Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation
16 Sep Schrödinger’s Sovereign: Statehood, Consent, and the Fictions of Sovereign Equality
[Melis Irem Kirkdisceoglu is senior editorof the Nottingham Advocate, and a member of both the International Law Association and the European Society of International Law. She is an LLB candidate at the University of Nottingham.] This post critically evaluates how structural imbalances shape the “international community of states as a whole”, (ARSIWA, Article 25(1)(b)) exposing how hierarchical concepts, such as state recognition, (p. 94) the civilised/uncivilised binary, and the developed/developing divide (pp. 187-193), are strategically deployed by economically dominant states (pp. 160-162) to solidify their authority and reshape the international...
03 May Beyond Territoriality: Symposium on Jurisdictional “Hooks” for (Extraterritorial) Human Rights Obligations – Back to the Drawing Board: Debordering Human Rights Law
human rights law, away from Eurocentrism and approaches that mainly serve the Global North, and back to the idea of human rights as truly universal rights, to be realised through solidarity and global obligations, as proposed by Gibney and Skogly, Pribytkova, Salomon and Skogly. Key Principles for Debordering Human Rights Law Five key principles must inform a debordering redraw of human rights law. First of all, a plurality of duty-bearers, beyond the territorial state, needs to be recognized, in particular but not exclusively foreign states. Second, a diversity of duty-bearers,...
22 Dec Governance in the Grip of Debt
[Jason Beckett is an associate professor of law at the American University in Cairo] Introduction The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) recently released an analysis of Egypt’s proposed budget for 2025-6, titled, “Egypt in the Grip of Debt”. It is a gloomy read, documenting Egypt’s ongoing immiseration, but concludes with a strangely sentimental optimism. “After all, the state’s role is not to help profitable actors further increase their profits.” (EIPR, 26) This, I will argue, is fundamentally untrue. In a neocolonial world gripped by neoliberal ideology, the states’ role...27 Jun Buxbaum on Transnational Regulatory Litigation
Hannah Buxbaum has just posted on SSRN an interesting article on “Transnational Regulatory Litigation.” You can download the document here. In particular she includes an illuminating section on global class actions. Here is the abstract: Recent years have seen much debate about the role of national courts in addressing global harms. That debate has focused on the application by domestic courts of international law – for instance, in civil actions brought in U.S. courts to enforce human rights law. This article identifies a parallel development in the area of economic...08 Jun Three Quick Thoughts on Zivotofsky
...power as dicta. In a world that is ever more compressed and interdependent, it is essential the congressional role in foreign affairs be understood and respected. For it is Congress that makes laws, and in countless ways its laws will and should shape the Nation’s course. The Executive is not free from the ordinary controls and checks of Congress merely because foreign affairs are at issue. See, e.g., Medellín v. Texas, 552 U. S. 491, 523–532 (2008); Youngstown, 343 U. S., at 589; Little v. Barreme, 2 Cranch 170, 177–179...01 May NY State Court Rejects DSK’s Immunity Claim
is limited under an annex to that agreement by the Bretton Woods Agreement and IMF Articles, which specifically limit immunity only to official acts. DSK is not entitled to this official acts/functional immunity (as Chimene Keitner argued earlier here), since he was not carrying out official duties during his visit to the Sofitel. The judge did not shy from the customary international law question here, i.e.,DSK’s argument that the Specialized Agency agreement has ripened to a customary norm through which absolute immunity is extended to all international agency heads. Citing...
16 Jul Symposium on PMSCs: AI Broke the Code – The International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers and Emerging Technologies
attempt to impose normative order on a chaotic sector. Its seventy provisions addressed the conduct of personnel, the use of force and firearms, detention practices, incident reporting, and internal grievance procedures—grounding much of its orders in the language of both human rights law and humanitarian law. But the ICoC was more than a checklist of operational safeguards. It marked an attempt to reassert law’s relevance in a space where contractual relationships had long displaced public obligations. Cedric Ryngaert once described the Code as an experiment in “the re-entry of the...
13 Aug Emerging Voices: Regrouping for Justice–Could Regional Inter-Governmental Organisations Save International Criminal Justice?
international crimes at the regional level. Additionally, this is a cosmopolitan and secular universalist challenge to classical assumptions of states as the sole subjects and drivers of international law, and an argument for international law as the ‘law of humanity’. This is not an ‘appropriate forum’ argument nor an endorsement of regional mechanisms over global ones. Rather, my argument is that there exists a significant and largely untapped potential in RIGOs to take a direct and active lead in accountability for international crimes at the regional level, and that there...
25 Mar Smoke and Mirrors: The Art of Misdirection in Claiming Diplomatic Immunity
[Moisés Montiel is a lawyer advising individuals, companies, and States on matters of international law, human rights, and other international areas at Lotus Soluciones Legales . @moisesmontielm] Alex Saab, a Colombian national and businessman, decided to throw his lot in with the Maduro administration in Venezuela and is currently awaiting a decision by the Supreme Court of Cabo Verde on whether or not he’ll be extradited to the US to face prosecution on charges of alleged money laundering. Saab’s defense team has built its arguments around the notion that he...