General

HILJ Online Symposium: On the Love of Hybrids and Technicalities

[Martins Paparinskis, DPhil (Oxon), is a Lecturer in Law at the University College London.] This post is part of the HILJ Online Symposium: Volumes 54(2) & 55(1). Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. I am grateful to the UCL LLM class of International Law of Foreign Investment for clarifying my thinking on some of these matters. A natural reaction to such an elegant and erudite article is to offer unqualified praise to its author. While not easily, this reaction should be resisted, as likely to lead to an uninspiring symposium contribution. Therefore, while fully acknowledging the great merit of the argument, I will focus instead on three points where I find the article less than entirely persuasive: (1) the analytical perspective of hybrid theory; (2) the application of law of State responsibility in investment arbitration, as per Italy v Cuba; and (3) the operation of inter-State investment arbitration, as per Ecuador v US. (It is only fair to say that there are very few points on which I actually disagree with Anthea Roberts, therefore I will be mostly clutching at exaggerated straw-mannish arguments.) I. Depoliticisation, fictions, hybrids, and banks of fog I will start with a trite, but hopefully not an entirely irrelevant observation. Contemporary international lawyers, unlike the lawyers of previous generations, are in possession of a reasonably complete set of rules and vocabulary on sources and responsibility in international law, which should not easily be thought to be inadequate for articulating and addressing our concerns. The different concepts and perspectives that are sometimes introduced into the legal arguments instead may be helpful, but they can also be superfluous or misleading. In investment arbitration, one example of what I have in mind is ‘depoliticisation’: a concept that (at its best) means everything for everybody, with little independent analytical value, but at its worst may be significantly misleading, erroneously suggesting with significant persuasive force that certain positive rules have or have not been created, or certain legal solutions would or would not fit the existing regime (I have contributed my two pennies here, and it seems to me that Roberts would agree, see pp 11-6). Another example, also referred to in the article (pp 32-3, 38-9), is ‘fiction’ (as ‘the fiction of diplomatic protection’). It may be that I am missing something here, but (even after rereading the leading article on the issue by Annemarieke Vermeer-Künzli) it is not obvious to me that the dutiful citations to ancient writers and cases add much to the most basic of propositions: States can create primary obligations and secondary rules of admissibility with any content whatsoever, that is precisely what they have done with (respectively) rules addressing treatment of their nationals and diplomatic protection, and there is little more to it.

HILJ Online Symposium: Volumes 54(2) & 55(1)

This post is part of the HILJ Online Symposium: Volumes 54(2) & 55(1). Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. The HILJ Online Symposium is a week-long discussion by scholars and practitioners on selected print articles from the Harvard International Law Journal. The Symposium takes place on the Opinio Juris website once or twice a year...

Weekly News Wrap: Monday, March 31, 2014

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa More than one million people in South Sudan have been forced from their homes during more than three months of ongoing fighting, with conditions continuing to worsen, the UN has warned. Senegal closed its land border with Guinea on Saturday to try to prevent the spread of the...

Weekend Roundup: March 22-28, 2014

This week on Opinio Juris, Kevin accused the ICC of fiddling while Libya burns, and relayed news in the Libyan press that Al-Senussi's and Gaddafi's trial will start mid-April. He also analysed whether Luis Moreno-Ocampo's possible representation of LRA victims at the ICC would amount to a conflict of interest. Roger followed up on his earlier post about using trade remedies to enforce arbitration awards to...

Welcome to the Blogosphere “Internationally Wrongful Memes” (!?)

A tumblr of international law humor. No, not "International law is a joke." Jokes about international law. Seriously....

Russian Roulette: Firing Blanks in the Sanctions Against Russia?

As widely reported in the press last week, President Obama announced sanctions against Russian and Ukrainian officials.   On Thursday, March 20, the “blacklist” was expanded to 2 banks and 20 officials, as detailed in this press release from the US Treasury.     Separately, the EU imposed sanctions on 21 individuals, including Russian military commanders. The U.S. goals, President Obama said,...

Weekly News Wrap: Monday, March 24, 2014

Your weekly selection of international law and international relations headlines from around the world: Africa The Pentagon has reported that the Obama administration is sending about 150 Special Operations troops along with military aircraft to Uganda to help in the search for warlord Joseph Kony. Suspected Boko Haram fighters have detonated a bomb in a crowded marketplace in northeastern Nigeria killing at least...

Weekend Roundup: March 15-21, 2014

This week on Opinio Juris, we continued last week's YLS Sale Symposium with a post by Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen describing Sale's legacy as a game of cat and mouse between law and politics, a post by David Martin on the realms of policy and law in refugee protection. In a two part post (1, 2), Guy Goodwin-Gill looked at state practice preceding Sale and...