Travelling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller. Ibn Battuta From its vantage point atop the Kasbah in Tangier, Morocco, the Ibn Battuta museum overlooks the meeting point of the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea—a vista coloured by myriad beginnings and a few endings as well. More of a memorial than a museum, the site...
[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...
A few years ago, I was in a meeting with some Global North colleagues planning an international law conference. We were trying to make sure we had diverse panels and while gender-wise we were doing fine, I pointed out we still only had one person of colour. “Well, two”, said one of my co-convenors, “counting you”. I am sure my Northern colleagues must have...
[Tamás Hoffmann is an Associate Professor at Corvinus University of Budapest and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Legal Studies, Budapest] Introduction – A Region without Agency Eastern Europe has a strange place in academic discourse. While the region has traditionally been rife with both internal and international conflicts, making it an ideal object of scientific enquiry, the countries of the...
Whether you are the most ardent football aficionado, or just an Arsenal fan, the controversies generated by the World Cup in Qatar will have reached your ears. Depending on political priorities, your interlocutor may have furnished a tapestry of accusations justifying the boycott of this tournament. Throughout the critique, three broad themes prevail: labour-related violations of human rights, gender-specific violations...
Open source investigation (OSINT) methods have become frequently used by international courts, human rights fact-finding bodies, and other non-governmental organisations. Though OSINT remains a vital tool for increasing accountability for human rights violations and international crimes, it still has its issues with regards to fairness, equality, and diversity (both in terms of those working in the field and in terms...
[Dr Vivek Bhatt is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Public International Law at the University of Aberdeen and a Fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM), Utrecht University.] “The struggle is inner: Chicano, indio, American Indian, mojado, mexicano, immigrant Latino, Anglo in power, working class Anglo, Black, Asian--our psyches resemble the bordertowns and are populated by the same people. The struggle...
1- White Supremacy and the International Legal Order Writing in 1997, Charles Mills threw a grenade into political theory. With a touch of hyperbole, we might even say he collapsed the contours of the social sciences. Standard undergraduate philosophy courses, he tells us, cover two thousand years of political thought. Mainstream philosophers introduce students to liberalism and libertarianism, capitalism and communitarianism, socialism...
International lawyers do debate class, but not necessarily in their own professional milieu. There is significant literature on ‘bourgeois’ international law, while the discussion as to what a ‘proletarian’ international law might look like is still alive and well (see for example here, here, and here). Despite these long-standing ties between international legal scholarship and the question of class, there...
[Christine Bell is Director of PeaceRep (Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform), Assistant Principal (Global Justice) and Professor of Constitutional Law, University of Edinburgh. The opinions expressed herein are the author’s own. Thanks are due to the PeaceRep programme funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, for support to write the piece.] Introduction: Need for a Geopolitical Dimension to Settlement This contribution...
Please think about submitting an abstract for a conference on the legacy of the much loved, much missed, and much lamented Robert Cryer. The conference announcement is below: Robert Cryer: A Life in Law and a Law unto Himself We greatly miss Professor Rob Cryer, who passed away in 2021 at the age of forty-six. We aim to channel this loss, those...
[Danya Chaikel is currently consulting with FIDH's International Justice Desk and is the Co-Vice Chair of the IBA’s War Crimes Committee.] This amicus curiae brief was submitted by: Louise Arimatsu, Adejoké Babington-Ashaye, Danya Chaikel, Christine Chinkin, Carolyn Edgerton, Angela Mudukuti, and Cynthia T. Tai.* Following the Ongwen Appeals Chamber’s (AC) invitation to scholars and legal practitioners we submitted an amicus brief contending that duress and sexual violence...