In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Books

14 Jul

[Erin Pobjie is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, Germany. She is a member of the International Law Association’s Committee on the Use of Force: Military Assistance on Request, and co-convener of the European Society of International Law’s Interest Group on Peace and Security.] Introduction Individuals are victims of war, but until now have not...

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13 Jul

[Luca Ferro is a post-doctoral researcher at the Ghent Rolin-Jaequemyns International Law Institute (GRILI) of Ghent University, and a member of the ILA Committee on the Use of Force: Military Assistance on Request.] An embarrassing confession at the start of this review: I cannot remember the last time I read a book on international law from (digital) cover to cover, instead of scanning through it and...

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13 Jul

[Brad R. Roth is a Professor of Political Science and Law at Wayne State University in Detroit. He is the author of Governmental Illegitimacy in International Law and Sovereign Equality and Moral Disagreement and co-editor of Democracy and International Law, Supreme Law of the Land? Debating the Contemporary Effects of Treaties within the United States Legal System, and Democratic Governance and International Law.] Chiara Redaelli’s meticulously researched book on Intervention in Civil Wars is...

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12 Jul

[John Hursh is a lawyer, writer, and researcher focusing on the use of force, human rights, and international humanitarian law. He served as Director of Research at the Stockton Center for International Law and Editor-in-Chief of International Law Studies at the U.S. Naval War College from 2017 to 2020.] “It can be difficult to write something interesting about something one agrees with.” So wrote Timothy Waters when reviewing Mark Drumbl’s...

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12 Jul

This week, we are excited to host a symposium on Chiara Redaelli's Intervention in Civil Wars: Effectiveness, Legitimacy and Human Rights. Scholars and practitioners who will be contributing include: John Hursh, Brad Roth, Luca Ferro, Erin Pobjie, Laura Iñigo and our own Alonso Gurmendi and will close with a rejoinder from Chiara herself From the publisher: This book investigates the extent to which...

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28 Jun

[Iain Scobbie is the Chair in International Law at the University of Manchester. This post is a contribution in our recent symposium on Ensuring Respect for International Humanitarian Law.] The understanding and implications of common Article 1 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions have undergone a transformation since its inception.  The volume edited by Eve Massingham and Annabel McConnachie, ‘Ensuring Respect for...

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18 Jun

[Ingo Venzke is Professor for International Law and Social Justice at the University of Amsterdam and Director of the Amsterdam Center for International Law (ACIL).] Our edited volume has asked a question that is deceptive in its simplicity: Could international law have been otherwise? One could expect the answer to be a resounding ‘yes’, given that no serious account is nowadays...

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18 Jun

[Doreen Lustig is a Senior Lecturer at Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law and the author of Veiled Power: International Law and the Private Corporation 1886-1981 (Oxford University Press, 2020).] Ingo Venzke and Kevin Jon Heller’s edited volume Contingency in International Law: On the Possibility of Different Legal Histories (Oxford University Press, 2021) (hereinafter: Contingency) is a rare editorial accomplishment. A coherent and multifaceted...

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17 Jun

[Marina Veličković is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge and a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Her research interests include International Criminal Law, Political Economy and Critical Theory. I The author extends many thanks to Francisco-Jose Quintana and Justina Uriburu for their comments on an earlier draft.] ‘Contingency in International Law: On the Possibility of Different Legal Histories’, an ambitious volume edited by Ingo Venzke and Kevin Jon Heller which was...

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17 Jun

[Vidya Kumar is an Associate Professor of Law at Leicester University, UK. Twitter: @DrVidyaKumarUK] Between you and me, Professors Ingo Venzke and Kevin Jon Heller’s edited collection reads like a classic expositional text on the ways to think about contingency in international law – not unlike Susan’s Mark’s timeless work “False Contingency”. Composed of no less than 30 innovative readings of the operation – and non-operation – of contingency...

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16 Jun

[Kanad Bagchi is a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg. The author would like to thank the editorial team for thier comments and feedback.] Edited collections often tend to surface within the hegemonic voice of the editors – they introduce the concept, set the frame, determine the contours, and also illustrate the specific set of argumentative...

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16 Jun

[Hirofumi Oguri is a Senior Assistant Professor of International Law at Okayama University in Japan.]  In his famous series of lectures delivered at Cambridge University, E. H. Carr displayed a cynical attitude towards those who tend to ask what if an event had happened otherwise. Carr dismissed this ‘might-have-been’ school of thought as no better than a ‘parlour game’. However, asking ‘what if’ questions is...

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