Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Hak: Image-Based Evidence in International Criminal Prosecutions: Charting a Path Forward

Jonathan W. Hak
has published Image-Based Evidence in International Criminal Prosecutions: Charting a Path Forward (Oxford Univ. Press 2024). Here's the abstract:

The use of image-based evidence in international criminal prosecutions is at a tipping point. In his pioneering book on the topic, Jonathan W. Hak, KC provides critical insight into the authentication and interpretation of images, setting out how images can be effectively used in the search for the truth. While images can convey vital information more efficiently and effectively than words alone, the biases of photographers, the use of image-altering technology, and the generation of images with artificial intelligence can lead to mischief and injustice. In this context, images must be effectively authenticated and interpreted to establish their true meaning.

Addressing the growing need for visual literacy, Jonathan W. Hak's Image-Based Evidence in International Criminal Prosecutions systematically explores the value of images as probative and didactic evidence in international criminal law. It analyses existing challenges in the creation, acquisition, processing, and use of image-based evidence, making recommendations for how those challenges might be addressed. In particular, the book investigates emerging technical frontiers in image-based evidence and the potential uses for advanced visual representations like virtual reality, immersive virtual environments, and augmented reality. Ultimately, the book argues that advanced visual representations may have sufficient probative value and proposes cautious parameters for their application in the international courtroom.

Monday, March 25, 2024

New Issue: Archiv des Völkerrechts

The latest issue of Archiv des Völkerrechts (Vol. 61, no. 4, 2023) is out. Contents include:
  • Nachruf
    • Anja Seibert-Fohr, Thomas Buergenthal (1934–2023)
  • Abhandlungen
    • Shu-Perng Hwang, Von der Verrechtlichung zur Vervölkerrechtlichung?
    • Christina Eckes, Roda Verheyen, & Piotr Krajewski, Treaty-Making by Afterthought
    • Kristin Y. Albrecht, Der Wert der Natur im Völkerrecht
    • Patrick R. Hoffmann, Das Staatsangehörigkeitsrecht im Lichte von Art. 8 EMRK

Saturday, March 23, 2024

New Issue: Journal of Human Rights and the Environment

The latest issue of the Journal of Human Rights and the Environment (Vol. 15, no. 1, February 2024) is out. Contents include:
  • Floor Fleurke, Michael Leach, Hans Lindahl, Phillip Paiement, Marie Petersmann, & Han Somsen, Constitutionalizing in the Anthropocene
  • Frédéric Neyrat, Towards a planetary coalition (a Preamble)
  • David Chandler, The Black Anthropocene: and the end(s) of the constitutionalizing project
  • Floor Fleurke, Reintroduction of large carnivores in Europe: a case study on frictions between rules of law and rules of nature
  • Johan Horst, Entanglements: the ambivalent role of law in the Anthropocene

Forsythe: The Contemporary International Committee of the Red Cross: Challenges, Changes, Controversies

David P. Forsythe
(Univ. of Nebraska, Lincoln - Political Science) has published The Contemporary International Committee of the Red Cross: Challenges, Changes, Controversies (Cambridge Univ. Press 2024). Here's the abstract:
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was founded in 1863 and is often considered the gold standard in humanitarian action. Despite its many positive achievements over more than 150 years, some former ICRC officials believe that the organization is now in decline because of a series of recent policy choices. Their view is that the organization has undermined its reputation for independent and neutral humanitarian action, while growing too fast and too large, which has weakened its reputation for quick, tightly focused, and effective action in the field. David P. Forsythe revisits the ICRC policy decisions of recent decades and suggests that the organization is not in fatal decline, but that it does need to reconsider some of its policies at the margins. Though some errors have been made and some corrections are in order, Forsythe argues that its obituary is premature.

Friday, March 22, 2024

Peters & Sparks: The Individual in International Law

Anne Peters
(Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law) & Tom Sparks (Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law) have published The Individual in International Law (Oxford Univ. Press 2024). This is an open access title. The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:

Shifts across the corpus of international law have brought the international legal system into a closer alignment with the interests of the individual. This has led to a great and growing interest in the roles and status of individuals in international law, and provided new impulses for debate.

The Individual in International Law is an exploration of what is described as the humanisation of international law. It examines how international law has accommodated individuals, and how individual status, rights, and obligations have become denser and more important in the international legal system. Split into two parts, the book analyses the humanisation of international law in different historical periods and from various theoretical perspectives. The first part focuses on the historical evolution of international law, exploring how the interests of individuals have shaped the development of the legal system from antiquity to 1945, providing a counterpoint to State-centric readings of international law's history. The second part contains theoretical debates, critical approaches, and interdisciplinary investigations, offering perspectives from ius positivism and ius naturalism, Marxism, TWAIL, feminism, global law, global constitutionalism, law and economics, and legal anthropology. The book aims to stimulate further research on the humanisation and dehumanisation of new fields ranging from the ius contra bellum to climate law. The editors' introduction and conclusion frame the contributions, draw together their findings, and address critiques comprehensively.

Alvarez & Bauder: Women's Property Rights Under CEDAW

José E. Alvarez
(New York Univ. - Law) & Judith Bauder (European Univ. Institute) have published Women's Property Rights Under CEDAW (Oxford Univ. Press 2024). Here's the abstract:

The gender gap with respect to wealth and property is a chasm. For over 40 years, the leading international treaty body on women's rights, the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (the CEDAW Committee), has been generating jurisprudence interpreting CEDAW's obligations that states protect the equal rights of women in relationships; family rights, including inheritance; rights to land, adequate housing, financial credit, social benefits, intellectual property, and other economic rights dependent on equal access to justice.

This book uses the CEDAW Committee's own texts: its General Recommendations, Views in response to communications, Concluding Observations in response to State reports, and Reports on Inquiries. The book finds that CEDAW's vision of what it means for women to have equal rights to property is dramatically different from what many scholars consider to be the leading source of "the international law of property," namely the case law generated on behalf of foreign investors' property under the international investment regime. CEDAW's vision is also more far-reaching and nuanced than the gender equality approaches followed by international financial institutions like the World Bank, whose gender equality rhetoric exceeds its actual on-the-ground development efforts.

While CEDAW's property rights converge with those protected under other international human rights regimes, they remain unique in addressing the underlying patriarchal structures, stereotypes, and forms of intersectional discrimination that have undermined the fundamental rights of women and girls and led to their continued impoverishment all around the world. This book concludes that CEDAW's re-engendering of property--although a flawed and evolving work in progress--has the potential to be transformative for the half of the planet who is more likely to be treated as property than to have any.

New Issue: International Journal of Human Rights

The latest issue of the International Journal of Human Rights (Vol. 28, no. 3, 2024) is out. Contents include:
  • Anticipation under the Human Right to Science
    • Samantha Besson, Anticipation under the human right to science: concepts, stakes and specificities
    • William A. Schabas, Codifying the human right to science
    • Rosemary Hill, Anticipatory co-governance for human rights to sciences across knowledge systems
    • Yvonne Donders & Monika Plozza, Look before you leap: states’ prevention and anticipation duties under the right to science
    • Camila Perruso, Anticipation under the human right to science and under other social and cultural rights
    • Rumiana Yotova, Anticipatory duties under the human right to science and international biomedical law
    • Anna-Maria Hubert, Between Scylla and Charybdis: the implications of the human right to science for regulating the harms and benefits of environmental science and technology
    • Amrei Müller, Anticipation under the human right to science (HRS): sketching the public institutional framework. The example of scientific responses to the appearance of SARS-CoV-2
    • Helle Porsdam & Sebastian Porsdam Mann, Anticipation and diplomacy (with)in science: activating the right to science for science diplomacy

New Issue: Transnational Legal Theory

The latest issue of Transnational Legal Theory (Vol. 14, no. 4, 2023) is out. Contents include:
  • Law’s Agency in Global Governance: Inquires into Algorithmic Governance and Finance
    • Afroditi Marketou & Joana Mendes, Law’s agency in global governance: inquiries into algorithmic governance and finance
    • Afroditi Marketou & Joana Mendes, Making it work: law’s agency in global governance
    • Raphaële Xenidis, Beyond bias: algorithmic machines, discrimination law and the analogy trap
    • Peer Zumbansen, Runaway train? Decentralised finance and the myth of the private platform economy
    • Guido Comparato, The transnational and the local in the comparative law of finance: technics, politics, and the functions of commercial law
    • Pascale Cornut St-Pierre, Securitisation from mortgages to sustainability: circulating techniques and the financialisation of legal knowledge
    • Pavlina Hubkova, Soft rulemaking through multi-level administrative practice: replicating the aesthetics of law

New Issue: Military Law and the Law of War Review / Revue de Droit Militaire et de Droit de la Guerre

The latest issue of the Military Law and the Law of War Review / Revue de Droit Militaire et de Droit de la Guerre (Vol. 61, no. 2, 2023) is out. Contents include:
  • Lindsay Moir, Reserving the objectionable: reprisals against enemy civilians, the United Kingdom and 1977 Additional Protocol I
  • Martha M. Bradley, Revisiting and reimagining scholarly approaches: assessing the notion of intensity in complex non-international armed conflicts through aggregation
  • Anna Rosalie Greipl, Artificial intelligence in urban warfare: opportunities to enhance the protection of civilians?

New Issue: International Criminal Law Review

The latest issue of the International Criminal Law Review (Vol. 24, no. 1, 2024) is out. Contents include:
  • Special Issue: Lights and Shadows of the Ongwen Case at the International Criminal Court, Part 2
    • Adina-Loredana Nistor, Culture and the Illusion of Self-Evidence: Spiritual Beliefs in the Ongwen Trial
    • Christelle Molima Bameka, The Post-Ongwen Case Period and the Reconciliation Process in Northern Uganda: Local Communities as a Site of Knowledge
    • Giovanna M Frisso, Children Born of War: The Recognition of Children Born of War as Victims in the Ongwen Case
    • Juan-Pablo Perez-Leon-Acevedo and Fabio Ferraz de Almeida, Ongwen and the Legitimacy of the ICC

New Issue: Nordic Journal of Human Rights

The latest issue of the Nordic Journal of Human Rights (Vol. 42, no. 1, 2024) is out. Contents include:
  • Johan Karlsson Schaffer & Isabel Schoultz, Introduction: Legal Mobilization in Nordic Civil Society
  • Johan Karlsson Schaffer, Malcolm Langford & Mikael Rask Madsen, An Unlikely Rights Revolution: Legal Mobilization in Scandinavia Since the 1970s
  • Michael Molavi, Collective Legal Mobilisation: Exploring Class Actions in Sweden and Canada
  • Kristin Bergtora Sandvik, Cultural Heritage and Legal Mobilisation After Terror: July 22 and the Battle for Y
  • Isabel Schoultz & Heraclitos Muhire, Mobilizing the Rights of Migrant Workers: Swedish Trade Unions’ Engagement with Law and the Courts
  • Stine Piilgaard Porner Nielsen & Ole Hammerslev, Young and Experiencing Homelessness: Opportunities for Mobilizing Rights

Thursday, March 21, 2024

Webinar: The WTO Ministerial Conference and the Future of International Trade

On March 28, 2024, the Institute for European Policymaking at Bocconi University will host a webinar on "The WTO Ministerial Conference and the Future of International Trade." Details are here.

Pavlopoulos: The Identity of Governments in International Law

Niko Pavlopoulos
has published The Identity of Governments in International Law (Oxford Univ. Press 2024). Here's the abstract:

The Identity of Governments in International Law provides a comprehensive account of the international legal regulation of governmental status. It examines the fundamental conceptual aspects of the government of a state in international law, before analysing the law concerning the recognition of governments and the criteria for governmental status under customary international law. It also explores matters concerning the identity of governments in the context of international organizations.

Presenting the positive international legal framework concerning the regulation of governmental status, the book engages extensively with historical and contemporary examples, such as the rival governments of Cambodia (1970-75; 1979-89, 1997-98); the recognition of the Taliban (1996-2001; and again beginning in 2021); and the contested identity of Venezuela's president (beginning in 2019). Given the pre-eminence of states in international law and the importance of governments to the representation of states, the systematic examination of practice grounded in solid conceptual foundations renders this book a useful reference point for scholars and practitioners in all fields of international law and beyond.

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

New Issue: Netherlands International Law Review

The latest issue of the Netherlands International Law Review (Vol. 70, no. 3, December 2023) is out. Contents include:
  • Meng Wang, The Unprecedented Ramsar Resolution: Ukrainian Wetlands Protection in Armed Conflict
  • Doudou Huang, World Pandemic Control in International Law: Through a Transboundary Harm Perspective
  • Trinh Thị Hồng Nguyễn, Examining the Breadth and Conformity with Global Standards of Vietnamese Courts’ Exclusive Jurisdiction in International Commercial Contracts Pertaining to Immovable Property Within Vietnam

Call for Papers: An Abolition Movement for International Criminal Law?

A call for papers has been issued for a workshop on "An Abolition Movement for International Criminal Law?", to be held at RMIT University Melbourne (Graduate School of Business and Law), in person and online, on June 27-28, 2024. The call is here. The deadline is March 24, 2024.

Workshop: Surviving Peer Review: from Submission to Publication

On April 8, 2024, the Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights will host a workshop on "Surviving Peer Review: from Submission to Publication." The workshop is geared towards early career researchers. Speakers include: Katharine Fortin, Yvonne Donders, Anja Mihr, and Elina Pirjatannieni. Details are here.

Brewster: Arbitrating Corruption

Rachel Brewster (Duke Univ. - Law) has published Arbitrating Corruption (Washington Univ. Law Review, Vol. 101, 2024). Here's the abstract:
One of the most controversial issues in international investment law is how arbitral panels should deal with investments tainted by corruption at their inception. The current practice of investment arbitrators is to refuse to hear investors’ claims when bribery allegations are substantiated. A recent wave of scholarship has attacked this “corruption defense,” arguing that the practice unfairly harms investors and encourages governments to maintain corrupt practices. This Essay responds to that scholarship, arguing that the current approach is the best policy choice on balance. The Essay analyzes three core policy questions at the heart of the debate: Would eliminating the corruption defense lead governments to adopt meaningful anti-corruption reform? Does corrupt foreign investment improve economic and political conditions in the host states to a sufficient degree to warrant investment protection? Do the governments establishing investment treaties that set the contractual terms between states want investment protections for corrupt investment? In answering all three questions in the negative and placing the issue within the broader context of transnational anti-corruption law, this Essay provides the theoretical foundation necessary for supporting the current practice.

Workshop: Transnational litigation networks: comparative regard at collective pursuit of justice

On March 27, 2024, the Institute of Advanced Study and the Democracy Institut of Central European University will hold a hybrid workshop on "Transnational litigation networks: comparative regard at collective pursuit of justice." Details are here.

Lange: Treaties in Parliaments and Courts: The Two Other Voices

Felix Lange
(Universität zu Köln - Law) has published Treaties in Parliaments and Courts: The Two Other Voices (Edward Elgar Publishing 2024). This is the latest volume in the Elgar International Law Series. Here's the abstract:

Highlighting the close relationship between foreign relations law and international law, this impressive book places parliament and domestic courts’ engagement with treaties at the heart of its inquiry. It presents a timely assessment of the impact that different rules of constitutional law have on parliamentary and judicial approaches to treaties in four different states (Germany, India, South Africa and the US), thereby incorporating valuable comparative dimensions.

With intellectual rigour, Felix Lange demonstrates how diverse conceptions of foreign relations law affect whether parliaments act as promoters, shapers or translators of human rights treaties, the Rome Statute to the International Criminal Court, and climate change treaties. Lange not only analyses the ways in which domestic courts rely on treaties through consistent interpretation and direct application, but also how they may dismiss treaty provisions as non-self-executing or employ the concept of non-justiciability in matters of foreign affairs. Ultimately, Lange embraces the view that parliaments and courts are being increasingly heard and suggests that their voices should become even louder.

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Call for Papers: Interest Group Workshops at the 2024 ESIL Annual Conference

In the context of the 19th ESIL Annual Conference in Vilnius, ESIL Interest Groups will hold their workshops on September 4, 2024. Here are the calls for those workshops:

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Call for Papers: 81st ILA Conference

A call for papers has been issued for the 81st International Law Association Conference, to take place June 25-28, 2024, in Athens and hosted by the ILA's Hellenic Branch. The theme is: "International Law in a Fluid World/Le droit international dans un monde en mouvement." The call is here.

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Inaugural Issue: Chinese Journal of Transnational Law

The inaugural issue of the Chinese Journal of Transnational Law (Vol. 1, no. 1, March 2024) is out. Contents include:
  • Ignacio de la Rasilla, Who is Afraid of Transnational Law Journals? An Editorial
  • Jie (Jeanne) Huang, Consensus and Compulsion: The Extra-territorial Effect of Chinese Judicial and Specially-Invited Mediation in Common Law Countries
  • Ilias Bantekas, Procedural Estoppel in International Commercial Arbitration Proceedings
  • Xiangzhuang Sun, The China International Commercial Court: Establishment and Development in a Global Context
  • Zhen Chen, Consumer Jurisdiction and Choice of Law Rules in European and Chinese Private International Law

Lecture: Nouwen on "Intra-State Peace Agreements – Prose, Poetry, Legal Instrument?"

Tomorrow, March 13, 2024, from 6-7 pm CET, Sarah Nouwen (EUI/Cambridge) will given the inaugural lecture of the TuLaw - Tübingen Lecture Series on the Laws of War. The topic is: "Intra-State Peace Agreements – Prose, Poetry, Legal Instrument?" Please send an email to: jessica.oheim@student.uni-tuebingen.de to register. The Zoom link and login data will be sent to those registered ahead of the event.

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Lecture: Kennedy and Koskenniemi on "Of Law and the World"

On the March 11, 2024, David Kennedy (Harvard Univ.) and Martti Koskenniemi (Academy of Finland) will deliver a lecture (on zoom) as the inaugural Wuhan University School of Law Global Law Distinguished Lecture Series, with the participation of Ignacio de la Rasilla (Wuhan Univ.), Qu Wensheng (East China Univ. of Political Science and Law), Jiangyu Wang (Hong Kong City Univ.), Ryan Martinez Mitchell (Chinese Univ. of Hong Kong), and Maria Carrai (NYU-Shanghai). The topic is: "Of Law and the World." Details are here.

Call for Papers: Double Standards and International Law

The Berlin Potsdam Research Group "The International Rule of Law - Rise or Decline?" has issued a call for papers for a workshop on "Double Standards and International Law," to take place July 15-16, 2024, at the Freie Universität Berlin. The call is here.