Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation
01 Jun Events and Announcements: 1 June 2025
Young Scholars’ Workshop to be held at the University of Ottawa on 12 November 2025, where they will receive constructive feedback from senior scholars and practitioners. Authors will then submit their articles for consideration by the Canadian Yearbook of International Law. Subject to favourable peer-review, articles submitted as part of the symposium will appear in Volume 63 of the Yearbook in 2026. See here for more information. Seminar – Developments in the Law of State Immunity: The Research Group for Human Rights and International Law at UiT – The Arctic...
07 Dec COVID-19 and Africa Symposium: “Jurislimitation” In Litigation In the Context of COVID-19, the New Normal?
...executive during times of crisis and emergency? Or should judges play a greater role in protecting human rights in context of the social and economic devastation wrought by COVID-19? These questions are of importance both in countries experiencing significant COVID-19 transmission rates and those who have not yet experienced the brunt of the pandemic. As former Liberian President has suggested, “Coronavirus anywhere is a threat to people everywhere”. International law and the right to effective remedies International law places obligations on States to respect, protect and fulfill human rights. The...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...
09 Mar Article 103 to the Rescue: A Few Thoughts on the Legality of Russian Claims Under the Genocide Convention, Jus Cogens Duties and Preventive Self-defense
[Moisés Montiel Mogollón is a lawyer advising individuals, companies, and States on matters of international law, human rights, and other international areas at Lotus Soluciones Legales . He is an Adjunct Professor of International Law at Universidad Iberoamericana (Mexico City) and Universidad Panamericana (Guadalajara).] In the wake of the Russian invasion on Ukraine, which the UN General Assembly has already politically qualified as an act of aggression, and, as Ignacio de Casas has pointed out, has seen an impressively strategic use of international litigation on the part of Ukraine, the...06 Sep Syria and the Role of the Security Council
Last Friday, ASIL Insights published an article that I authored, “Legality of Intervention in Syria in Response to Chemical Weapon Attacks.” I followed it up yesterday was an expanded commentary at Lawfare, “Five Fundamental International Law Approaches to the Legality of a Syria Intervention.” A number of readers of the expanded Lawfare post queried me about remarks made near the end of that (lengthy) post concerning the role of the Security Council. Insofar as the disagreements about Syria are serious ones among the great powers, and among permanent five members...19 Jun Judicial Review and Administrative Detention
I would suggest it was a proper response in reining in the executive I well understand those who are critical. On the other hand former Chief Justice Rehnquist’s theory regarding the role of the Court in times of armed conflict is, I respectfully suggest, deeply flawed and ultimately harmful to American principles and values. The ultimate role, I believe, of a ‘comparatist’ is to examine different regimes–in the understanding that profound differences exist–with the intention of identifying strengths from distinct paradigms and to cobble together a functional model for addressing...
07 Jul Customary International Law Symposium: The Stubborn Tenacity of Secondary Rules
the idea, to quote the ILC’s Draft Conclusions on Identification of Customary International Law, that “[t]o determine the existence and content of a [primary] rule of customary international law, it is necessary to ascertain whether there is a general practice that is accepted as law.” “Put simply,” Hakimi insists, “the rulebook conception reflects what many people imagine CIL to be, but it does not describe what global actors use and receive as CIL in the everyday practice of law. It does not reflect what CIL ‘is’ as a real-world sociological...02 Dec A Response to Milanovic
prescription. He explores in depth the two main approaches to extraterritorial application—broadly, territorial and personal– and finds them both wanting. As he shows, a territorial approach pushes courts inexorably toward ever smaller definitions of relevant territory in order to ensure, at least in cases that present uncomfortable or shocking fact patterns, that justice is done. (Rather than a nation or region or city, perhaps the relevant territory over which a state exerts control is a facility or building. And so on.) An approach based on persons, by contrast, has no...16 Oct Comment on What’s at Stake in the Sovereignty Debate?
All Mi T The way things are going with the economy, debate aside, I would not be surprised if the next step over here will be martial law http://rawdawgb.blogspot.com/2008/10/next-stop-martial-law.html...07 Sep Two Questions on LOAC
...do sense the thing behind the words. I know we can not go to the common law enumerated lists approach here, but the effort to have a maximized and realistic vision of civilians for purposes of a protection appears to be at the intersection of what International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law and Alien law are trying to do (and should be trying to do) to protect civilians from the monopoly on violence of the state and/or the oligopoly/duopoly on violence with non-state actors hiding among the civilians....