Featured Announcement ILA British Branch Annual Spring Conference The International Law Association British Branch Annual Spring Conference will be held on Friday 29 April 2022 at the University of Surrey. The Conference will be held in hybrid mode on the theme ‘International Law and Climate Change’. Full details may be found in the conference programme enclosed and the conference website. Fees range from £10...
[Melanie O’Brien, Associate Professor of International Law, University of Western Australia, is an award-winning IHL teacher and President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.] Following the news from Ukraine, the list of violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) being reportedly committed by Russia is like a checklist through the rules of IHL, particularly the First Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions (API) (which Ukraine and Russia are both...
[Reece Lewis is Lecturer in Law at Cardiff University.] This year marks 40 years since the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) was opened for signature. This landmark provides an opportunity to reflect on its achievements and challenges it faces today. Leading the way is the Report by the UK House of Lords International Relations and Defence...
[Ralph Wilde is a member of the Faculty of Law at University College London, University of London.] Over two decades ago, in 2000, a conference was held in London, entitled ‘international law and the Kosovo crisis’, concerning the NATO bombing of Serbia the year before. At that event, Professor, now Judge, Hilary Charlesworth, characterized international law as a ‘discipline of crisis’ in a presentation subsequently...
In an excellent recent blog post at Just Security, Tom Dannenbaum identified four options for prosecuting Russia's unprovoked aggression against Ukraine: [T]he International Criminal Court, an ad hoc international tribunal (whether along the lines proposed at Chatham House or pursuant to a General Assembly resolution), a domestic court exercising territorial jurisdiction (in Russia, Belarus, or Ukraine), or a domestic court exercising...
[Dr Carrie McDougall, Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, is author of The Crime of Aggression under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (2nd ed 2021, Cambridge University Press) and was involved in the Special Working Group on the Crime of Aggression and ICC Assembly of States Parties’ negotiations in relation to the crime of aggression.] This post is a reply to the post published...
[Mateusz Piątkowski is an Assistant Professor at the University of Łódź, Poland (Faculty of Law and Administration, International Law Department), Attorney-at-law, and Member of the Polish Society of the Military Law and the Law of War. You can find Part I of this post here.] Under international law, military confrontations between states are measured by their intensity and gravity. To establish...
[Mateusz Piątkowski is an Assistant Professor at the University of Łódź, Poland (Faculty of Law and Administration, International Law Department), Attorney-at-law, and Member of the Polish Society of the Military Law and the Law of War. The author thanks Dr Tomasz Lachowski from University of Łódź, Poland and LtnCol. Dr Wojciech Mendel from the Polish Society of Military Law and...
[Marc Weller is Professor of International Law and International Constitutional Studies in the University of Cambridge, a Barrister at Doughty Street Chambers and a former United Nations Senior Mediation Expert. He has served as Senior Advisor in a large number of international peace negotiations and is the co-editor of International Law and Peace Settlements (Cambridge University Press, 2021).] In an earlier...
[Agata Kleczkowska is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Law Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland.] Since February 24, the international community has been discussing Russia’s ‘attack’, ‘aggression’, ‘invasion’, or ‘assault’ against Ukraine. While certainly all of these terms rightly describe what happened in Ukraine on the morning of February 24, many seem to forget that there has been an ongoing...
Events 11th Annual Cambridge International Law Conference: Strengthening Global Governance through International Law: Challenges and Opportunities: What are the challenges that international law must confront to strengthen global governance in the future? What opportunities might these present, and how may this challenge our current vision of international law? How are traditional and emerging actors in international law engaging and preparing for these challenges and...
[Dr. Sava Janković is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Law Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, where he pursues research under the National Science Centre grant No 2020/37/K/HS5/02762. Professor Volker Roeben is the Dean and Professor of International Law at Durham Law School.] Background The Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) declared independence from Ukraine in May 2014, following President Yanukovych's...