In association with the International Commission of Jurists

The Ethnographic Turn in International Law: Vernacularisation as a Path towards Reform?

23 Jun

[Moritz Koenig obtained his PhD in law from SOAS, University of London and is currently working on a research project on the history of Dutch colonial law schools.] It has often been argued that international law and international legal scholarship are incapable of reforming themselves. David Kennedy has argued that supposed renewal in legal argument is usually simply a recycling of old ideas and...

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21 Jun

[The Sex Worker Inclusive Feminist Alliance (SWIFA) was formed as part of a long-term strategy of building alliances across the sex workers’ rights and women’s rights movements to advance the acceptance of sex workers’ rights within the women’s movement and the core group of organisations in the alliance include: Amnesty International - International Secretariat, CREA, FEMNET, Global Alliance Against Traffic...

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20 Jun

On the morning of June 6th, 2023, Ukraine accused Russia of destroying the Kakhovka Dam in the Dnieper River. A few hours later, during the afternoon on the same day, Russia blamed Ukraine for the destruction. Since then, I searched and collected statements by forty-nine other states addressing the destruction. This post analyses and systematises these forty-nine reactions in order to offer a clearer outlook...

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20 Jun

[Matthew Gillett is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the University of Essex Law School and a United Nations Special Mandate holder (Vice-Chair of Working Group on Arbitrary Detention), who previously prosecuted cases before the international courts. The views herein are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect those of any other person or organization. The author was...

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08 Jun

Few emotions rival the existential horror a PhD candidate experiences when asked to justify their topic’s relevance to the discipline. Having adopted “Mass Media and International Law” as my banner, I’ve received a fair share of queries about “where’s the law”. Though the frequency of these challenges has decreased with our discipline’s recent gestures towards multi-disciplinarity, their persistence reflects the...

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15 May

[Carlos Lusverti is the Latin America Legal advisor with the International Commission of Jurists] The principle of presumption of innocence in criminal cases is core to the rule of law. It is also a universally recognized general principle of law, incorporated into general international human rights treaties, the Venezuelan Constitution and domestic law as part of the Criminal Proceedings Code. However,...

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11 May

[Dr Christine Schwöbel-Patel is Reader at Warwick Law School and Co-Director of the Centre for Critical Legal Studies; she is currently based at the Humboldt University in Berlin as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow.] Dear Asad, Filip, and Mark, I’ll begin this letter, as so many letters begin, by apologising for its tardiness. Since you Mark and Asad sent your responses, many months...

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10 May

[Filip Strandberg Hassellind is a doctoral candidate in International Law at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.] In Marketing Global Justice: The Political Economy of International Criminal Law, Christine Schwöbel-Patel argues that “a global elite benefit from marketized global justice whilst those who tend to be the ‘faces’ of global injustice – particularly victims of conflict – are instrumentalized and ultimately commodified” [p. i]. The book directs...

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09 May

[Dr Asad Kiyani is an Assistant Professor at the University of Victoria Faculty of Law (Canada), and a recipient of the Antonio Cassese Prize for International Criminal Law Studies, as well as the Hessel Yntema Prize for Comparative Law.] Introduction In her intriguing analysis of the marketization of global justice, Christine Schwöbel-Patel offers an expansive examination of how international criminal law reinforces the existing international...

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08 May

[Mark A. Drumbl is Class of 1975 Alumni Professor of Law and Director, Transnational Law Institute, Washington and Lee University.] Dear Christine, I really liked engaging with your fabulous book, Marketing Global Justice. It’s cleverly edgy and full of insights. You unwind international criminal justice as a transnational business venture. As with all commodity trading and product hawking, well, advertising is indeed key. I was reading...

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