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The ambiguity of colonial international law: Three approaches to the Namibian Genocide Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2024-04-02 Matthias Goldmann
A visible sign of changing relations between the Global South and Global North are reparation claims for colonial injustice. An interesting case is the 1904–1907 Namibian Genocide. Germany has recently concluded a draft agreement with Namibia on reconciliation and compensation. Nevertheless, Germany maintains that it is not under any legal obligation to pay reparations. This article challenges that
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Seeking victim-centred accountability for violence against persons with disabilities at the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry for Ukraine Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2024-03-27 Kate McInnes
Persons with disabilities suffer disproportionately in every armed conflict, and Russia’s war in Ukraine is no exception. The atrocities committed against persons with disabilities in this conflict, however, are in part a consequence of the state’s longstanding policy of institutionalization, which heightens existing vulnerabilities and places persons with disabilities at an unacceptable risk of acute
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Navigating transformations: Climate change and international law Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2024-03-25 Laura Mai
The global climate crisis response envisioned by the Paris Agreement is commonly understood as demanding transformative change. International law, however, lacks a holistic conceptual framing for making sense of what such change would entail, how it might unfold, and who and what it will involve. Moreover, there has been little critical engagement with the question of what is at stake when invoking
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Gravity of the crime and early release: A comparative study of early release practices in international tribunals Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2024-03-12 Cristina Fernández-Pacheco Estrada
The gravity of the crime committed has been considered ‘a factor of fundamental importance’ when deciding the early release of a person convicted by the ad hoc tribunals. Hence, most of the decisions rendered by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, for Rwanda and the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals include this factor and determine whether it weighs
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Seventeen men at Lake Success: In search of the International Law Commission Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2024-02-22 Keri van Douwen
The International Law Commission has allegedly been in crisis from its first day of existence. Its own (former) members have been critical about its working methods, the topics it chooses to discuss, its relationship with other UN bodies, and even its aura. At the same time, the International Law Commission also paints more positive pictures of itself. This article aims to make sense of this dynamic
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From treaty to custom: Shifting paths in the recent development of international humanitarian law Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2024-02-13 Giovanni Mantilla
From 1864 to the 1970s, international humanitarian law (IHL) changed through the path of formal treaty revision. Since 1977, however, purported changes to IHL have come not from treaty making but from interpretation, particularly through claims about the attainment of customary status by existing treaty rules. This article explains this shift as the result of the attitudes and choices of key IHL stakeholders
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Seeing Santurbán through ISDS: A sociolegal case study of Eco Oro v. Colombia Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2024-02-13 Lorenzo Cotula, Nicolás M. Perrone
This article aims to enrich the emerging, multi-coloured tapestry of ‘international law in context’ through a study of how international economic law operates in complex investment-related disputes. Focusing on the Eco Oro v. Colombia investor-state arbitration, and drawing on both doctrinal analysis and sociolegal research, the study investigates how different actors make sense of the issues, of the
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Deciphering l’esprit d’internationalité: The 1872 Alabama arbitration and the pacifist antithesis of modern international law profession Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2024-01-31 Xiaohang Chen
In international legal historiography, it becomes a commonplace that the successful resolution of the Alabama dispute between Britain and the US by the 1872 Geneva Tribunal of arbitration – the 1872 Alabama arbitration – kindled the progressivist enthusiasm of liberal internationalists for projects of humanitarianism, the codification of international law, and international arbitration. The article
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Dislodging the compulsory dispute settlement mechanism: Analysis of Article 281 of UNCLOS Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2024-01-31 Bjørn Kunoy
Article 281 of UNCLOS allows states parties to a dispute to set aside the compulsory dispute resolution procedures under Section 2 of Part XV. This article discusses the recent jurisprudence that appears in the interpretations of Article 281. It discusses in turn whether, first, Article 281 provides requirements for agreements under Article 281(1) to activate the opt-out procedure from the compulsory
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Characterization of the violence between Türkiye and the PKK Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2024-01-08 Şehmus Kurtuluş
This article addresses the question of whether the violence between Türkiye and the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) constitutes an armed conflict within the meaning of international humanitarian law. The article first explains the different non-international armed conflict descriptions provided by (i) the ICTY’s famous Tadić decision, (ii) Additional Protocol II, and (iii) the Rome Statute of the ICC
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Revisiting Jessup and the imperial origins of transnational law Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-12-20 Michael Elliot
Philip Jessup’s 1956 Storrs Lectures, Transnational Law, developed a case for theorizing law beyond the state which continues to shape understandings of transnational law. Yet while transnational law has assumed increasing importance with globalization, it remains beset by conceptual difficulties. This article suggests that such difficulties are at least partly attributable to misreadings of Transnational
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Eradicating the exceptional: The role of territory in structuring international legal thought Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-12-14 Gail Lythgoe
This article examines the idea of the sui generis in international law and explores how these exceptions structure international legal thought. Exceptions are useful to international law theorizing because they create easy manageable narratives which explain situations not fitting traditional paradigms, yet as a category in their own right – specifically how they are structured and how they operate
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The 2003 Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention in Armed Conflict: An integrated reading of obligations towards culture in conflict Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-12-04 Ashrutha Rai
International law today recognizes that cultural heritage includes not only tangible but also intangible cultural heritage, encompassing traditions, customs, practices, and beliefs. While protections for tangible cultural heritage have existed since at least the nineteenth century, only relatively recently has the law gone beyond piecemeal human rights protections and extended direct and specific treaty
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Exploiting the deep seabed for the benefit of humankind: A universal ideology for sustainable resource development or a false necessity? Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-12-04 Rozemarijn J. Roland Holst
A pivotal point in time has been reached in the ongoing negotiations under the auspices of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) towards the adoption of regulations for the commercial exploitation of mineral resources in the deep seabed beyond national jurisdiction. The ISA has a mandate to ensure that activities in the Area, legally designated as ‘common heritage of humankind’, are carried out
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The ‘ideal victim’: A cage for victims’ narratives at the International Criminal Court Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-12-04 Alessandra Cuppini
Despite Article 68(3) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) granting victims an autonomous standing in proceedings, victims’ participatory rights have often been tailored to fit within the retributive structure of the trials. This contribution aims to provide a different perspective on victims’ role and their narratives in proceedings at the ICC, building upon the expressivist
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Science, epistemology and legitimacy in environmental disputes – The epistemically legitimate judicial argumentative space Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-11-30 Katalin Sulyok
This article maps the elements of the epistemically legitimate argumentative space of judges in scientific disputes, where scientific facts and arguments intrude into the legally relevant aspects of the legal controversy. The article distinguishes four main forms of legitimate hybrid reasoning styles. It identifies the epistemic risks threatening the legitimacy of decisions in light of the corresponding
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Delimitation methodology for the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles: Three-stage approach as a way forward? Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-11-28 Xuexia Liao
Delimitation of the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles (nm) is a relatively novel exercise by international courts and tribunals, and a question that assumes theoretical and practical importance is whether the delimitation methodology primarily developed in maritime delimitation within 200 nm can be applied to the delimitation beyond that distance. In contrast to some prevailing arguments
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Beyond the res judicata doctrine: The nomomechanics of ICJ interpretation judgments Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-11-15 Jörg Kammerhofer
Res judicata is a core belief of international law; the ICJ’s judgments are seen as final and without appeal, to doubt that is apparently equal to calling the entire international legal order into question. But the doctrine is not as absolute as the orthodoxy makes it out to be, neither as a matter of positive international law nor as a statement of legal theory. Even final judgements are not always
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Between commodification and data protection: Regulatory models governing cross-border information transfers in regional trade agreements Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-10-20 Magdalena Słok-Wódkowska, Joanna Mazur
The subject of this analysis is the role that regional trade agreements (RTAs) play in balancing between personal data commodification and protection of privacy and personal data, approached from the perspective of Karl Polanyi’s theory of double movement. We analyse provisions on cross-border information transfers and data protection in order to establish the models for balancing between the ideas
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States as bystanders of legal change: Alternative paths for the human rights to water and sanitation in international law Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-10-16 Nina Reiners
This article argues for international legal change in human rights as a consequence of a states-as-bystander effect: When states do neither actively drive nor block change processes, and alternative state-empowered authorities exist in a legal field, states’ position at the sidelines opens a path for non-state actors to enact substantive change. In human rights law, this is a process they route through
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Protection of LGBTQIA+ rights in armed conflict: How (and whether) to ‘queer’ the crime against humanity of persecution in international criminal law? Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-10-10 Aneta Peretko
The discrimination faced every day by LGBTQIA+ individuals does not disappear during armed conflict. On the contrary, such persons have been, and continue to be, targeted for particularly heinous human rights violations due to their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. And while international human rights law has, in the last two decades, made significant leaps in prohibiting discrimination on
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The dark legacy of Nuremberg: Inhumane air warfare, judicial desuetudo and the demise of the principle of distinction in International Humanitarian Law Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-10-02 Jochen von Bernstorff, Enno L. Mensching
On its seventy-fifth anniversary last year, the Nuremberg war crime trials moved again into the spotlight of public attention. To the present day, Nuremberg is mainly portrayed as the birth of international criminal law being the first tribunal that held individuals accountable for war crimes committed during the Second World War. As we argue in this article, there is an often-overseen dark legacy
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The ‘imbroglio’ of ecocide: A political economic analysis Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-09-26 Eliana Cusato, Emily Jones
In this article we adopt a political economic lens to analyse the revival of the concept of ecocide in present international legal scholarship and practice. The current campaign to codify the crime of ecocide under international criminal law represents the epitome of a problem-solving approach, which conceives of the law as external to society and as a corrective to its evils. Yet, a large body of
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Legal technologies: Conceptualizing the legacy of the 1923 Hague Rules of Aerial Warfare Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-09-25 Christiane Wilke, Helyeh Doutaghi
Many contemporary armed conflicts are shaped by the reliance on airstrikes using traditional fighter planes or remotely piloted drones. As accounts of civilian casualties from airstrikes abound, the ethics and legality of individual airstrikes and broader targeting practices remain contested. Yet these concerns and debates are not new. In fact, a key attempt to regulate aerial warfare was made 100
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Closing cases with open-source: Facilitating the use of user-generated open-source evidence in international criminal investigations through the creation of a standing investigative mechanism Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-09-07 Elizabeth White
Digital open-source evidence has become ubiquitous in the context of modern conflicts, leading to an evolution in investigative practices within the context of mass atrocity crimes and international criminal law. Despite its extensive promulgation, international criminal tribunals have had few opportunities to address the admissibility of user-generated open-source evidence. Through semi-structured
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Sisyphus in robes: International law, legal interpretation and the absurd Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-08-29 Wouter G. Werner
Legal systems across the world contain the obligation to prevent ‘absurd interpretations’ of law. In international law, an instruction to avoid ‘manifestly absurd’ interpretations can be found in Article 32 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties. This gives rise to at least two questions that I will take up in this article. First, what is meant by the ‘absurd’ that is to be avoided in legal
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Treaty amendment procedures: A typology from a survey of multilateral environmental agreements Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-08-17 Louis Bélanger, Jean-Frédéric Morin
Treaty amendments constitute a critical but under-researched aspect of international law. In this article, we present a comprehensive survey of 491 amendment procedures across 691 multilateral environmental agreements. We use this data collection to build a typology of amendment procedures based on various combinations of control, adaptability, and flexibility. We introduce the property space reduction
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In someone else’s words: Judicial borrowing and the semantic authority of the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-08-07 Martin Lolle Christensen
Since its first judgment on the merits in 2013, the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights (the African Court or ACtHPR) jurisprudence has bourgeoned. In building this jurisprudence, the African Court has borrowed significantly from the case law of the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. This article empirically maps judicial borrowing in the jurisprudence
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Conceptualizing legal change as ‘norm-knitting’ through the example of the environmental human right Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-08-04 Dorothea Endres
Understanding law as a continuous process with circular and interacting phases of selection, construction, and reception makes it possible to account for the variety of actors and resources implicated in the process of incrementally changing a norm of international law. This process is visualized through an analogy to knitting. One can start the knitting project with one needle, but to actually construct
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Methodology of identifying customary international law applicable to cyber activities Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-08-02 Ori Pomson
What is striking about recent scholarship on the application of customary international law to cyber activities is how little has been dedicated to the preliminary question of how one identifies the applicability of existing rules of customary international law to cyber operations. Yet, the answer to this preliminary question holds the key to answering many of the questions which arise regarding whether
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Emancipating human rights: Capitalism and the common good Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-06-29 Margot E. Salomon
This article begins with a study of the political economy of welfare capitalism to demonstrate how the private quest for profit was never going to be undermined by the advance of socio-economic rights. Contrary to the conventional view among human rights lawyers, capital draws power from its rights or welfarism. It is in recognizing the role that socio-economic rights play in serving capitalism that
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In search of Paulus Vladimiri: Canon, reception, and the (in)conceivability of an Eastern European ‘founding father’ of international law Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-06-29 Eric Loefflad
While many international lawyers are familiar with Francisco de Vitoria (1483–1546), very few have even heard of Paulus Vladimiri (1370–1435) – a Polish priest and jurist who made striking similar arguments to Vitoria on legal universality and the rights of non-Christians a full century before Vitoria. This divergence of consciousness, I argue, provides a unique opportunity to explore questions of
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A coherence framework for fact-finding before the International Court of Justice Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-06-09 James Gerard Devaney
It is the task of the International Court of Justice to establish the operative facts from which to draw normative conclusions in all contentious cases that come before it. This task, however, is complicated where those facts necessitate engagement with specialized epistemic fields other than law such as science. Drawing on legal theory and epistemology I propose a coherence framework for the establishment
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Beyond rhetoric: Interrogating the Eurocentric critique of international criminal law’s selectivity in the wake of the 2022 Ukraine invasion Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-06-06 Patryk I. Labuda
Russia’s full-blown invasion of Ukraine has reinvigorated the debate over international criminal law’s selectivity. While many have welcomed the renewed interest in accountability for international crimes in the wake of the ‘Ukraine moment’, others have emphasized double standards in the enforcement of international criminal law, including a lack of accountability for Western violations and disproportionate
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Mapping interpretation by the International Criminal Court Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-05-25 Stewart Manley, Pardis Moslemzadeh Tehrani, Rajah Rasiah
This article is one of very few attempts to empirically measure legal interpretation. It maps the application of eleven interpretation elements (good faith, ordinary meaning, object and purpose, etc.) in Articles 31 and 32 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) across ten International Criminal Court case studies. The elements were coded for identity and sequence of element, and amount
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The 2022 Russian intervention in Ukraine: What is its impact on the interpretation of jus contra bellum? Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-05-22 Olivier Corten, Vaios Koutroulis
This article examines the precedential value of Russia’s ‘special military operation’ against Ukraine in February 2022 for the purpose of interpreting the rules of jus contra bellum. Following the methodology set down by the ICJ in its Nicaragua judgment, self-defence is identified as the legal basis explicitly invoked by Russia in order to justify its operation in Ukraine. The authors then examine
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The social field of international adjudication: Structures and practices of a conflictive professional universe Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-05-17 Tommaso Soave
The modern professional world of international adjudication bears little trace of the ‘invisible college’ theorized by Oscar Schachter 50 years go. Instead, it has become a social field marked by a fierce competition among actors possessing unequal skills and influence. Moving from these premises, this article unravels the socio-professional dynamics of the community of legal experts – judges, arbitrators
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The global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines by the public-private partnership COVAX from a public-law perspective Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-05-08 Jelena von Achenbach
This article examines COVAX, a public private partnership, from a public law perspective. It asks whether COVAX is a legitimate and appropriate instrument with regard to the goal of distributing COVID-19 vaccines in a globally equitable manner and enabling equal access to vaccination worldwide. By developing public-legal legitimacy standards for this purpose, the article critically distances itself
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The settlement of tax disputes by the International Court of Justice Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-05-05 Céline Braumann
This article analyses the ICJ, one of the most eminent actors of the international legal regime, as an actor of the international tax regime. So far, the ICJ’s role in tax dispute resolution has been a blind spot in the literature. The descriptive part of this article first discusses the case law of the PCIJ and ICJ that considers – albeit incidentally – questions of taxation. These tax-related cases
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Might contain traces of Lotus: The limits of exclusive flag state jurisdiction in the Norstar and the Enrica Lexie cases Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-05-04 Máté Csernus
The article scrutinizes some of the surprising commonalities in the reasonings of two recent decisions by two separate judicial forums: the ITLOS’s judgment in the M/V Norstar case and the award of an ad hoc arbitral tribunal in the Enrica Lexie case. One key connection between the two decisions is their heavy reliance on the Lotus judgment of the PCIJ. Another similarity between the two disputes is
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Seizing stateless smuggling vessels on the Mediterranean High Seas Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-04-28 Thea Coventry
The EUNAVFOR MED anti-smuggling mission, Operation Sophia, ended in March 2020 and is largely viewed to have failed in its objective of ‘disrupting the business model’ of migrant smugglers in the Mediterranean region. The mission relied on purported enforcement powers in the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the 2000 Migrant Smuggling Protocol to seize and destroy stateless smuggling
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Ableism in the college of international lawyers: On disabling differences in the professional field Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-04-24 Lys Kulamadayil
In the wake of the #metoo and #blacklivesmatter movements, the masculine and ‘methodologically white’ nature of the core of the international legal profession has received renewed attention, and attempts to diversify it are well underway. Absent from the conversations that accompany such diversification efforts are reflections on the pervasiveness of ableism in the profession. Ableism describes implicit
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Conferences of the Parties beyond international environmental law: How COPs influence the content and implementation of their parent treaties Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-04-24 Sebastián Rioseco
Conferences of the Parties (COPs) are intergovernmental meetings established by treaties to review and promote the implementation of their provisions. The literature on COPs is limited and almost exclusively based on multilateral environmental agreements. The article departs from this scholarship to show that COPs are now present in different areas of international law and to discuss some of the ways
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Election hacking, the rule of sovereignty, and deductive reasoning in customary international law Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-04-24 Steven Wheatley
This article considers the international laws applicable to irresponsible state behaviour in cyberspace through the lens of the problem of election hacking. The rule of sovereignty has taken centre stage in these discussions and is said to be preferred to the non-intervention rule because it evades the problem of coercion. Proponents of the cyber rule of sovereignty contend that there is such a rule;
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Inside the treaty interpreter’s mind: An experimental linguistic approach to international law Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-04-24 Benedikt Pirker, Izabela Skoczeń
One particularly intense critical debate over interpretation in international law concerns the role of moral factors – specifically, the degree to which such factors influence legal interpretation, and how the law should deal with them. A formalist approach argues that moral considerations should be excluded as non-legal; a critical legal studies approach suggests they are an inevitable part of the
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The relevance of the African regional human rights system in the urban age Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-03-27 Marius Pieterse
In an attempt to reassert the relevance of international human rights law in contemporary urban contexts, this article considers the extent to which the provisions of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights lend themselves to fruitful application in African cities, appropriation by African cities and the development of rights to African cities. The article ultimately argues that, despite the
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Prometheus caged: The exiling of Napoleon and the Law of Nations, 1814–1821 Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-03-23 Adam Rowe
This article explores the exiling of Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French, in 1814 and 1815. It argues that in confronting Napoleon’s sovereignty and trying to remove him, the allies were forced to make a highly pragmatic, improvisational, and incoherent use of international law. Much of this stemmed from that fact that they were trying to implement a Great Powers political system within and through
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Digital evidence and fair trial rights at the International Criminal Court Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-03-20 María de Arcos Tejerizo
International criminal proceedings are witnessing an increase in the use of digital sources of evidence at trial, and it is expected that digital evidence will shape the outcome of upcoming decisions of international criminal tribunals. Digital footage may arguably enhance the efficiency of international crimes investigations. However, the high expertise required to access, analyse, and assess digital
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From soft law to hard law in business and human rights and the challenge of corporate power Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-03-06 Sarah Joseph, Joanna Kyriakakis
We introduce this symposium of articles by explaining the notions of hard and soft law, and reviewing UN developments on business and human rights in this light. We move to a more detailed discussion of existing hard law, particularly the state duty to protect, before examining examples of fulfilment of that duty via the domestication (especially the judicialization) of human rights norms for business
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Coming to terms with the SDGs: A perspective from legal scholarship Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-02-27 Jaye Ellis, Dylan Edmonds
The Sustainable Development Goal’s (SDG) blueprint to global sustainability exemplifies the global governance trend towards the displacement of law by indicators. Indicators purport to produce objective measurement and comparison, a desirable trait for international public authorities that struggle to bolster the legitimacy of environmental and sustainability norms. This paper adopts a pragmatic approach
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Developments in Canada on business and human rights: One step forward two steps back Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-02-23 Penelope Simons
Unlike its European counterparts, Canada appears to remain firmly entrenched in a soft approach to ensuring that Canadian extractive companies respect human rights abroad. Canada’s powerful extractive industry has been very successful in resisting attempts to introduce hard law measures to regulate their transnational conduct. This article considers business and state motivations for supporting or
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At war? Party status and the war in Ukraine Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-02-22 Alexander Wentker
Military support to Ukraine has been accompanied by debates as to when Western states would find themselves ‘at war’ with Russia. This political and legal discourse reminds us that international law needs concepts to identify who is a party to an international armed conflict. Identifying parties is crucial because the international legal regulation of armed conflict remains, in many ways, structured
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The fragmentation of international investment and tax dispute settlement: A good idea? Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-02-22 Javier García Olmedo
The international investment and tax law regimes are undergoing a process of significant reforms that seek to address existing shortcomings of the mechanisms used for the resolution of investment and tax treaty disputes. These reforms show that policymakers are gradually adopting a fragmented approach towards dispute settlement in both fields, with the establishment of different and unco-ordinated
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Mandatory human rights due diligence laws in Europe: A mirage for rightsholders? Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-02-22 Surya Deva
Mandatory human rights due diligence (HRDD) laws in the European Union (EU) – both enacted and in the making – seem to be a promising tool to harden soft international standards in the business and human rights (BHR) field, the most prominent of these being the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). This article develops a two-layered critique of mandatory HRDD laws. It problematizes
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National climate litigation and the international rule of law Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-02-20 Andreas Buser
This article assesses the implications of national climate litigation for what is termed ‘the international rule of law’. Starting from the finding that the current international climate treaty regime lacks several elements of an international rule of law, such as legal bindingness, clarity, and justiciability, the author explores what national courts contribute to filling these gaps. Deviating from
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A game of cat and mouse: Human rights protection and the problem of corporate law and power Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-02-17 Charlotte Villiers
Human rights violations by corporations are widespread and have a broad spectrum: damage to people’s health through pollution, environmental accidents and health and safety failures, forced labour or child labour, underpaid workers, displaced communities, contaminated water sources, use of excessive force, and discrimination, for example by race, gender or sexuality. Corporate violence, resulting from
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From migration crisis to migrants’ rights crisis: The centrality of sovereignty in the EU approach to the protection of migrants’ rights Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-02-06 Alan Desmond
The long-simmering process of sidelining and side-stepping migrants’ rights protection while attempting to regulate cross-border movement of people was heated up by the 2015 migration crisis and has recently been brought to the boil with the crisis-fuelled adoption of the UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) in 2018. The GCM represents an endorsement at the international
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The ECtHR’s suitability test in national security cases: Two models for balancing human rights and national security Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-01-26 Chao Jing
The European Court of Human Rights has often been criticized for lacking clarity and consistency in its reasoning of balancing human rights against conflicting public interests. To reconcile national security with human rights protection, the Court requires the interference with rights to be suitable for reaching the objective purported by the government. In this article I deal with how the Court conducts
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You were bombed and now you have to pay for it: Questioning the positive obligations in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-01-23 Anna Hood
One of the central components of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) is its victim assistance and environmental remediation provisions (known collectively as the Treaty’s ‘positive obligations’). While there is much to celebrate about efforts to remedy the damage caused by nuclear weapons, the way the TPNW distributes responsibility for this work is troubling. Under the Treaty,
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International law: A discipline of ambition Leiden Journal of International Law (IF 1.588) Pub Date : 2023-01-03 Leslie-Anne Duvic-Paoli
The term ‘ambition’ appears to have infiltrated international legal discourses: it is used to, for instance, lament the lack of state action to tackle major global challenges, praise progress towards difficult goals, or evaluate the outcomes of international law-making processes. Often mobilized, the concept of ambition in international law remains, however, poorly understood. And yet, each narrative