In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Critical Approaches

16 Apr

[Alonso Gurmendi Dunkelberg is Lecturer in International Relations at King’s College London] Carsten Stahn’s Confronting Colonial Objects: Histories, Legalities, and Access to Culture is a fantastic volume that deserves wide readership. International law’s material turn has been the less discussed of all the recent turns – the historical turn, the linguistic turn, etc. The book is therefore an innovative and refreshing take on international law and, as...

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16 Apr

[Carsten Stahn is Professor of International Criminal Law and Global Justice at Leiden University and Queen’s University Belfast] The debate on restitution and return of stolen or looted cultural objects is as old as humanity. In contrast to return of Nazi-looted art, governed inter alia by the Washington Principles, cultural takings in the colonial era have received limited structural attention. The debate has been dominated by...

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16 Apr

The restitution and return of colonial objects is one of the most important sites of debate over engagement with the colonial past. It forms an integral part of claims of reparation for colonial injustice, which have been voiced in the UN for decades (e.g., Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow’s famous Plea for the Return of Irreplaceable Cultural Heritage to Those Who Created It)....

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05 Apr

“I can’t stand [Netanyahu]. He’s a liar.” “You’re tired of him; what about me? I have to deal with him every day.”Sarkozy and Obama in conversation about the Israeli prime minister Justice hinges on the voices heard, whether in courts or across media platforms. It also depends on the credibility afforded to these same speakers. In legal systems, we presume truthfulness, believing...

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16 Dec

[Alonso Gurmendi Dunkelberg is a Lecturer in International Relations at King’s College London’s Department of War Studies. I wish to thank Ntina Tzouvala for her comments on previous versions of this post] For the past few months, in the context of the horrific attacks of October 7th and the subsequent Israeli military retaliation, it has become almost a ritualised incantation for...

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28 Nov

I don't think there's any part of international law that isn't integrated and fully embedded within capitalism.Margot Salomon Margot Salomon is a sought-after voice in the field of international law. She has a long history of challenging the conventional wisdom upon which international economic law is structured. I first encountered her work during my PhD and have been an avid reader...

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16 Oct

[Dr Letizia Lo Giacco is Assistant Professor of Public International Law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies of Leiden University] The International Court of Justice (ICJ, ‘the Court’) has recently heard the preliminary objections in the case Allegations of Genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Ukraine v Russian Federation: 32 States...

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10 Oct

If you're not careful, [international lawyers] will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.Malcolm X The Power of Mythmaking  Origin stories are always more fiction than fact, more myth than reality. At times, origin stories serve to redeem a dubious past, while at others they enable us to justify an unwelcoming...

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18 Sep

Travelling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller. Ibn Battuta From its vantage point atop the Kasbah in Tangier, Morocco, the Ibn Battuta museum overlooks the meeting point of the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea—a vista coloured by myriad beginnings and a few endings as well. More of a memorial than a museum, the site...

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23 Jun

[Moritz Koenig obtained his PhD in law from SOAS, University of London and is currently working on a research project on the history of Dutch colonial law schools.] It has often been argued that international law and international legal scholarship are incapable of reforming themselves. David Kennedy has argued that supposed renewal in legal argument is usually simply a recycling of old ideas and...

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16 Dec

[Tamás Hoffmann is an Associate Professor at Corvinus University of Budapest and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Legal Studies, Budapest] Introduction – A Region without Agency Eastern Europe has a strange place in academic discourse. While the region has traditionally been rife with both internal and international conflicts, making it an ideal object of scientific enquiry, the countries of the...

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