In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Books

15 Nov

[Dr Erin Pobjie is Assistant Professor at Essex Law School and a Senior Research Affiliate at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law. She serves as co-Rapporteur of the International Law Association’s Committee on the Use of Force.] The author writes here in her personal capacity. Amidst the shadows cast by current global events, there is solace in...

|
14 Nov

[Alejandro Chehtman is Dean and Professor of Law at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella.] Prohibited Force (CUP, 2024) addresses a neglected issue in International Law, namely, the scope of the prohibition to use force. That this is a neglected issue might seem unexpected, given that this rule has been appropriately termed a “cardinal principle”, and one of the “cornerstones” of the international...

|
14 Nov

[James A. Green is Professor of Public International Law at the University of the West of England, Bristol, UK ,co-rapporteur of the International Law Association’s Use of Force Committee and a former editor-in-chief of the Journal on the Use of Force and International Law. His most recent book is Collective Self-Defence in International Law (CUP, 2024).] Pål Wrange once wrote that...

|
13 Nov

[Andrew Clapham is Professor of International Law at the Geneva Graduate Institute and the author of "War"] During Dr Pobjie’s book launch at the Geneva Academy we discussed some of the contemporary challenges facing those working to ensure respect for the international law on prohibited force. It is obvious that states are not willing to take the necessary steps to deal...

|
13 Nov

[Tomohiro Mikanagi is an Ambassador/Deputy-Permanent Representative of the Japanese Permanent Mission to the UN and Ambassador-at-Large for Cooperation on International Law. He is a Former Legal Advisor of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and former visiting fellow of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, Cambridge.] The following comments are made in the author’s personal capacity According to Erin Pobjie, “a ’use of...

|
12 Nov

[Adil Ahmad Haque is a Professor of Law and Judge Jon O. Newman Scholar at Rutgers Law School. His first book, Law and Morality at War, was recently published by Oxford University Press.] Erin Pobjie’s Prohibited Force is an extraordinary book. Its combination of theoretical sophistication and empirical rigor is both striking and rare. While some readers may be tempted to skip to the later chapters, which set...

|
11 Nov

[Claus Kreß is a Professor of Criminal Law and Public International Law, the Chair for German and International Criminal Law, and Director of the Institute of International Peace and Security Law at the University of Cologne. He formerly Served in the German Federal Ministry of Justice.] In para. 253 of its 19 July 2024 Advisory Opinion in Legal Consequences from the Policies...

|
11 Nov

[Alonso Gurmendi is Fellow in Human Rights and Politics at LSE and Contributor Editor at Opinio Juris] At Opinio Juris we are extremely happy to present the present online symposium on friend-of-the-blog, Erin Pobjie’s recent book, Prohibited Force: The Meaning of ‘Use of Force’ in International Law (available on open access here). In this fascinating contribution to the law on the use of force, Erin addresses...

|
23 Aug

[Mark A. Drumbl is Class of 1975 Alumni Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University. Barbora Holá is Professor in Empirical Legal Studies of International Criminal Justice at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.] Even the journey can be the destination…Mňága a Žďorp, Czech rock band Writing this book, as we note in its opening pages, lifted us to many places and spaces, physically...

and |
22 Aug

[Dr. Mia Swart is Visiting Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand Law School] Informers Up Close focuses almost exclusively on informers in the context of Communist Czechoslovakia. Drumbl and Holá state explicitly that, but for a sideways glance here and there, the book is not comparative in nature. It zooms in on individuals that informed to the secret police or...

|
21 Aug

[Nesam McMillan is an Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and author of Imagining the International: Crime, Justice and the Promise of Community (2020)] In their new book, Drumbl and Holá offer a meditative scholarly inquiry into the practice, motivations and social significance of informing. They invite the reader to better appreciate the everydayness of informing (p....

|
20 Aug

[Saira Mohamed is Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley] Mark Drumbl and Barbora Holá’s fascinating Informers Up Close: Stories from Communist Prague offers a rigorous and engrossing account of the lives of informers in Czechoslovakia and the reckoning that comes for them after the fall of Communism. The book gives the reader so much to grapple with and...

|