Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation
05 Jan Who Decides and Why?
They are particularly successful at documenting how the GMO dispute has, at the same time, hardened some soft law instruments while also softening some hard law. This insight alone would make the book worth reading. Where the book falls down a bit is in exploring a central question embedded in this insight—whether it is appropriate for the WTO’s dispute resolution process to dramatically expand the reach of trade law into erstwhile domestic environmental, consumer and food safety law questions via broad application of the SPS Agreement premise that regulation must...
11 Jul Death by Omnibus? The European Commission’s Proposal and the Fate of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (Part I)
[Jacob Bogart (X: @BogartJacob) is Counsel at Perseus Strategies, a 2025 Salzburg Global International Law Fellow and graduate of Columbia Law School] This post is the first part in a three-part series on the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD). Part I dissects the Omnibus and other reform proposals. Part II maps the reactions to and legal implications of these proposals. Part III argues that companies should adopt a UNGP/OECD-based model even if the CSDDD itself is delayed and diluted. Introduction: A Directive in Danger The European Union’s (EU)...
08 Aug Ecocide and Article 2(4): Envisioning Environmental Aggression as “Use of Force”
[Ananya Bhargava (she/her) is a law student at Jindal Global Law School] Introduction Historically in situations of war, international law has maintained fidelity to a strictly parochial understanding of what constitutes “use of force.” This understanding adheres to the normative belief that “use of force” solely includes armed force. Any deviation from this belief would invariably lead to the unsettling of definite principles of jus ad bellum or laws of war. Although a contextual reading of “use of force” to only include grave violations is imperative, confining it to “armed...08 Nov The Oxford Guide to Treaties Symposium: What Happens if a Treaty Reservation is Invalid?
not bound by the treaty.” (emphasis added) But the presumption is clear: “Unless the author of an invalid reservation has expressed a contrary intention or such an intention is otherwise established, it is considered a contracting State … without the benefit of the reservation.” On its face, this approach makes little sense and smacks of unfairness. As the United States has consistently noted, it is difficult to square this approach with the bedrock principle of treaty law that States are bound only to those obligations they affirmatively consent to undertake....
11 Feb The Gambia v. Myanmar and the Nature of Genocidal “Intent to Destroy” before the ICJ (As Opposed to Criminal Courts)
was targeted for destruction in its entirety or in substantial part.” These observations appear to negate the need for reading the definition of genocide more strictly than is required by the Convention as interpreted according to the law of treaties, in any event before the ICJ. To conclude, the difference between the two legal disciplines is too substantial, rendering it all the more plausible that the interpretation of the Convention—and identically worded penal statutes—may yield different results in a criminal law context than its interpretation according to the law of...
15 Mar Polish-Lithuanian-Belarusian Border Crisis and Ius ad Bellum Part II
[Mateusz Piątkowski is an Assistant Professor at the University of Łódź, Poland (Faculty of Law and Administration, International Law Department), Attorney-at-law, and Member of the Polish Society of the Military Law and the Law of War. You can find Part I of this post here.] Under international law, military confrontations between states are measured by their intensity and gravity. To establish the threshold and to distinguish between the less and more grave forms of use of force, ius ad bellum offers a three-tier classification of interstate incidents. Tier one is...12 Feb The Shift from Proportionality to Necessity and an Indirect Comment on Gaby Blum’s Article
it here, distinction. III We also need to add the other, lawfare part, as well as the effects of a shift from the equality of obligations upon the sides to a differentiated “capabilities” approach. To start with, the technology driving these changes in the “intelligence” conflict – as distinguished from the “conventional” armed conflict or “law enforcement” paradigm, to finally get all three relevant use-of-force ideations on the table – did not come about all on its own account. In considerable part, the development of these new technologies represents an...26 Feb U.S. v. Microsoft (Microsoft-Ireland): Implications for International Lawmaking
and that international law limits are rarely in play given often stricter domestic limitations, the assertion that international law imposes no limits whatsoever is a minority position. As Professor Alex Mills explains: “Although some international lawyers have questioned the need for a separate category of ‘adjudicative jurisdiction,’ few if any would maintain that adjudicative jurisdiction is unregulated in international law.” The point is not to argue whether the Fourth Restatement is normatively right, but to suggest that the Fourth Restatement does not reflect settled international law, and not international law...
01 May AI and Machine Learning Symposium: Command in the Age of Autonomy–Unanswered Questions for Military Operations
[Eve Massingham , Simon McKenzie and Rain Liivoja are members of the Law and the Future of War Research Group at the University of Queensland Law School. The Research Group receives funding from the Australian Government through the Defence Cooperative Research Centre for Trusted Autonomous Systems. The views and opinions expressed in the article are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Government or any other institution. This post is part of our symposium on legal, operational, and ethical questions on the use...