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24 Feb

[Tania Ixchel Atilano, born in Mexico City, has a Juris Doctor from the Humboldt University of Berlin. Her research interests lie in the fields of history of international humanitarian law, international criminal law and criminal law. The author kindly thanks Professor Vivianne Weng for her invaluable feedback and comments.] Due to copyright issues, the images discussed have not been reproduced here. A link...

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23 Feb

A few days ago, the European Law Institute published its final report on ecocide. The report not only provides a definition of ecocide, it also contains Model Rules for an EU Directive and a Council Decision that ELI hopes will both "contribute to the inter-institutional negotiations in the EU on the Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and...

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23 Feb

[Saparya Sood is a doctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods (Bonn, Germany). She is a lawyer qualified in India and received her postgraduate degree in law and economics as a recipient of an Erasmus Mundus scholarship. Views expressed are personal.] A New Dawn in BHR Discourse Business and Human Rights (BHR) discourse has become increasingly...

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23 Feb

[Jacob Bogart is a human rights lawyer from the United States specializing in business and human rights in Southeast Asia.] On 19 December, three women human rights defenders in Thailand went to court again to face criminal defamation charges brought by Thammakaset Co. Ltd., a Thai-owned poultry company that has filed 39 retaliatory civil and criminal lawsuits against 23 individuals since...

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22 Feb

1 Experimentation is the lifeblood of a pedagogue. Without this, our craft is at risk of going stale: the materials will become anachronistic, just as the methods will falter. Law schools, however, are not ideal sites for experimentation. Staunchly grounded in professional practice—we might say jealously guarded by the guild—the curriculum constricts space for pedagogical adventure, bounded by the demands of an absentee landowner. Law students are not...

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22 Feb

[Nurlan Mustafayev is a counsel on international legal affairs at the State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan, an instructor on public international law, and a pro bono advisor to Azerbaijani refugees on claims before the European Court of Human Rights.] Azerbaijan’s liberation of its territories from Armenia’s three-decade-long occupation in late 2020 created a new legal situation on the ground....

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17 Feb

[Mary Ellen O’Connell is the Robert and Marion Short Professor of Law and Professor of International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame. O’Connell’s research is in the areas of international law on the use of force and international legal theory.] Agatha Verdebout’s Rewriting Histories of the Use of Force belongs with Philip Allott’s Health of Nations, Martti Koskenniemi’s Gentle Civilizer of Nations, and Stephen Neff’s...

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16 Feb

[Ingo Venzke is a Professor at the University of Amsterdam.] ‘This workshop where ideals are fabricated—it seems to me just to stink of lies.’Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality (2007 [1887]), §I.14 It is a common belief that international law had little to say on the legality of the use of force before the First World War. A ‘narrative of indifference’ holds that...

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16 Feb

[Miriam Bak McKenna is Associate Professor of Law and Global Governance at Roskilde University, School of Social Science and Business. Her book Reckoning with Empire: Self-Determination in International Law (Brill) was released in December 2022.] By now it is perhaps axiomatic to assert that the historical narratives surrounding international law are rather murky at best. As the canon of texts revisiting and critiquing...

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15 Feb

[Siddharth Mallavarapu is Professor and Head of the Department of International Relations and Governance Studies at the Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence in India.] Close to a year after the commencement of the Russia-Ukraine war, there is barely anything that can be more topical and worthwhile than a closer look at the histories of international law relating to the use of force. Agatha Verdebout...

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15 Feb

[Isa Blumi is Associate Professor at the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Stockholm University.] Dr. Agatha Verdebout’s Rewriting Histories of the Use of Force (2021) charts how International Law’s founding generations of scholars sought relevance during times when the powerful adopted “the law” only when it suited their interests. By reading beyond the ‘emotional’, ‘cynical’, or ‘idealistic’ discourse that accompanied assertive claims about the...

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