Calls for Papers The British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) is making a worldwide Call for Papers on British Influences on International Law 1915-2015. The Institute is publishing a series of books to commemorate the centenary of the establishment in London of the Grotius Society (a forerunner of BIICL) in 1915. One of these books is on British Influences...
[Anton Moiseienko received his LL.M. from the University of Cambridge and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Queen Mary, University of London. All translations from Russian in this piece are his own. He is a citizen of Ukraine.] Few people with any background in international law would doubt that Russia’s annexation of Crimea raises serious questions of compliance with international law....
I agree with Jens' excellent post on the importance of the "unwilling or unable" standard to the US justification for legal strikes on non-state actors in Syria. I agree this action may reveal state practice supporting (or rejecting) this legal justification. I am curious whether the UK, France, or other states that may be participating in Syria strikes will embrace this theory....
The Junior International Law Scholars Association (JILSA) is holding its annual meeting on Friday, January 23, 2015, at the University of Miami School of Law. JILSA is an informal network of junior scholars at mostly American law schools who get together annually for a self-funded workshop. Junior faculty and fellows interested in presenting at the meeting should email proposals to...
[Christopher K. Connolly is an Assistant United States Attorney, Southern District of New York. This post is written solely in the author's personal capacity. The views expressed in this post are the author's alone and cannot be attributed in any way to his employer or any branch of the U.S. Government.] On September 7th, faced with new polls showing a surge in support for Scottish...
[Milena Sterio is The Charles R. Emrick Jr. - Calfee Halter & Griswold Professor of Law and the Associate Dean for Faculty Enrichment at the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law.] As many readers may already know, Scotland may soon become an independent nation. Scots will vote in a September 18 referendum whether to secede from Great Britain. The exact question that they will answer, in...
[Tom Sparks is a PhD Candidate in Law at the Durham University School of Law and member of the ERC-funded "Neo-Federalism project."] We have been repeatedly told that the Scottish referendum of the 18th of September is an historic moment, and it surely is. As a matter of international law, however, it may be that the most significant decision in the...
[Jure Vidmar is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Faculty of Law and Research Fellow of St John's College, Oxford. Some arguments made in this post are further elaborated on in this article.] The Treaty on European Union (TEU) now gives member states an explicit right to exit the EU and provides for a mechanism that makes this right effective. However, the...
[Stephen Tierney is a Professor of Constitutional Theory, University of Edinburgh and Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Constitutional Law.] In the Edinburgh Agreement of 2012 the United Kingdom Government committed itself to respect the outcome of the Scottish independence referendum. This suggests that, in the event of a Yes vote, the transition to independence will be relatively straightforward, as will...
5. Decides to elaborate and adopt through a process of intergovernmental negotiations, as a matter of priority during its sixty-ninth session, a multilateral legal framework for sovereign debt restructuring processes with a view, inter alia, to increasing the efficiency, stability and predictability of the international financial system and achieving sustained, inclusive and equitable economic growth and sustainable development, in accordance with national circumstances and priorities; 6. Also decides to define the modalities for the intergovernmental negotiations and the adoption of the text of the multilateral legal framework at the main part of its sixty-ninth session, before the end of 2014.According to the General Assembly’s press release, the U.S. delegate stressed at the meeting “that she could not support a statutory mechanism for sovereign debt restructuring as such a mechanism was likely to create economic uncertainty.” Moreover, she expressed the view that “[i]n the past, market-oriented approaches had been preferred and work was ongoing in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and elsewhere.” In response to that, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Argentina stated that “[s]overeign debt held development back and the establishment of a better system could improve global economic security.” The Minister continued that “[t]he clear majority agreed it was time to establish a legal framework for restructuring that respected creditors while allowing debtors to emerge from debt safely. The profits currently made by vulture funds were scandalous and were funnelled into campaigning and lobbying to prevent changes to the situation.” Needless to say, this is a big step forward in terms of the development of international law on sovereign debt restructuring.
[Michael W. Lewis is a Professor of Law at Ohio Northern University where he teaches International Law and the Law of War.] Kevin was right that my Just Security post misstated the legal standard for self-defense by stating that Syria could rightfully treat US attacks on ISIS on Syrian soil as aggression if the US had established that it was acting in...
