Public International Law

This week, along with Völkerrechtsblog we are thrilled to co-host a symposium on Ingo Venzke and Kevin Jon Heller’s latest edited volume, Contingency in International Law: On the Possibility of Different Legal Histories (OUP 2021). Scholars and practitioners who will be contributing include: Adeel Hussain, Ntina Tzouvala, Doreen Lustig, Vidya Kumar, Kanad Bagchi, Marina Veličković and Hirofumi Oguri. The symposium will close with a rejoinder by the editors....

Events Careers Panel for Aspiring International Lawyers: The Co-Editors of the Irish Yearbook of International Law are delighted to host a Zoom careers seminar on international law careers on 23 June 2021, 14:00, Dublin time. The event is aimed at law students in Ireland but will also cover topics of interest to an international audience including LLMs and internships. Our panellists...

[The author is a Lecturer in International Humanitarian Law at Egerton University.] Introduction Contemporary armed conflicts in Africa and elsewhere continue to pose significant challenges for the legal protection of life, limb, livelihood and property of the individuals and communities caught up in those situations. Most of the unlawful conduct that typifies recent armed conflicts in Africa – including intentionally directing attacks...

[Dapo Akande, Antonio Coco, Talita Dias, Duncan B. Hollis, James O’Brien and Tsvetelina van Benthem] The Internet has allowed the dissemination of content across the globe in a matter of seconds. Recommendation algorithms, found in social media platforms and search engines, have also dangerously amplified the reach of false, misleading, and violent content (see here, here, and here). Because they are...

[Helen Stamp is a PhD candidate in the Minderoo Tech & Policy Lab at the University of Western Australia and researches concepts of control, responsibility, and accountability regarding the development and use of autonomous vehicles and autonomous weapons.] The ongoing discussions by the international community regarding the challenges posed by emerging technologies and the application of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) to the use...

[Karolina Aksamitowska is a Swansea University Research Excellence Scholar at the Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law, Swansea University, Wales, UK.] The book that is the focus of this symposium, Ensuring Respect for International Humanitarian Law, is an important contribution to international law and practice. Generating respect for international humanitarian law (IHL) is one of the most difficult challenges faced by...

Call for Papers Two-day international conference on secondary sanctions: On Thursday 2 and Friday 3 December 2021, the Ghent Rolin-Jaequemyns International Law Institute (GRILI) and the Utrecht Centre for Regulation and Enforcement in Europe (RENFORCE) will host a two-day international conference on secondary sanctions. The conference seeks to explore both the international legal framework governing such sanctions and the potential remedies to challenge them, as well as...

[Ata R. Hindi is Research Fellow in International Law, Institute of Law at Birzeit University. Twitter: @atarhindi] Eve Massingham and Annabel McConnachie’s edited volume, Ensuring Respect for International Humanitarian Law, is a meticulous and necessary contribution to the study and practice of international humanitarian law (IHL). The volume focuses on Common Article 1 (CA1) to the four Geneva Conventions (GCs), which...

Photo credit: Harold Stern The world has lost James Crawford, a luminary of international law in the truest sense of the word.  Indeed, Judge Crawford was one of the few people alive who could rightly be called a luminary of international law, or a luminary of any field at all. He was, to use Professor Iain Scobbie’s phrase, one of the...

[Dr Ray Murphy is Professor at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland Galway. ] Leanne Smith’s chapter seeks to examine the complexities posed by ensuring respect for IHL in the peacekeeping context.  It also explores the relationship between humanitarian actors and peacekeepers.  A real strength of the chapter is that much of it is written from what the author refers to on page 153 as a...

[Parisa Zangeneh is a PhD student at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland, Galway, where she is a recipient of the Hardiman Scholarship.] In 2020, the volume Ensuring Respect for International Humanitarian Law was published as part of the Routledge Research in the Law of Armed Conflict Book Series. Edited by Eve Massingham and Annabel McConnachie, the book explores the various ways in which Common Article 1 (CA1) of...

[Frédéric Mégret is a Full Professor and Dawson Scholar and co-Director of the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, Faculty of Law, McGill University.] Photo credit: AP Photo/Adel Hana Concerned member of the public (CMP): Gaza! Civilians killed! Lots of them! WAR CRIME!!! LOAC expert: Well, not really. Actually it’s much more complicated than that. Let me explain how this works...