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...
[Dr Emma J Marchant is a lecturer in international criminal law at the University of Birmingham, UK having completed her doctorate on intelligence standards during targeting and the impact of technology. She researches international humanitarian law specifically surrounding intelligence and information during conflict.] Introduction In recent days there has been increasing focus on intelligence sharing arrangements with Ukraine. The legal question that...
[Grant Dawson served as the Principal Legal Officer of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons from 2014–2021. He has regularly published and lectured on the topic of disarmament and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The opinions expressed herein are the author’s alone.] The Russian Federation has alleged that Ukraine was developing nuclear, biological and chemical weapons before the...
[Lily Zanjani is a paralegal at the International Criminal Court and rule of law intern and project assistant at the International Centre for Counterterrorism. She holds an LL.M. from Tilburg University and is currently completing an Advanced LL.M. of Public International Law at Leiden University. The views expressed in this article are the author's alone.] The susceptibility of international law with...
[Deepak Raju is a Senior Managing Associate at Sidley Austin LLP, Geneva, focusing on international disputes; he is also a visiting faculty at National University of Juridical Sciences (India), and a doctoral candidate at the University of Geneva.] In a recent post on EJIL: Talk, I discussed Ukraine’s new dispute before the International Court of Justice (“ICJ”) against Russia, and compared...
[Boyd van Dijk is a McKenzie Fellow at the University of Melbourne.] The paradox of writing a book about the laws of war is that you never wish it to become timely. Today, however, with the ongoing brutality in Ukraine and Yemen, we are going through a dark time again. The Geneva Conventions are hitting the headlines every day. The study of...
[Karin Loevy is a fellow at NYU School of Law, where she serves as the manager JSD Program. She is also a researcher at the Institute for International Law and Justice (IILJ) where she leads the History & Theory of International Law workshop series. Her current work is in history of international law in the Middle East in the period leading to the mandate system.] One thing that...
[Katharine Fortin is an Associate Professor at the Netherlands Institute of Human Rights, Utrecht University. She is the founder and co-editor of the Armed Groups and International Law blog.] The author is grateful to comments from Brianne McGonigle Leyh and Vivek Bhatt on an earlier draft of this post. Reading Boyd van Dijk’s Preparing for War at a time when the prospect of...
[Doreen Lustig is a Senior Lecturer at Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law. She studies the history and theory of international law, global governance and constitutional law. She is the author of Veiled Power: International Law and the Private Corporation 1886-1980 (Oxford University Press, 2020).] Preparing for War is an insightful account of the history of the drafting of the four...
So far, the 2020s have been a great decade for books on the history of international humanitarian law. 2020 saw the publication of Giovani Mantilla’s exceptional Lawmaking Under Pressure, on the history of Common Article 3; 2021 gave us Samuel Moyn’s Humane, a powerful critique on the idea that war can be humanised; and now 2022 starts off with Boyd van Dijk’s Preparing for War. I...
[Professor Eyal Benvenisti is the Whewell Professor of International Law at the University of Cambridge, CC Ng Fellow in Law at Jesus College, and the Director of the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law. In Fall 2022 he will be the Samuel Rubin Visiting Professor of Law at Columbia Law School.] Boyd van Dijk’s “Preparing for War” offers a rich historical account of...
[Dr Ka Lok Yip is an Assistant Professor at Hamad Bin Khalifa University.] Events vs Tendencies: an Interdisciplinary Divide? In view of the gravity of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it is understandable that most legal commentators focus on the legal norms regulating the event directly, jus contra bellum, rather than other legal norms regulating the tendencies that make up the more...