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...terms under ENMOD. The “Understandings” clearly state that the interpretations are “intended exclusively for this Convention,” further highlighting the need to construe these terms in the context of ENMOD, to the exclusion of other treaties. Second, while Article I of ENMOD prohibits hostile modification of the environment, the effects of such modification need not be only environmental. The term “effects” in Article II is unqualified. Therefore, drawing from the “Understandings” damage to human life, economic resources, nature, and the environment all need to be considered while determining the effects of...

researcher’s theoretical outlook on which specific type of power relations are most pertinent or interesting (race, gender, class, colonialism, or all of the above). They are descriptive by exposing these relations (and here, they might deploy various methods of descriptive research in order to present their factual basis); and although they might not always offer solutions (short of revolution, of course), they are normative by implying that these relations are bad. In relation to the questions described above, the term “methods” has tight relations with the term “theory.” Recognizing this...

[Valerie Oosterveld is a Professor at theUniversity of Western Ontario Faculty of Law (Canada) and member of the Canadian Partnership for International Justice. The author wishes to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its research support. This essay was initially prepared at the request of FIU Law Review for its micro-symposium on The Legal Legacy of the Special Court for Sierra Leone by Charles C. Jalloh (Cambridge, 2020). An edited and footnoted version is forthcoming in Volume 15.1 of the law review in spring 2021.] The Special Court for Sierra Leone...

...provides a basis for both short term trust building steps and final status agreements on the critical issue of who gets what land. As to the short term, the Road Map allows the encouragement of immediate Israeli guarantees on preliminary territorial issues addressed in the Road Map and Oslo Accords. Roger mentioned two expressly referenced in the Road Map–a settlement freeze and withdrawal from illegal outposts. I would add an end to construction of access roads and the security barrier in the occupied territories. These latter steps are not referred...

...the pursuit of short-term goals (such as rapid economic development and the influx of capital and immediate returns in investment) and long-term goals (such as fostering sustainable economic development). Investment agreements, either individually or in the guise of a multilateral instrument establishing shared principles, can contribute only a limited amount to the furtherance of sustainable development goals unless their reach expands drastically. That point is well illustrated in the area of climate change. Investment agreements themselves do not require that states legislate in environmentally friendly ways, or that states prioritize...

One of the take-aways from Hillary Clinton’s confirmation hearing was the rise of the term “smart power.” Sen. Clinton said: “I believe that American leadership has been wanting, but is still wanted,” she said. “We must use what has been called smart power, the full range of tools at our disposal — diplomatic, economic, military, political, legal, and cultural… With smart power, diplomacy will be the vanguard of foreign policy.” As explained in The Cable, the framing of “smart power” was, so far as we can determine, actually introduced into...

[ Paola Gaeta is a professor of international law at the Geneva Graduate Institute and director of the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights. Dr Etienne Henry is an independent legal consultant and a lecturer in international humanitarian law at the University of Neuchâtel, whose recent work includes contributing to the Geneva Academy’s research project IHL in Focus.] The weaponization of water—namely, the use of water and water systems as tools or weapons in armed conflicts—has become a recurrent practice in contemporary warfare. According to recent research, cases...

...work she was doing with the International Standards Organisation on autonomy and how this work, in an internationally agreed forum, could potentially help to move conversations about autonomy forward in a defence context, and particularly where cyber-physical systems (CPS) were becoming more prevalent.  The term CPS was brought back into the limelight by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2015, when it also identified current technological developments as the ‘Fourth Revolution’. What the WEF refers to as the Fourth Revolution is powered by data, but is not limited to the...

...wanted to offer some observations about what has been happening and what is at stake. Let me say at the outset that I have concerns that certain stakeholders have been too myopically focused on “process” – process for the sake of process; process to the exclusion of all else. The process might look great on paper – but if it yields flawed candidates, there will be no consensus among States Parties and this will have reverberations such that the long-term viability of the Court will be in doubt. Let me...

...term (p. 282). The books states that sanctions are measured by “substantially equivalent” trade concessions (p. 283), but does not explain where the term “substantially” comes from as it is not a term from the treaty or the jurisprudence. In addition, the book posits that the WTO dispute system provides gap fillers for an incomplete bargain that approximate what WTO members would have negotiated had they been able to address the contingency in the treaty text (p. 284). But the book fails to note that the WTO judges do not...

...are capable of objective, factual determination and hence ‘operate as limitative qualifying clauses’ tempering the discretion of the Members. The WTO panel in the Russia – Traffic in Transit dispute considered that “the ‘balance’ that was struck by the security exceptions was that Members would have ‘some latitude’ to determine what their essential security interests are, and the necessity of action to protect those interests”. At the same time, it was expected that the “potential abuse of the exceptions would be curtailed by limiting the circumstances in which the exceptions...

Recently, there’s been many a discussion in the Global North on the semiotics of law. What does it mean to say there was a genocide in Canada or that ICE runs concentration camps. In general, these debates follow a similar pattern: specific groups of people are outraged that scholars and experts would use the correct terminology to describe a policy they support, because it sounds too harsh. The effect of language in how societies approach gross human rights violations is an important aspect of transitional accountability (and the law in...