In recounting the interventions of Belgian lawyers in the institutionalization of the discipline of international law at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Vincent Genin’s Le laboratoire belge du droit international offers new materials and documentary evidence of the complicity between the construction of the international legal discipline and the colonial project.

We deal in EJIL with the world we live in – often with its worst and most violent pathologies, often with its most promising signs of hope for a better world. But, inevitably, since our vehicle is scholarship, we reify this world. Roaming Charges is designed not just to offer a moment of aesthetic relief, but to remind us of the ultimate subject of our scholarly reflections: we alternate between photos

Credited with having fostered the renaissance of Francisco de Vitoria and the School of Salamanca in international law circles in the interwar period, Camilo Barcia Trelles has largely fallen into oblivion along with most Spanish international law professors of the Spanish Civil War generation. The first part of this article provides an outline of the long career of Barcia Trelles against the background

We deal in EJIL with the world we live in – often with its worst and most violent pathologies, often with its most promising signs of hope for a better world. But, inevitably, since our vehicle is scholarship, we reify this world. Roaming Charges is designed not just to offer a moment of aesthetic relief, but to remind us of the ultimate subject of our scholarly reflections: we alternate between photos

We deal in EJIL with the world we live in – often with its worst and most violent pathologies, often with its most promising signs of hope for a better world. But, inevitably, since our vehicle is scholarship, we reify this world. Roaming Charges is designed not just to offer a moment of aesthetic relief, but to remind us of the ultimate subject of our scholarly reflections: we alternate between photos

Carl Schmitt’s The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum (1950) undertook a re-interpretation of the modern origins of the discipline of international law, placing Vitoria at its pivot, as the Spanish international law professor Camilo Barcia Trelles (1888–1977) had done before. Barcia’s work had a strong influence on some of the seminal pieces on international law

This article explores three important dimensions of the work and trajectory of Camilo Barcia Trelles: his understanding of the Monroe Doctrine; his vision and contribution to the debates in Latin America and the United States over intervention and the codification of American international law; and how his own understanding of the intellectual legacy of Francisco de Vitoria shaped his views and approaches

In 1926, James Brown Scott invited the Spanish international lawyer Camilo Barcia Trelles to lecture at the 1927 Hague Academy of International Law on the contribution of the Spanish internationalists of the 16th century to the development of international law. With his lecture series on Francisco de Vitoria, Barcia Trelles fulfilled the hopes Scott had of enlisting an ally in his crusade to the Spanish

International human rights law is most efficacious when it is both incorporated into domestic law and translated into local contexts. Yet, cities as independent implementers of unratified international law have received limited scholarly attention. This article examines such renegade municipal localization of international law through an analysis of San Francisco and Los Angeles’s binding ordinances

International law’s duty of non-aggravation requires states to avoid actions that might inflame an international dispute, both to maintain international peace and to preserve the effectiveness of judicial or arbitral proceedings. Yet parties on the receiving end of calls for non-aggravation – whether from the Security Council or a tribunal – have little idea of what conduct they are expected to avoid

We deal in EJIL with the world we live in – often with its worst and most violent pathologies, often with its most promising signs of hope for a better world. But, inevitably, since our vehicle is scholarship, we reify this world. Roaming Charges is designed not just to offer a moment of aesthetic relief, but to remind us of the ultimate subject of our scholarly reflections: we alternate between photos

We deal in EJIL with the world we live in – often with its worst and most violent pathologies, often with its most promising signs of hope for a better world. But, inevitably, since our vehicle is scholarship, we reify this world. Roaming Charges is designed not just to offer a moment of aesthetic relief, but to remind us of the ultimate subject of our scholarly reflections: we alternate between photos

This article is a critical reaction to the 2020 EJIL Foreword titled ‘Guiding Principles on Shared Responsibility in International Law’. It focuses on Principle 3, concerning a ‘single internationally wrongful act’, and it is divided into its constitutive elements: the meaning of same conduct (Section 2), the attribution to multiple persons (Section 3), the breach of obligations (Section 4) and the

This comment assesses the approach to the reach of defences beyond the international legal person(s) who is (or are) the author(s) of the internationally wrongful act articulated in Guiding Principle 5 of the Guiding Principles on Shared Responsibility in International Law. It will focus on three main points: (1) whether the choice in respect of the reach of defences in Principle 5 is justifiable for

And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst, [t]hey say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou? So … He lifted up himself and said unto them, he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. (John 8:3

The earth has become more than ever a melting- pot.

KreßClaus and BarrigaStefan (eds). The Crime of Aggression: A Commentary, . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. 1583. £236.99. ISBN: 9781107015265

The 2020 COVID pandemic has posed an unprecedented challenge to Europe’s economies, societies and political institutions. Finding solutions for the immediate and longer-term impact of the pandemic requires collaboration between the European Union’s (EU) member states and leadership from their governments at both national and European levels. The President of the European Council is central to this

Judges and scholars have long debated whether the European Court of Human Rights (the ECtHR or the Court) can only expand, never diminish, human rights protections in Europe. Recent studies have found that political backlashes and national-level restrictions have influenced ECtHR case law. However, analysing whether the ECtHR is shifting in a regressive direction faces an empirical challenge: How can

Despite the historical turn in the study of public international law and the advance of comparative approaches, still too little attention is paid nowadays to specific national traditions. This holds, inter alia, for the scholarly views and practices in the Netherlands during the first half of the 20th century. This article seeks to shed light on the experiences here at the advent of the League of

AbstractThis article was sparked by a critical reading of Henri de Waele’s article ‘A New League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? The Professionalization of International Law Scholarship in the Netherlands, 1919–1940’, and aims to offer an alternative perspective on this period in the history of Dutch international legal scholarship. While it appreciates the author’s examination of Dutch international law

This contribution engages with Ardi Imseis’s article ‘Negotiating the Illegal: On the United Nations and the Illegal Occupation of Palestine, 1967–2020’. In reply, I contemplate whether an occupation’s legal status can or should affect the requirement that an occupying power must withdraw from the territory that it controls. I consider Imseis’s claim that it is necessary to declare that an occupation

ClarkPhil. Distant Justice: The Impact of the International Criminal Court on African Politics.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. 392. £26.99. ISBN: 9781108474092.

The prevailing view among legal scholars over the last decade is that international financial collaboration is a resolutely cooperative venture that cannot be reduced to the interests or relative power of individual states. Moving along this line, the book under review shows that the protection of financial nationalism contributes to the creation of global systemic risks. In this review essay, I discuss

2019 marked the 25th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide and of the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). After prosecuting 73 people, including high-ranking politicians and military leaders, the Rwanda Tribunal closed its doors in 2015. Together with its sister tribunal, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the ICTR is considered one of the

PeatDaniel, Comparative Reasoning in International Courts and Tribunals.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. 258. £95. ISBN: 9781108415477.

SaabAnne. Narratives of Hunger in International Law: Feeding the World in Times of Climate Change.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2019. Pp. 222. £85.00. ISBN: 9781108473378.

SantosAlvaro, ThomasChantal and TrubekDavid (eds), World Trade and Investment Law Reimagined: A Progressive Agenda for an Inclusive Globalization.New York: Anthem Press, 2019. Pp. 278. £80.00. ISBN: 9781783089727.

We deal in EJIL with the world we live in – often with its worst and most violent pathologies, often with its most promising signs of hope for a better world. But, inevitably, since our vehicle is scholarship, we reify this world. Roaming Charges is designed not just to offer a moment of aesthetic relief, but to remind us of the ultimate subject of our scholarly reflections: we alternate between photos

AbstractThis article, part of the symposium on ‘theorizing international organizations law’, discusses the work (and a little of the life and influence) of Henry G. (Hein) Schermers, arguably the leading functionalist international organizations lawyer of the post-war era. The article discusses how Schermers’ work solidified and consolidated functionalism and unwittingly laid bare its ‘Achilles heel’

Fernando LusaBordin. The Analogy between States and International Organizations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. 267. £85. ISBN 97811071555558.

AbstractThe proportionality principle is an international humanitarian law requirement intended to constrain the use of military force in order to protect civilians in armed conflicts. This research experimentally assesses the reliability of its application by legal and moral experts (in 11 countries), by military officers (in two countries) and by laypeople. Reliability was evaluated according to

Discours de parlementaires,

GerhardUllrich. The Law of the International Civil Service.Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2018. Pp. 538. € 89,90. ISBN: 978-3-428-14914-8.

AbstractHans Kelsen and his Vienna School in International Law developed a highly original legal concept of international institutions. It originated in the Interbellum and aimed at bolstering the new institutional structures created in the League era by promoting egalitarian legal structures and strong judicial controls of both member states and the organs of the institution. Against the background

AbstractVera Shikhelman’s recent article on the implementation of the views of the United Nations Human Rights Committee (HRC) took a valuable first step towards addressing the question why states do, or do not, comply with adverse treaty body views. In this contribution, we contend that parts of the chosen theoretical and methodological approach are somewhat problematic, however, and ultimately weaken

AbstractThis short article introduces a symposium on the intellectual history of international organizations law, which focuses on the contributions of six international lawyers: Henry G. (Hein) Schermers, Clarence Wilfred Jenks, Paul Reuter, Louis Sohn, Georges Abi-Saab and Hans Kelsen.

DavidÉric. Droit des organisations internationales. Brussels: Bruylant, 2016. Pp. 829. 124€. ISBN: 9782802749028.

AbstractWhile the responsibility of international organizations and their member states has been on the agenda of courts and scholars for decades, the adoption of the Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations (ARIO) by the International Law Commission in 2011 has given new impetus to the debate. Nikolaos Voulgaris’ Allocating International Responsibility between Member States and

AbstractThis article situates C. Wilfred Jenks as a central figure in the emergence and development of the law of international organizations. Deeply informed by his work as a legal advisor at the International Labour Organization (ILO), Jenks’ scholarly writings during and immediately after World War II established a basis for, and elaborated the details of many aspects of, classical international

AbstractThis review essay takes an in-depth look at the most recent addition to the Oppenheim family, a two-volume work on the law and practice of the United Nations, prepared by Rosalyn Higgins and a dream team composed of some of her former students. The essay not only zooms in on the merits of the work but also aims to place it in context in a changing world, wistfully noting a little nostalgia

AbstractThe right to benefit from science and its applications is one of the least studied, discussed and applied human rights. In the current time of globalization, characterized by the rapid advancement of science and its technological applications, as well as by increased flows of scientific data, there is a growing need to fully awaken the right of everyone to enjoy the benefits of science. This

AbstractLouis Sohn was an émigré scholar who fled Poland for the USA in 1939, two weeks before the Nazis invaded. His most widely known work is World Peace through World Law, co-written with Grenville Clark, a vision for a reconstructed United Nations. Writing at a time when political realism was ascendant in the USA, Sohn was labeled an ‘idealist’. Yet a strain of pragmatism also runs through his

AbstractWhy and how have ‘Third World’ international lawyers engaged with the law of international organizations? This article considers Georges Abi-Saab’s 1978 work The United Nations Operation in the Congo 1960–1964, an important but largely forgotten intervention in debates about the power and authority of the United Nations (UN) at the height of the post-World War II wave of decolonization. Fusing

AbstractScience is widely regarded as being necessary for effective international environmental decision-making and risk assessment processes. However, it is equally well recognized that uncertainties or the complexity of phenomena under study mean that science may only offer partial knowledge for environmental problems in many circumstances. ‘Democratization’ of science is often proposed as a solution

AbstractThe true designer of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) might have been a French professor of international law, Paul Reuter (1911–1990). Then working in the shadow of Jean Monnet, he became one of the leading experts in public international law in France from the late 1950s on and also served on the International Law Commission. It was not his style to develop

AbstractJean-Claude Juncker was President of the first ‘political Commission’, being the first (and so far the only) President to be elected through the Spitzenkandidat system following the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty. Juncker was appointed as head of a college of commissioners with high profiles and extensive experience in national politics. During his tenure, Juncker had to manage several

AbstractThis contribution is inspired by the thought-provoking article ‘Monopolizing War’ by Eyal Benvenisti and Doreen Lustig. My Reply argues that early 19th-century IHL codification projects in the eyes of European governments did not primarily serve domestic anti-revolutionary purposes. It also takes a somewhat sceptical stance as to the recent scholarly trend, which reduces historical explanations

AbstractInvestment arbitration has attracted growing criticism both in academia and in the general political debate. The system has been criticized by groups and stakeholders with very different agendas – from academics to anti-globalization activists, from alt-right groups to policy-makers. While sharing a common aversion to such dispute resolution mechanism, these groups do not generally take the

AbstractThis article explores the potential contribution of international human rights law – specifically, the oft-neglected ‘right to science’ – to the interpretation, operation and progressive development of international environmental law. Science and its applications play a critical role in environmental protection. At the same time, society faces persistent controversies at this interface. Environmental

AbstractWe are very grateful to Professor von Bernstorff for taking the trouble to read and comment on our article,11 which is a segment of a larger research project. His feedback will be invaluable in taking this project successfully to its next stage. While we could not address each and every aspect of his critique, the following response addresses four elements: the assertion that we argued that

AbstractProvisional application has become a quasi-automatic corollary to the signature of mixed bilateral European Union (EU) agreements. Resort to provisional application is thereby informed by a rationale hitherto unknown in international law: it allows federal polities where the federal level does not have exclusive treaty making powers to develop an effective external action that is not hindered

AbstractAccusations of bad state behaviour in cyberspace are proliferating, yet this increase in naming has not obviously produced much shame. Accused states uniformly deny the accusation or decline to comment, without changing behaviour. For international lawyers, the problem is compounded by the absence of international law in these charges. States are not invoking international law when they complain

AbstractModern geopolitics includes measures short of armed conflict designed to control decision-making in, and action by, target states. One increasingly significant category of these measures involves attacks by foreign states against civil society institutions in target states. Liberal states that seek to protect their civil societies from this interference seek to bolster civil society defences

AbstractThis article takes a critical look at the United Nations’ commitment to the international rule of law through an examination of its position on occupied Palestine post 1967. Occupation of enemy territory is meant to be temporary, and the occupying power may not rightfully claim sovereignty over such territory. Since 1967, Israel has systematically and forcibly altered the status of occupied

AbstractConsidering the role of attribution in the law of state responsibility, this article examines the technical and international law methodologies and determinants used when attributing malicious cyber activities falling below the use-of-force threshold to a state, and identifies the challenges that arise which lead to responsibility gaps. The article goes on to discuss a number of proposals that

It is popular to view international human rights law as universal. In a normative sense, human rights universality refers to certain qualities of human rights norms. These qualities have long been under attack, most recently by what is called here human rights nationalism. The main point made in this article is that some of the criticism levelled against normative human rights universality can be accommodated

The maritime boundary dispute between Timor-Leste and Australia was submitted to the compulsory conciliation procedure under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). This is the first instance of conciliation, whether voluntary or compulsory, under UNCLOS. The Timor Sea conciliation led to the successful settlement of the long-standing deadlock between the parties that had hitherto

This paper develops the concept of the monopoly of jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) through the analysis of the case-study of the recently challenged Investment Court System. By providing a general framework over the criteria which have been developed by the Court, the work intends to be both pragmatic and theoretical. One the one hand, the criteria are developed as

Rereading Grotius in 2019 as a sequel to the 1990 and 2009 European Journal of International Law’s contributions on ‘the politics of international law’, at a time of staggering global inequality, Martti Koskenniemi asks what we can learn from Grotius about the ‘tendency [of humans] to subordinate themselves’ to law and, I may add, the limits of that tendency. While I agree with Koskenniemi that Grotius’