Public International Law

[Ezequiel Jimenez is a PhD candidate at Middlesex University (United Kingdom). This blog arises from his thesis on the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute. All comments and feedback welcome at ezejim@gmail.com.] From 5 to 10 December 2022, delegates from the 123 States Parties to the Rome Statute met at the World Forum in The Hague for its twenty-first Assembly session. By virtue of the...

[Psymhe Wadud is a Lecturer in Law at the Bangladesh University of Professionals and currently pursuing her Bachelor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford.] Introduction The year 2022 has been marred by systemic discrimination, violence, and endemic oppression against women all across the world. The latter half of the year in particular witnessed outrageous manifestations and images of such discrimination...

[Sara Elizabeth Dill is Partner at Anethum Global (London, England), a Certified Global Sanctions and Financial Crimes Specialist, and Officer with the International Bar Association’s War Crimes Committee.] “… we saw a mosque whose dome had been split in half when its minaret had come crashing down. … seeing the destruction in person profoundly shocked me. For as long as I could remember,...

[Dr Siva Thambisetty is an Associate Professor of Law and the Law School, London School of Economics and Political Science. In 2022 she acted as Advisor to the G77+China group Chair’s Team at the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction Negotiations in 2022.] Public international law interacts with intellectual property laws in numerous negotiating fora and intergovernmental organisations. I have long been envious of my...

[Ralph Wilde is a member of the Faculty of Laws, University College London, University of London, the 2022 Peace Fellow, Ålands fredsinstitut (Åland Islands Peace Institute), and the 2022 Research Fellow, British Academy Council for British Research on the Levant Kenyon Institute, Al-Quds/Jerusalem. Photograph by the Author.] Advisory Opinion Request On 30 December 2022, the United Nations General Assembly voted to request...

[Dimitrios A. Kourtis (@DAKourtis) has a PhD from Aristotle University and is an Adjunct Lecturer at the Hellenic Police Academy] Introduction When Oscar Schachter wrote his iconic article on the ‘invisible college’ in 1977, the scholars and practitioners of international law were, more or less, a bunch of white male academics situated in what we now call the Global North, well-versed in both English and French and the diplomatic niceties...

[Shahab Saqib (@sufi_shahab) is a Visiting Lecturer at the SOAS University of London and a PhD Scholar of law at King’s College London] Introduction In a bizarre conversation with an established colleague on international law, I was told, ‘you should run away from being a critic of international law as I did. It won’t earn you a dime’. The discussion was long and covered various other issues,...

[Sanam Amin (@cardboardsky) is a PhD student at Melbourne Law School and a member of several international feminist advocacy networks] To self-describe as an international lawyer (at a party, say) is to call up an image of a person who travels a lot doing law, someone perhaps involved in the mercantile world, a trans-nationalist. This person carries a briefcase and a small piece of...

[John D. Haskell is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester Law School and Junior Faculty at the Harvard Law School Institute for Global Law and Policy.] “I [find] myself in a spiral of uneasiness … [S]omething in the authors’ tone of voice, in their self-positioning [is] disturbing… I am troubled by the initial pairing of the notions of democratic...

[Mikkel Jarle Christensen is professor WSR in iCourts, Faculty of Law, University of Copenhagen. Here he is principal investigator for the JustSites project (ERC-StG 802053).] International criminal justice often operates across borders, mediating different degrees of distance and proximity. Sometimes, cross-border operations are folded directly into its institutions. This is visible, for instance, when international criminal courts deal with conflicts located elsewhere...

[Hazar Kaan Özkonak is currently doing his PhD at Utrecht University (Utrecht, the Netherlands). His doctoral thesis focuses on the limits on the use of unilateral sanctions pursuant to the international rule of law principles.] Introduction On September 3, Gazprom, a state-owned and state-run energy company of the Russian Federation (Russia), completely and indefinitely suspended its Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline following a discovered oil leak...

[Cecilia M. Bailliet is Professor in the Department of Public & International Law, Faculty of Law, University of Oslo, Norway.] Summary In this post, the author explores how Judge Cançado Trindade presented his views of universal juridical conscience of mankind and international law for humankind in his dissenting opinions as a judge of the International Court of Justice. For the author, these concepts...