General

[Géraldine Giraudeau is a Professor of Law at the University of Paris-Saclay (UVSQ)] Introduction Since May 13, in the context of a controversial project on electoral reform, New Caledonia (Kanaky), an archipelago of South Pacific under French administration has been in the grip of a violence that has already caused at least 11 deaths, numerous injuries and considerable damage. After more than...

To have your event or announcement featured in next week’s post, please send a link and a brief description to ojeventsandannouncements@gmail.com. Calls for Papers The diversification of civilian agency in armed conflict: In recent conflicts we have seen states increasingly rely on alternative actors. Civilians, including corporate actors, are playing an increasingly active role in national defence doctrines. In a similar fashion,...

[Michelle Burgis-Kasthala is Professor of International Law and Global Governance at the University of Edinburgh Law School. Matilde Masetti Placci is a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh Law School, and her thesis focusses on the history and theory of international law.] On 19th July, the ICJ handed down its long-awaited advisory opinion examining the legal status of Israel’s occupation...

[Philip Collins is a US-based immigration attorney and a PhD Researcher at the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the University of Galway, Ireland, where he also holds a Master's Degree in International Human Rights Law.] On June 5, 2024, President Biden’s ‘Proclamation on Securing the Border’ went into full effect, with the stated purpose of suspending and limiting ‘[t]he entry of any...

[Mark A. Drumbl is Class of 1975 Alumni Professor of Law at Washington and Lee University. Barbora Holá is Professor in Empirical Legal Studies of International Criminal Justice at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.] Even the journey can be the destination…Mňága a Žďorp, Czech rock band Writing this book, as we note in its opening pages, lifted us to many places and spaces, physically...

[Dr. Mia Swart is Visiting Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand Law School] Informers Up Close focuses almost exclusively on informers in the context of Communist Czechoslovakia. Drumbl and Holá state explicitly that, but for a sideways glance here and there, the book is not comparative in nature. It zooms in on individuals that informed to the secret police or...

[Nesam McMillan is an Associate Professor in Criminology at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and author of Imagining the International: Crime, Justice and the Promise of Community (2020)] In their new book, Drumbl and Holá offer a meditative scholarly inquiry into the practice, motivations and social significance of informing. They invite the reader to better appreciate the everydayness of informing (p....

[Saira Mohamed is Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley] Mark Drumbl and Barbora Holá’s fascinating Informers Up Close: Stories from Communist Prague offers a rigorous and engrossing account of the lives of informers in Czechoslovakia and the reckoning that comes for them after the fall of Communism. The book gives the reader so much to grapple with and...

[Sergey Vasiliev is Professor of International Law at the Open University in the Netherlands] Why bring a new book about the secret police (StB) collaborators in Communist Czechoslovakia, of all topics, into the burning, drowning, and splintered world of 2024? Can it serve purposes other than indulging one’s historical curiosity or wanderlust – an unaffordable distraction? I certainly thought so, if...

[Sanjana Ragu is an Bachelor of Laws graduate from Strathmore University and currrenly works as a trainee lawyer at Anjarwalla & Khanna] Be it Palestine in the East, or Sudan in the South, in the chessboard of global politics and economy, the suffering of the Global South is often a pawn, sacrificed for strategic advantage. This wretched reality becomes apparent once...