Courses of the Hague Academy of International
Law
is out. Contents include:
The global data divide has emerged as a major policy challenge threatening equitable development, poverty alleviation, and access to information. Further, it has polarised countries on either side of the data schism, who have often reacted by implementing conflicting and sub-optimal measures. This paper surveys such policy measures, the politics behind it, and the footprints that they have left on the digital trade or electronic commerce rules contained in free trade agreements (‘FTAs’). First, this paper details an understanding of what constitutes the global data divide, focusing on three components of access, regulation, and use. Second, the paper surveys electronic commerce or digital trade rules in FTAs to understand whether existing rules deal with the widening data divide in a comprehensive manner and, if so, how. Our primary argument is that existing FTA disciplines are deficient in addressing the global data divide. Key problems include insufficient participation by developing countries in framing digital trade rules, non-recognition of the data divide affecting developing countries, and lack of robust and implementable mechanisms to bridge the data divide. Finally, we present a proposal to reform digital trade rules in line with best practices emerging in FTA practice and the main areas where gaps must be bridged. Our proposals include enhancing technical assistance and capacity-building support, developing a tailored Special and Differential Treatment (‘SDT’) mechanism, incentivising the removal of data-related barriers, and boosting international regulatory cooperation.
The latest issue of Trade, Law and Development (Vol. 14, no. 1, Summer 2022) is out. Contents include:
Die umweltvölkerrechtliche Aarhus-Konvention von 1998 gibt der Zivilgesellschaft in Europa, im Kaukasus und in Zentralasien elementare Rechte in Umweltsachen. Die Einhaltung des Abkommens überwacht seit 2004 ein unabhängiger Ausschuss, das ›Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee‹ (ACCC). Den Erfolg des Gremiums prägt in entscheidender Weise, dass sich Umweltverbände und Privatpersonen bei Konventionsverletzungen mit Individualbeschwerden (›communications‹) an das ACCC wenden können. So hat zuletzt die Umwelt-NGO ›ClientEarth‹ vor dem ACCC erreichen können, dass die Europäische Union die Verordnung (EG) Nr. 1367/2006 (»Aarhus-Verordnung«) in wesentlichen Teilen ändern musste. Florian Zeitner beschreibt das einzigartig ausgestaltete Überwachungsverfahren, in dessen Zentrum das ACCC steht, in umfassender Weise. Eine besondere Berücksichtigung erfährt die Darstellung des von ›ClientEarth‹ und anderen angestoßenen Verfahrens, dessen Kontroversen als Fall 32 (Part II) bekannt geworden sind. Die ab dem 29.04.2023 vollständig geltenden Änderungen der Aarhus-Verordnung werden umfänglich eingeordnet.
Hypocrisy and Human Rights examines what human rights pressure does when it does not work. Repressive states with absolutely no intention of complying with their human rights obligations often change course dramatically in response to international pressure. They create toothless commissions, permit but then obstruct international observers' visits, and pass showpiece legislation while simultaneously bolstering their repressive capacity.
Covering debates over transitional justice in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Cambodia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and other countries, Kate Cronin-Furman investigates the diverse ways in which repressive states respond to calls for justice from human rights advocates, UN officials, and Western governments who add their voices to the victims of mass atrocities to demand accountability. She argues that although international pressure cannot elicit compliance in the absence of domestic motivations to comply, the complexity of the international system means that there are multiple audiences for both human rights behavior and advocacy and that pressure can produce valuable results through indirect paths.
The Additional Protocols to the 1949 Geneva Conventions remain a landmark in the development of international humanitarian law. The first two Additional Protocols were adopted by states in 1977. These protocols encompass the rules governing the treatment and protection of those in the power of an enemy, as well as the conduct of hostilities. Crucially, they address non-international armed conflicts and wars of national liberation. In 2005, a third additional protocol designating an additional distinctive humanitarian emblem was adopted in controversial circumstances.
The Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions in Context interprets the key rules and issues of the Additional Protocols and considers their application and implementation over the past forty years. Taking a thematic approach, the book examines subjects including the protection of women, armed non-state actors, relief operations, and prohibited weapons. Each chapter discusses the pertinence of existing laws, the challenges raised by the rules in the Additional Protocols, and what more could be done to better protect civilians. This book also considers whether new technologies, such as offensive cyber operations and autonomous weapons, need new treaty rules to regulate their application in armed conflict.
This book examines whether international agreements between non-state actors can be identified as a source of international law using objective criteria. It asks whether, beyond Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, there is a system of rules, processes, beliefs or semantics by which these agreements can be objectively identified as a source of international law. Departing from the more usual state-centric analysis, it adopts postmodern legal positivism as its analytical tool. This allows for the reality that international law-making takes place in subjective social landscapes. To test the effectiveness of this approach, it is applied to agreements between petroleum agencies and corporations which allow two or more states to exploit disputed resources across boundaries looking in particular at arrangements involving China, Vietnam and the Philippines. By so doing it illustrates an alternative way that states can manage disputes, without having to resort to conflict. It will appeal to both scholars and practitioners of public international law, as well as civil servants.
Staaten greifen zunehmend auf militärische Gewalt gegen nichtstaatliche Akteure zurück. Ob und wie nichtstaatliche Akteure in das Selbstverteidigungsrechtsregime einbezogen werden können, ist eine zentrale Frage des modernen Friedenssicherungsrechts. Shpetim Bajrami untersucht den völkerrechtsdogmatischen Rahmen, beleuchtet die methodischen Anforderungen an einen Rechtswandel und wertet anhand der entwickelten Maßstäbe die Staatenpraxis – insbesondere mit Blick auf die unwilling or unable-Doktrin – aus.
The latest issue of the Nordic Journal of Human Rights (Vol. 40, no. 2, 2022) is out. Contents include:
The latest issue of the ICSID Review: Foreign Investment Law Journal (Vol. 37, no. 3, Fall 2022) is out. Contents include:
The latest issue of the Journal of World Intellectual Property (Vol. 25, no. 3, November 2022) is out. Contents include:
Under the law of armed conflict, no entity is accountable for lawful acts in war that cause harm, and accountability mechanisms for unlawful acts (like war crimes) rarely create a right to compensation for victims. Accordingly, states now regularly create bespoke institutions, like the proposed International Claims Commission for Ukraine, to resolve mass claims associated with international crises. While helpful for specific and politically popular populations, these one-off institutions have limited jurisdiction and thus limited effect. Creating an international “war torts” regime—which would establish route to compensation for civilians harmed in armed conflict—would better address this accountability gap for all wartime victims.
This Article is the first attempt to map out the questions and considerations that must be navigated to construct a war torts regime. With the overarching aim of increasing the likelihood of victim compensation, it considers (1) the respective benefits of international tribunals, claims commissions, victims’ funds, domestic courts, and hybrid systems as institutional homes; (2) appropriate claimants and defendants; and (3) the elements of a war torts claim, including the necessary level and type of harm, the preferable liability and causation standards, possible substantive and procedural affirmative defenses, and potential remedies.
Domestic law has long recognized that justice often requires a tort remedy as well as criminal liability; it is past time for international law to do so as well. By describing how to begin implementing a new war torts regime to complement the law of state responsibility and international criminal law, this Article provides a blueprint for building a comprehensive accountability legal regime for all civilian harms in armed conflict.
The latest volume of the Israel Yearbook on Human Rights (Vol. 52, 2022) is out. Contents include:
The latest issue of the Journal of International Peacekeeping (Vol. 25, no. 3, 2022) is out. Contents include:
Volume 426 of the
Recueil des Cours, Collected Courses of the Hague Academy of International
Law
is out. Contents include:
