History of International Law

Over the coming five days, we are happy to host a book symposium on Boyd van Dijk’s new book, Preparing for War: The Making of the Geneva Conventions, published by Oxford University Press. In addition to comments from van Dijk himself, we have the honor to hear from this list of renowned scholars and practitioners: Eyal Benvenisti, Andrew Clapham, Doreen Lustig, Katharine Fortin, Karin Loevy...

Announcements ABILA - Crisis in Ukraine: International Law and Accountability: The ABILA ICC Committee is pleased to co-sponsor a virtual panel on Crisis in Ukraine: International Law and Accountability on Thursday, March 31 at 12:15-1:45 pm ET. Given the tragic outbreak of war in Ukraine and Russia’s flagrant violation of the UN Charter and ongoing commission of crimes, this panel will...

What is the difference between a Marxist and a TWAILer (except for the class element)?Julia Emtseva, Research Fellow, Max Planck Institute* Posed on twitter, this question about Third World Approaches to International Law triggered a flurry of responses. 'Many TWAILers are grounded in historical materialism'; 'it’s about the ‘ultimate’ power relations…to TWAIL, it’s empire-colony, or race'; and 'most TWAIL draws heavily...

A Comment on Shiri Krebs’ chapter “The Invisible Frames Affecting Wartime Investigation: Legal Epistemology, Metaphors, and Cognitive Biases” [Emiliano J. Buis is a Professor of Public International Law at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and at the Central University of the Province of Buenos Aires (UNICEN), and researcher at the National Research Council for Science and Technology (CONICET)] Introduction Shiri...

Introduction to the Symposium on Andrea Bianchi and Moshe Hirsch (eds), International Law’s Invisible Frames: Social Cognition and Knowledge Production in International Legal Processes (OUP 2021) [Alexandra Hofer is an assistant professor in public international law at Utrecht University and affiliated researcher at the Ghent Rolin-Jaequemyns International Law Institute (GRILI)] In their thought-triggering project, Andrea Bianchi and Moshe Hirsch bring together sixteen chapters that, each in...

Recently, US President Joe Biden gave a press conference where he was asked about the US’ approach to Latin America. In an I-can’t-believe-he-actually-said-this moment, Biden responded as follows: “We used to talk about, when I was a kid, in college, about ‘America’s Backyard’. It’s not America’s backyard. Everything south of the Mexican border is ‘America’s Front Yard’. And we’re equal...

Call for Papers Call for abstracts - International Law Association British Branch Spring Conference: On Friday, 29 April 2022, the University of Surrey will host the annual Spring Conference in hybrid mode on the theme of ‘International Law and Climate Change’. The Conference will feature a mixture of invited and selected speakers on the following panels: impact of rising sea levels...

Call for Papers Call for Papers - South Asian Postgraduate Law Conference 2022: The first SAPLawC’22,  to be held virtually on 25th and 26th November 2022 aims to bring together research scholars working in the area of legal issues that are of concern within the South Asian countries. The purpose of the Conference is to encourage the young research scholars to present their research before...

When Telford Taylor was planning the trial programme for the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMTs), he was faced with a dilemma concerning the Nazis' pre-war mistreatment -- legal and physical -- of Jews and members of other despised groups. Unlike the London Charter, Control Council Law No. 10, the NMTs' enabling statute, did not require crimes against humanity to be committed...

Call for Papers Call for Submission - Trade, Law, and Development: The Board of Editors of Trade, Law and Development is pleased to invite original, unpublished manuscripts for publication in the Special Issue of the Journal (Vol. XIV, No. 1) in the form of ‘Articles’, ‘Notes’, ‘Comments’ and ‘Book Reviews’, focusing on the theme “Looking Ahead: Addressing the Challenges Faced by the International Trade Regime”. Manuscripts...

[Katharine Fortin is an Associate Professor at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht University. She is the founder and co-editor of the Armed Groups and International Law blog.] [Andrew Clapham is Professor of International Law at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, a member of the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, and an Honorary Member of the International Commission of...

Part I set out the fundamentals of the debate, explaining that a key part of the contextualist critique of Orford’s view of legal history centres on the difference between doing history of international law and using history in international law. This is where the two sides get stuck, because Orford presents the TWAIL critique as “correctives to problems with earlier...