FID Recht - Völkerrecht / Recht der internationalen Organisationen

United Nations to Be Reformed, Not Replaced: Toward a Better Shared Future for Humanity

2026-04-11T00:00:00+00:00

1. The year 2025 saw the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and the founding of the United Nations. With the end of the war and the birth of the United Nations, the UN-centered international system and the international law-based global order have taken shape and have helped maintain overall peace in the post-war era while promoting worldwide development and progress. Now, 80 years on, the world once again stands at a historic crossroads, providing a good occasion to review the evolution of the contemporary international order over the past 80 years, and to look ahead to its future transformation. Such an effort is essential for advancing global governance reform in step with the times and for building a community with a shared future for humanity.

Beyond Ownership: An Evolving Framework for the Restitution of Cultural Objects

2026-04-07T10:25:16+00:00

Chinese Journal of Transnational Law, Ahead of Print.
While the rule that stolen or unlawfully exported cultural objects should be returned has a solid basis in public international law, cross-border restitution in practice remains complex. Even where an artefact has been located and identified – a major ...

Recensión: Werner, Cavalcanti y Aguas (editores) (2025), Antarctica as a Model for Global Peace

2026-03-31T00:00:00+00:00

Recensión del libro de Horacio Werner, Patricia Cavalcanti y Mariano Aguas (editores) (2025), Antarctica as a Model for Global Peace. A Compelling Contemporary Example of How Nations Can Thrive Through Collaboration, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung: Buenos Aires. 468 pp.

Kaleidoscopic Empire: Robert Hart and the Fragmentation of Late Qing Governance

2026-03-28T08:12:24+00:00

Chinese Journal of Transnational Law, Ahead of Print.
Robert Hart, the Anglo-Irish Inspector General of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Services, is largely known for introducing the last imperial rulers of China, the Great Qing, to Western structures and ideas during the late nineteenth and early ...

From Regulation to Crime Control: Preventive Justice in the Governance of Global Markets

2026-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

This essay analyzes the “criminal turn” in economic governance, where national security priorities embed preventive justice rationales into global market, trade, investment, and technology regulation. Drawing on the frameworks of preventive justice and securitization theory, it illustrates how systems in China, the United States, and the United Kingdom employ anticipatory coercion, strict liability sanctions, definitional vagueness, and procedural opacity, discarding traditional criminal safeguards such as mens rea and proportionality. Comparative evaluation exposes converging preventive architectures across divergent constitutional models, producing chilling effects, delegated enforcement, multilateral fragmentation, and threats to economic openness. It advocates limited consequentialist reforms to reconcile security imperatives with rule‑of‑law integrity.

United Nations and Development

2026-03-26T00:00:00+00:00

Australia’s Obligations for the Acquisition and Operation of Nuclear Submarines under AUKUS: What Can Article 14 of its Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA Tell us?

2026-03-26T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

Australia is pursuing the acquisition and operation of nuclear-powered submarines in collaboration with the United States and the United Kingdom under the AUKUS initiative. In accordance with Article 14 of its Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement (CSA) with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Australia has invoked the non-application of safeguards to nuclear material used in non-proscribed military activities. This paper argues that Article 14 is applicable in this context, and emphasizes that the non-application of safeguards resulting from the application of this Article is not automatic and entails two sets of obligations for Australia: the obligation of notification and the obligation of making an arrangement. First, Australia is obliged to inform the IAEA of the non-proscribed military activity in question, to ensure that the use of the nuclear material in nuclear-powered submarines does not conflict with its undertaking under the CSA that the nuclear material will be used only in a peaceful nuclear activity. Furthermore, Australia must guarantee that the nuclear material will not be used for the production of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices. Second, Australia is obliged to enter into a separate arrangement with the Agency. The arrangement must identify, to the extent possible, the period or circumstances during which the safeguards will not apply. Additionally, the arrangement must stipulate that Australia is obliged to keep the IAEA informed of the quantity and composition of the unsafeguarded nuclear material and any exports of such material. From a procedural perspective, it is now up to the IAEA and the Member States to decide how the arrangement required by Article 14 should be adopted, in particular whether it should be approved by the Board of Governors. In any case, any arrangement that fails to achieve the fundamental objective of non-proliferation would set a detrimental precedent for the international non-proliferation regime.

United Nations and Human Rights: A Brief Reflection

2026-03-25T00:00:00+00:00

Fortifying the Cross-Border Protection and International Security of Cultural Property and Heritage

2026-03-25T11:24:12+00:00

Chinese Journal of Transnational Law, Volume 3, Issue 1, Page 3-10, March 2026.

United Nations and Global Commons Governance

2026-03-25T00:00:00+00:00

1. “Global commons” is not a legal term. A similar term used in legal discourse is “areas beyond national jurisdiction” (ABNJs), which encompasses the high seas, the Area (defined as “the seabed and ocean floor and subsoil thereof, beyond the limits of national jurisdiction”1¹), Antarctica, international airspace, and outer space. This coincides with the narrow definition of global commons, although there have been efforts to expand the concept to include shared resources that transcend national boundaries, such as the atmosphere, cyberspace, and biodiversity. This short note addresses only issues falling under the narrow definition of global commons.

The Relevance of ADR Processes in China's Transnational Efforts for the Return of Its Looted Cultural Property*

2026-03-23T03:49:04+00:00

Chinese Journal of Transnational Law, Ahead of Print.
Alternative dispute resolution (ADR) processes can be relevant where claims span state boundaries such as Chinese repatriation claims for the return of cultural property from foreign individuals, institutions and states. This article explores China's use ...

The Role of the United Nations in the Maintenance of International Peace and Security

2026-03-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chinese National Social Science Fund Project “Application of the Principle of Reciprocity in the field of Immunity of State and Its Officials25BFX022

¿El Multilateralismo a Prueba? Reflexiones y Perspectivas desde los dos polos geográficos del Cono Sur a 80 años de Naciones Unidas

2026-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

Agudas Chasidei Chabad of U.S. v. Russian Federation: Reaffirming the Narrow Reach of the FSIA Expropriation Exception against Foreign States

2026-03-18T00:00:00+00:00

1. The United States has long been an attractive forum for litigants bringing claims against foreign sovereigns, and its unparalleled expropriation exception has considerably contributed to this prosperity. Codified as 28 U.S.C. §1605(a)(3), part of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA), the expropriation exception withdraws immunity where rights in property taken in violation of international law are in issue if either the property or exchanged property is (i) present in the United States in connection with a commercial activity carried on there by the foreign State, or (ii) owned or operated by the foreign State’s agency or instrumentality that is engaged in a commercial activity in the United States. Enacted in part as a Congressional response to address expropriations targeting US nationals, this exception has been invoked more frequently in restitution claims concerning cultural property expropriated during the Holocaust. However, the controversial exception, allegedly having departed from international law, has witnessed a restrictive shift in recent cases. Notably, the US Supreme Court has recently narrowed the reach of the expropriation exception in two key decisions: Federal Republic of Germany v. Philipp, 592 US 169 (USSC 2021) (“Philipp”), and Republic of Hungary v. Simon, No. 23-867 Slip Op. (USSC 2025) (“Simon”).

Chronology of Practice: Chinese Practice in Public International Law in 2023*

2026-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

This Survey covers materials reflecting Chinese practice in 2023 relating to: treaties, agreements and other documents signed or ratified by the People’s Republic of China; national legislation; statements made by Chinese representatives at the meetings of the UN and other international organizations, international conferences, and those made by the Foreign Ministry spokespersons, with respect to various branches of international law; and judicial decisions, in particular on the applicability and application of international conventions, by Chinese courts.

The Extraterritorial Application of Human Rights in Armed Conflict in the DRC v. Rwanda Case in the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights

2026-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

1. This contribution discusses the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACtHPR, or the Court)’s decision pronounced on 26 June 2025 in the case of the Democratic Republic of the Congo v. the Republic of Rwanda (Application 007/2003, decision on jurisdiction and admissibility, hereinafter, DRC v. Rwanda), a decision that is attracting increasing attention by scholars.1¹ Specifically, this analysis addresses the Court’s findings on the extraterritorial application of human rights instruments and the jurisdiction of regional human rights courts over alleged violations. The case pertains to alleged human rights violations committed by Rwanda in the territory of the DRC, particularly in the region of North Kivu, in the context of the ongoing armed conflict between the armed group M23, supported by Rwanda, and the DRC (see the factual background in ACtHPR, DRC v. Rwanda, paras. 3-7).2² The Court, unanimously, found that it has jurisdiction and that the claims are admissible, thus opening the way for a discussion of the merits of the case.

Rosa Luxemburg’s self-determination: a critical feminist approach to international law

2026-02-24T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

Rosa Luxemburg’s relationship with feminism is widely known to be multifaceted and contested. In this contribution, I examine her radical reflections, particularly on self-determination, by focusing on her critique of political economy, anti-imperialism, and national self-determination, and its link with contemporary critical feminist scholarship in international law.

Rosa Luxemburg and imperialism as statecraft: US jurisdictional accumulation on the Philippines frontier

2026-02-20T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

This article considers the internationalisation of American police power in the early 20th century alongside Rosa Luxemburg’s theory of imperialism as a form of statecraft. I examine colonial land reform policies in the US-occupied Philippines as an early example of imperial nation-building premised on the development of legal mechanisms to both promote and police property ownership. In particular, I look at the implementation of the 1903 Public Land Act (PLA), an effort to redistribute previously Spanish-held land to Filipino cultivators with the dual goal of pacificying local insurgency and facilitating democratic state-building to prepare the Philippines for independence. I argue that colonial land reform functioned by reproducing relations of legal unevenness, a term that describes the jurisdictional development of legal and political spaces outside the sanction of American rule of law. Liberal land reform schemes like the PLA held the Philippines in a chokehold, preventing the development of meaningful political institutions and economic self-sufficiency, while leveraging the failure of stabilization efforts as a means to prolong US rule.

Introduction to the symposium on Rosa Luxemburg and international law: like a clap of thunder

2026-02-10T00:00:00+00:00

What does Rosa Luxemburg’s work have to offer to the study of international law in a time of neoliberal capitalism, climate catastrophe, and pandemic? The 150th anniversary of the birth of Rosa Luxemburg in 2021 appeared a particularly fitting time to ask this question, and to invite interlocutors and academic comrades in a collective effort to answer it. Our purpose was to celebrate Rosa Luxemburg’s life and political and intellectual contributions, making them visible to international lawyers, based on what we already knew of her work on the nexus between capital accumulation and imperialism, her critical stance towards national self-determination, her critique of bourgeois feminism, and her multi-disciplinary expertise of political economy, botany, zoology, and geology. We believed that Luxemburg’s work could build on, complement, and even challenge the existing Marxist literature in international law, which has served as an important critique of neoliberal capitalism and the entanglements of international law and its pathologies.

Reclaiming the revolutionary: whither Rosa Luxemburg?

2026-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

While the turn to Rosa Luxemburg by international legal scholars in the context of contemporary political crises is laudable, this article lays out the potential pitfalls of such academic appropriation. We highlight the political commitments central to Luxemburg’s life and thought and argue that these should anchor any ‘Luxemburg-ian’ turn.

The everyday banality of domination and the exceptional drama of conquest: Rosa Luxemburg’s critique of self-determination through the many lives of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

2026-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

This article explores Rosa Luxemburg’s theories in relation to present international legal discourses on the ban on conquest and its fragility. Towards this end, I centre the significance of the (partitioned) Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as a generative site for modern conceptualisations of ‘conquest’ and, relatedly, Luxemburg’s formative context of political engagement.

International law as ‘frontier law’: Rosa Luxemburg’s ecology and climate catastrophe

2026-01-22T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

Through a new reading of Rosa Luxemburg’s insights on primitive accumulation and ecology, this article develops the lens of ‘Rosa Luxemburg’s ecology’ to interrogate international law’s role in climate catastrophe and the green transition. This lens reframes international law as ‘frontier law’—a regime enabling and legitimising extractivism.

More than a glance at the ocean: international law, seabed mining, and the monetary nature of capitalism

2025-10-31T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

The article draws on Rosa Luxemburg to examine current legal developments concerning seabed mining. Building on the macro-monetary reading of capitalism that Luxemburg developed in The Accumulation of Capital and the Anti-Critique, the analysis casts doubt on the international law of the sea’s alignment with the contradictions inherent in capitalist production.

Editorial: EJIL: News! In This Issue; In This Issue – Reviews; Guest Editorial Note: Selected Essays from the Study and Analysis of International Law (SAILS) Consortium; EJIL Roll of Honour; EJIL Peer Review Prize

2026-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

Roaming Charges Moments of Dignity: Generation Z

2026-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

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 of places – the world we live in – and photos of people – who we are, the human condition. We eschew the direct programmatic photograph: people shot up, the ravages of pollution or the latest group photograph of ICJ judges.

Adam der Erste*

2026-02-17T00:00:00+00:00

Du schicktest mit dem FlammenschwertDen himmlischen Gendarmen,Und jagtest mich aus dem Paradies,Ganz ohne Recht und Erbarmen!

My Patria Is the Book: 10 Good Reads 2025

2026-02-11T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

Here, yet again, is my pick of ‘good reads’ from the books I read in 2025. I want to remind you, as I do every year, that these are not ‘book reviews’, which also explains the relative paucity of law books or books about the law. Many excellent ones have come my way this year, as in previous years, but an excellent law book is not always, in fact rarely is, a ‘good read’ in the sense intended here: curl up on the sofa and enjoy a very good read, maybe even as a respite from an excellent law book. I usually point out that some of these ‘good reads’ are not necessarily literary masterpieces – though in the list this year each recommendation is for a book which in my eyes is a lot more than a ‘mere’ good read; a handful are truly masterpieces. A lot more than 10 good reads came my way this year. The selection process was tougher than usual. I was guided by my possibly misguided notion of trying to provide titles which would cater for very different tastes. I myself am hopelessly eclectic.

Natasha Wheatley, The Life and Death of States: Central Europe and the Transformation of Modern Sovereignty

2026-02-06T00:00:00+00:00

WheatleyNatasha. The Life and Death of States: Central Europe and the Transformation of Modern Sovereignty. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2023. Pp. xviii + 406. ISBN: 9780691244075.

The Rise of International Environmental Law, 1946–1993: Narrow Limits and Extensive Tasks

2026-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

Environmental lawyers have devoted little attention to their discipline’s past, and when they have done so, they have often narrated the past as showing that the field is becoming progressively more self-aware and sophisticated so as to reach its present stage of maturity. In this article, we trace a somewhat different course. We follow the emergence of the field from the 1950s to its eventual collapse into ‘sustainable development’. To do this, we examine the processes that created and shaped its boundaries in such a way that it gradually came to see itself as a specific type of professional project with a blueprint for international legal reform. We examine the way in which topics became included in and excluded from the field. And we focus especially on the diplomatic, professional and academic tensions that shaped the field and eventually led it from its early environmentalist orientation to its present-day efforts to engage with wider issues of social development and international justice.

International Environmental Law: A Law of Side Effects?

2026-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

A reader examining a contemporary account of international environmental law 20, 30 or 50 years from now may be interested not only in its accuracy but also in what the account conveys of our own generational perception of our past. By then, several features will have become evident to that reader, which our generation missed or under-estimated. One above all is likely to connect our and their perception of what international environmental law had to face: humanity, through its production and consumption processes, is changing not only human history but also the dynamics of the entire Earth System in what some see as a new geological epoch defined by humans, the ‘Anthropocene’. This major fact is and will remain with us, and the extent to which it can be addressed depends on whether we see it and integrate it in our policies. This article argues that such is not the case of the social practice we call international environmental law, and this is, above all, for a very specific reason: international environmental law is built around an asymmetry between the legal organization of production and consumption processes – the ‘transaction’ – and the regulation of their side effects or ‘negative externalities’. At the core of international environmental law lies a deliberate effort to preserve legal space for the transaction – the very processes that led us into the Anthropocene – while aiming to minimize its negative side effects for the global environment. It is an odd mismatch, akin to a legal requirement to keep the dam gates open while also requiring that the flooded areas be kept as dry as possible. International environmental law is faced with impacts affecting the geological timescale, but it is structured to preserve the cause of the problem and focus on side effects unfolding in a human timescale.

Reflections on the Structure of International Environmental Law after Half a Century

2026-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

We inhabit a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – in which humans are the major force affecting the Earth System, with potentially catastrophic results. We also live in a kaleidoscopic world with many actors, in addition to states, many different legal instruments and abrupt, rapid changes in issues and coalitions. Increasingly, we face problems of commons and public goods at multiple geographical levels. This is the reality that international environmental law now must govern. While this body of law has had certain successes in the last half-century, progress in many areas has been incremental. As this article argues, international environmental law must undergo transformational change that takes account of these critical changes in the global context, reconsiders the adequacy of legacy legal structures and treats the Earth as a holistic system with humanity as an integral part. Specifically, it needs to overcome five disconnects: (i) between the narrow anthropocentric scope of legal frameworks and the integrated character of the Earth System; (ii) between the siloed and ad hoc approach to individual environmental problems and their integrated connection in the Earth System; (iii) between the legal need for certainty and the inherent uncertainties and changes in the relevant science; (iv) between the legal prioritization of the present generation and the needs of future generations; and (v) between the theoretical recognition of the rights of marginalized and vulnerable communities and indigenous peoples in sustainable development and their practical exclusion from participation and justice.

International Environmental Law after Half a Century

2026-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

This symposium assesses the evolution – or, more neutrally, the trajectory – of international law as it relates to the environment in the last half-century. In the decades since the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment and until 2025, a watershed for climate litigation (but for little else), the development-environment equation that haunts every environmental negotiation, every instrument and much of the case-law became only more polarized. In this introductory article, I discuss three main aspects of this assessment, as they arise from the contributions to this symposium: (i) the case for reconsidering the overall retrospective narrative of international environmental law; (ii) the possible reasons explaining its inability to address humanity’s geological impact; and (iii) the role of international law in relation to the balancing of the terms of the development-environment equation. The purpose is not descriptive; it is analytical, and sometimes critical. It is an effort to provide the context that is most relevant for an understanding of these contributions.

Koskenniemi’s Lauterpacht: A ‘Gentle Civilizer’?

2026-01-20T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

Hersch Lauterpacht’s normative project has been subject to a number of excellent studies in the past – most notably by Martti Koskenniemi. The central image of the latter’s ‘Lauterpacht’ is, famously, that of a backward-looking thinker: Lauterpacht is portrayed as a ‘natural lawyer’ who nostalgically looks back into the 19th century as the last representative of a ‘Victorian tradition’ in international law. This article wishes to critique and challenge this influential intellectual portrait. In order to do this, it revisits Lauterpacht’s rich academic oeuvre in three sections. Section 2 begins with a reconstruction of Lauterpacht’s understanding of the judicial function – a function on which much of Koskenniemi’s Lauterpacht hinges. Section 3 explores the legislative function within Lauterpacht’s international legal order, while section 4, subsequently, investigates the ‘function’ given to natural law in Lauterpacht’s normative project. Section 5, finally, offers a critical challenge to Koskenniemi’s ‘Lauterpacht’ and re-evaluates the place that he should be given within the history of 20th-century international law. A conclusion contends that Lauterpacht is best characterized as a utopian international federalist, whose supranational legacy has largely remained unredeemed.

The Trouble with Carbon Budgets, Offsets and Removals in Climate Litigation against States: The Case of KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland at the ECtHR

2026-01-11T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

The European Court of Human Rights’ (ECtHR) judgment in KlimaSeniorinnen v. Switzerland represents a critical juncture in climate litigation. By endorsing a national carbon budget in combination with an extraterritorial, consumption-based approach to state responsibility, while sidestepping the contentious issues of carbon offsets and removals, I show how the Court has created an implementation paradox. The judgment cannot be implemented in a meaningful way in a context where Switzerland’s fair-share carbon budget is already exhausted and negative, and where it is almost exhausted if we adopt a per capita approach. A negative fair-share carbon budget would entail an ‘emergency brake’, which no state can afford. A still remaining positive per capita carbon budget would require unprecedented emission reduction rates far beyond the temporality of economic lockdowns imposed during COVID-19. The judgment thus highlights the limits of climate litigation against states at a time of exhausted carbon budgets and an over-reliance on questionable carbon offsets and highly speculative carbon removal promises.

International Law as a Driver of Confrontation? UNCLOS and China’s Policy in the South China Sea

2026-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

Could international law contribute to interstate maritime conflicts? A close tracing of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) policies in the South China Sea suggests so. China’s early interactions with the emerging maritime legal order in the 1970s expanded the scope of its interests from disputed island territories to comprehensive jurisdiction over vast swathes of maritime space. Ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in 1996 prompted Beijing to develop new bureaucratic and enforcement capabilities designed to realize sweeping claims inspired by, though not limited to, UNCLOS entitlements. When these capabilities came to fruition in the mid-2000s, they enabled a sustained, increasingly coercive push for control over the PRC’s maritime periphery, which has continued to the present. Four representative cases of China’s new and ongoing patterns of behaviour demonstrate in specific detail how China’s interactions with the legal regime have contributed to its confrontational on-water behaviour. In short, the PRC’s campaign to control vast swathes of East Asian maritime space was rooted in the party-state’s internalization of concepts of maritime rights through the UNCLOS process, coupled with a rejection of its corresponding limitations.

An International Anomaly. Colonial Accession to the League of Nations, by Thomas Gidney

2026-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

GidneyThomas. An International Anomaly. Colonial Accession to the League of Nations.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025. Pp. 315. £90 hardcover. ISBN: 978-1009584449.

Untied Nations? Saving the UN Security Council

2026-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

The United Nations Security Council is often criticized for being unrepresentative, paralysed by the veto and impotent in the face of major conflicts. Yet, beneath these familiar complaints lies a more profound dilemma: whether international society still believes in the desirability, let alone the possibility, of a global legal order anchored in the Security Council. This review essay situates contemporary reform debates against that larger question. It explores how proposals for modest procedural and working-method reforms collide with the political reality of entrenched permanent members; how expansion schemes risk draining attention from more feasible fixes; and how normative disagreements expose the fissure between Kelsenian faith in rules and Schmittian insistence on power. Alongside geopolitical tension, the Security Council must now contend with new existential threats – from climate change to artificial intelligence – that will test its mandate and legitimacy. The deeper problem, however, may not be the Security Council’s structure or procedures but, rather, the mismatch between the expectations placed upon it and what member states are prepared to deliver.

Shannonbrooke Murphy. The Human Right to Resist in International and Constitutional Law

2026-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

MurphyShannonbrooke. The Human Right to Resist in International and Constitutional Law.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2025. Pp. 376. €122.55. ISBN: 9781108838214.

Paulo Borba Casella. International Law, History and Culture

2026-01-06T00:00:00+00:00

CasellaPaulo Borba. International Law, History and Culture.Leiden: Brill Nijhoff, 2024. Pp. 576. ISBN: 9789004694507.

A History of the Hague Academy’s First Century: Computational Insights from the Recueil des cours

2025-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

The Hague Academy’s flagship publication, the Collected Courses / Recueil des cours, sheds light on the evolution of international law over the last century. Our computational analysis reveals a dynamic field that expanded into new domains even as other fields receded into the background. Headquartered in the Netherlands and established with US funding, the Hague Academy was, from the outset, a Western institution. Its Collected Courses and their authors underscore this legacy. We tested two hypotheses through computational analysis: first, that the Academy has thus far under-delivered on its aspiration of being representative of all regions and legal traditions and, second, that the characteristics of the Collected Courses, such as length, language and topics, have changed over the Academy’s first century in light of political developments and shifting policy priorities. Our findings confirm both hypotheses. Empirically mapping the characteristics of the courses and the lecturers over the past 100 years affords a ‘bird’s eye’ view of the Hague Academy that allows for a better understanding of its evolution. The findings of our data analysis provide the groundwork for deeper scholarly inquiry into how they might interconnect and relate to the construction of international expertise and authority.

If the World Is a Family, What Kind of Family Could It Be? Afterword to the Foreword by Susan Marks

2025-12-13T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

In this Afterword to Marks’ thoughtful provocation, I offer alternative, emancipatory imaginings and practices of kinship that offer life-sustaining relational connections between people(s) as well as between humans and all other forms of life. To this end, I explore two such assemblages. The first of these was developed during the Cold War years as a ‘third way’ to organize global relations cooperatively, emerging from the early efforts of post-colonial states to create an anti-imperial world order. The second is the more recent, still precarious, emergence of queer kinship communities from their many ‘closets’. I conclude that these cooperative and queer kinship imaginaries offer hope that it may yet be possible to reconfigure the imperial system of nation-state-generated relational loyalties, based on the treacherous metaphors of ‘traditional’ family forms that endanger us all, including the planet itself.

If the World Is Not a Family, What on Earth Is It? Afterword to the Foreword by Susan Marks

2025-12-12T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

While Susan Marks’ trenchant critique of the family metaphor in international law in her EJIL Foreword will resonate with many readers, her repudiation will fail to persuade those whose experience of the family is not entirely bleak. Drawing from the African continent, where ideas of family anchor social cohesion and diverse public policies, and from the global climate debate, where intergenerational discourses are increasingly receiving formal legal recognition, I illustrate that the family is very much alive, if not always doing well. Rumours of its demise and obsolescence will remain unfounded as long as the family continues to inspire personal, social and global goods.

‘This Is Not International Law’: International Tax Law and the Disciplinary Boundaries of International Law

2025-12-11T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

International tax law, as an academic field, is traditionally viewed as lying outside the broader discipline of international law. This makes international tax law an interesting case for exploring the disciplinary boundaries of international law and their manifestations. This article argues that the apparent separation between international tax law and international law can be linked to a series of choices made by international law scholars and international tax law scholars in the 20th century that contributed to the compartmentalization of the two scholarly communities. By shedding light on such a compartmentalization, this article hopes to encourage more dialogue between today’s international law and international tax law scholars. If social dynamics indeed play a key role in the emergence of subfields of international law, then such a dialogue could lead to a rethinking of the disciplinary boundaries of international law.

Forms of Families: Afterword to the Foreword by Susan Marks

2025-12-08T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

Susan Marks’ insightful and wide-ranging Foreword invites readers to reconsider the meaning of families and the circulation of familial discourse in and about international law. Marks argues that familial rhetoric, though multiple and multi-vectoral, lends itself to both naturalization and sentimentalization, and that ‘family figurations in international discourse’ are especially apt to legitimate structures of exploitation and exclusion (or inclusion, though on violent, intrusive or simply unsatisfying terms). This Afterword revisits Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ critique of the bourgeois family form, demonstrating that neither was an ‘abolitionist’ of families in general and that both maintained that what would follow the social transformations required to overcome capitalism could not be predicted in advance. It concludes by suggesting that it is just as possible that the future will bring forth new forms of families as it is that it will engender no families at all, on the international plane as elsewhere.

International Interdependence beyond the Family of Nations: Afterword to the Foreword by Susan Marks

2025-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

This afterword takes up Susan Marks’ argument to take seriously the metaphorical uses of the idea of the family in international law and to renew the terms by which we understand global interconnection. Drawing on anti-colonial and post-colonial perspectives, the article seeks to reimagine concepts associated with the family such as dependence, care and inheritance. It does so by foregoing the familial emphasis on monogenesis and emphasizing the ways in which the history of slavery and colonialism have integrated the world in deeply hierarchical and unequal ways.

The Family Lie: Afterword to the Foreword by Susan Marks

2025-11-18T00:00:00+00:00

Abstract

I wrote these thoughts in response to Susan Marks’ critique of the metaphor of the world as a family. I read Marks’ article while a genocide was raging relentlessly, so, of course, my thoughts revolved around the failure of the international community and of international law and its institutions to do anything to stop it. What kind of family fails so dramatically at curbing such extreme violence, I wondered. Using a psychoanalytic lens, I analyse the development of the superego in individuals, in groups and, finally (and most unsuccessfully), in states. Adding to Marks’ suggestion for a sublation of the family, I suggest a sublation of international law and a move away from its focus on states to a focus on individuals. My article deplores the insistence on homogeneity in groups, whether the group is formed around family, kinship, ethnic identity, religion, race or nationhood. Such insistence inevitably leads to exclusions and, in the worst instances, to genocide.

Correction to: Demystifying the Right to Life during the Conduct of Hostilities: Theories, Methods, Practices

2025-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

Qatar National Library10.13039/100019779

Civil Forfeiture and Transnational Cultural Property Returns in the United States

2026-03-11T11:32:29+00:00

Chinese Journal of Transnational Law, Volume 3, Issue 1, Page 11-28, March 2026.
This article will examine forfeiture of cultural property involved in transnational disputes. It will focus on the ever-growing body of civil forfeiture actions, or in rem actions, against objects of cultural heritage in the United States, where there has ...

Collective and Individual Victims: Cultural Property, Justice and the Politics of Restitution in Poland

2026-03-10T07:33:27+00:00

Chinese Journal of Transnational Law, Volume 3, Issue 1, Page 113-130, March 2026.
The transition from authoritarianism to democracy in Central and Eastern Europe was not merely institutional, but a moral reckoning with totalitarian legacies. In Poland, this reckoning remains incomplete, as unresolved property restitution—compensation ...

The Scourge of War 120 Am. J. Int'l L. 2 (2026)

2026-02-25T04:05:52+00:00