In association with the International Commission of Jurists

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09 Apr

[Fuad Zarbiyev is an Associate in the International Arbitration Group of Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP.] The interpretation discourse in modern international law is dominated by a textualist paradigm. This claim may seem empirically wrong if it is taken to mean that nothing other than eo nomine textual arguments features in the international legal discourse. After all, the interpretive regime...

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08 Apr

[Julian Arato is an Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School.] Interpretation in International Law is something of an iconoclastic volume, from its critical ethos to its provocative structure around the metaphor of the game. The object of its revisionism, above all, is an apparently stagnant formalism that seems too prevalent in the theory and practice of interpretation in international law today. Symbolic...

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07 Apr

Newsweek published a long article today about a petition organized by NYU students, alumni, and non-law faculty claiming that it would be "unacceptable" for Harold Koh to teach international human-rights law at the law school. Here is a snippet: While working for the Obama administration, Koh was the most public legal defender of the president’s drone strike program. Last month, a...

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07 Apr

[Michael Waibel is a University Lecturer in Law at the University of Cambridge and Deputy Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law.] The rise of distinct interpretive communities goes hand in hand with the much debated topic of fragmentation in international law. Even though the VCLT’s role in treaty interpretation has been studied extensively, how interpretive communities affect treaty interpretation...

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06 Apr

[Daniel Peat and Matthew Windsor are PhD candidates at the University of Cambridge Faculty of Law, and members of Gonville and Caius College.] International lawyers have long realised the importance of interpretation to their academic discipline and professional practice. Interpretation in international law has traditionally been understood as a process of assigning meaning to texts with the objective of establishing rights...

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04 Apr

[Craig H. Allen is the Judson Falknor Professor of Law/Professor of Marine and Environmental Affairs at the University of Washington.] The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (Tribunal) continued to develop the law of flag State responsibility in a 68-page advisory opinion issued on April 2, 2015 (Request for an advisory opinion submitted by the Sub-Regional Fisheries Commission (SRFC),...

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02 Apr

The op-ed, which appears in today's New York Times, argues that the ICC is the most appropriate venue for prosecuting ISIS's many international crimes. I have great respect for John, who is unique among former high-ranking US government officials in his willingness to defend the ICC, but the op-ed makes a number of arguments that deserve comment. It certainly makes more...

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02 Apr

[Sushma Nagaraj is an Advocate practicing commercial and constitutional law before the Bombay High Court, India. She assisted Mr. Kevic Setalvad, the Senior Advocate who represented AWAS Ireland Ltd. (the Petitioner before the Honorable Delhi High Court) with legal research on aviation law and public international law.] Indian Courts have, for the most part been generous in applying International Law but recently, the...

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31 Mar

From April 17-19, the University of Southampton is scheduled to host a conference entitled "International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism." As the title indicates, the conference was always going to be controversial. (Full disclosure: I was originally scheduled to present at the conference, but pulled out a couple of weeks ago because I simply didn't...

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