New Issue: London Review of International Law

The latest issue of the London Review of International Law (Vol. 12, no. 3, November 2024) is out. Contents include:

• Symposium
• Alain Pottage, The responsibility function: symposium introduction
• Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Thinking about a Natural Contract: with Michel Serres (1930–2019)
• Naomi Oreskes, Power, futuristic framings, and the problem of techno-fideism or How climate change breaks the promise of progress
• Thomas Scheffer, Responding before responseability: the delayed realisation of climate change as discrepant discourse formation
• Paul N Edwards, Is climate change ungovernable?
• Andrew Lang, Performances of responsibility: market-based sustainability governance and the ‘responsibility economy’
• Andreas Folkers and Nadine Marquardt, Planetary response-inability: Gaia, the Anthropocene, and the world without us

Conference: The Politics of International Dispute Settlement

On June 6, 2025, Utrecht University will host a conference on "The Politics of International Dispute Settlement." Details are here.

Lubin & Tang: Data Injustice in Global Justice

Asaf Lubin (Indiana Univ., Bloomington - Law) & Cherry Tang have posted Data Injustice in Global Justice (UC Davis Law Review, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

In May 2020, the United Nations Secretary-General unveiled a sweeping “Data Strategy for Action by Everyone, Everywhere,” seeking to unlock the UN’s “full data potential.” The International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor followed suit, declaring in 2023 its intent to acquire advanced cyber forensic tools so to hold the “widest range of digital evidence globally.” Across international institutions, data-driven governance has become the norm, with humanitarian agencies and tribunals transforming into “data hubs and information clearinghouses.”

This paper critiques the unfettered datafication of global justice by international courts and organizations. These entities have aggressively expanded their data-driven operations in the last decade—deploying AI to predict crises, satellites to monitor conflict zones, biometric-enabled blockchain systems to track refugee movements, and social media evidence to prosecute crimes. Yet, the data that fuels these systems is often extracted from the world’s most vulnerable communities. This exposes these communities to grave risks of surveillance, hackability, and exploitation—risks further entrenched by the privileges and immunities that shield these international institutions from independent oversight. In sum, the regulatory and accountability vacuum surrounding data protection in global justice not only reinforces existing power hierarchies but also undermines the legitimacy of the very courts and organizations purporting to dismantle them.

Against this backdrop, the paper calls for a fundamental reorientation of the way international institutions govern data—recasting these institutions not as data aggregators in a digital supply chain, but as fiduciaries of the communities they aim to serve. In resisting both nation-driven and corporate-driven technological authoritarianism, international courts and organizations have an opportunity to present an alternative vision of data governance. Such a vision should draw from the international legal principles of good faith and self-determination as fundamental obligations constraining the datafication practices of these institutions. Without such a shift, international courts and organizations risk making data injustice the next frontier of global inequality.

Deeks & Hollis: Large Language Models and International Law

Ashley Deeks (Univ. of Virginia - Law) & Duncan B. Hollis (Temple Univ. - Law) have posted Large Language Models and International Law (Chicago Journal of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Large Language Models (LLMs) have the potential to transform public international lawyering. ChatGPT and similar LLMs can do so in at least five ways: (i) helping to identify the contents of international law; (ii) interpreting existing international law; (iii) formulating and drafting proposals for new legal instruments or negotiating positions; (iv) assessing the international legality of specific acts; and (v) collating and distilling large datasets for international courts, tribunals, and treaty bodies.

The article uses two case studies to show how LLMs may work in international legal practice. First, it uses LLMs to identify whether particular behavioral expectations rise to the level of customary international law. In doing so, it tests LLMs’ ability to identify persistent objectors and a more egalitarian collection of state practice, as well as their proclivity to produce orthogonal or inaccurate answers. Second, it explores how LLMs perform in producing draft treaty texts, ranging from a U.S.-China extradition treaty to a treaty banning the use of artificial intelligence in nuclear command and control systems.

Based on our analysis of the five potential functions and the two more detailed case studies, the article identifies four roles for LLMs in international law: as collaborator, confounder, creator, or corruptor. In some cases, LLMs will be collaborators, complementing existing international lawyering by drastically improving the scope and speed with which users can assemble and analyze materials and produce new texts. At the same time, without careful prompt engineering and curation of results, LLMs may generate confounding outcomes, leading international lawyers down inaccurate or ambiguous paths. This is particularly likely when LLMs fail to accurately explain or defend particular conclusions. Further, LLMs also hold surprising potential to help to create new law by offering inventive proposals for treaty language or negotiations.

Most importantly, we highlight the potential for LLMs to corrupt international law by fostering automation bias in users. That is, even where analog work by international lawyers would produce different results, LLM results may soon be perceived to accurately reflect the contents of international law. The implications of this potential are profound. LLMs could effectively realign the contents and contours of international law based on the datasets they employ. The widespread use of LLMs may even incentivize states and others to push their desired views into those datasets to corrupt LLM outputs. Such risks and rewards lead us to conclude with a call for further empirical and theoretical research on LLMs’ potential to assist, reshape, or redefine international legal practice and scholarship.

Biddolph: Queering Governance and International Law: The Case of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Caitlin Biddolph (Univ. of Technology Sydney - International Relations) has published Queering Governance and International Law: The Case of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (Oxford Univ. Press 2025). Here's the abstract:

International law is brought into existence by actors from a variety of perspectives--international lawyers, state representatives, bureaucrats, and organizations--and as such, international law is riddled with contradictions. It is violent and violating, reducing complex lives and histories to "good" (lawful) and "bad" (criminal) bodies subject to protection, praise, or punishment. And yet it has potential to be a means of hope, resistance, and justice for victims, survivors, and oppressed communities.

In Queering Governance and International Law, Caitlin Biddolph examines the international legal space through queer, feminist, and postcolonial lenses. In doing so, she queers governance and international law, exposing the gendered and sexualized meanings behind legal concepts like violence, and critiquing legal status quos so that more transformative, liberatory, and queerer paths to justice might be dreamt and manifested within and beyond international law. Using as a case study the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Biddolph traces the cis-heteronormative underpinnings of legal violence, and identifies ways that violence can be resisted and international law subverted to dismantle the very gendered and racial hierarchies it has reinforced.

Symposium: The Juridification of Justice

On April 29, 2025, the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law at the University of Cambrdige will host a symposium on "The Juridification of Justice." Details are here.

Lieblich: The Death and Life of the Prohibition on Forcible Reprisals

Eliav Lieblich (Tel Aviv Univ. - Law) has posted The Death and Life of the Prohibition on Forcible Reprisals (Yale Journal of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

That forcible reprisals between states are unlawful is taken for granted in contemporary international law. However, events in recent years have highlighted the resurgence of retaliatory force, challenging the foundational principles of the prohibition. This article seeks to uncover the normative assumptions underlying the prohibition on reprisals, demonstrate how these assumptions are challenged in the current international moment, and propose ways in which the prohibition can be revitalized.

In the pre-UN Charter era, forcible reprisals were considered lawful on the basis of three normative assumptions: that there was no "common judge" among sovereigns and thus self-help was justified; that self-defense and punishment were intertwined; and that international law was concerned with the rights of states rather than those of individuals. The UN Charter, in its prohibition on reprisals, sought precisely to counter these assumptions. However, as the article shows, international polarization and permissive doctrines on the use of force – in particular, those blurring the distinction between defense and punishment – have consistently eroded these foundations. The article exemplifies these erosive dynamics by focusing on the retaliatory cycle between Iran and Israel in 2024, situating it within the current moment of international polarization.

The article then proposes a normative framework to revitalize the prohibition. Chiefly, it offers a novel theoretical definition of reprisals as a form of opportunistic harm, one that cannot be justified even in the absence of a common judge. By doing so, the article acknowledges the fragmentation of the current global order while reaffirming the intrinsic wrong of reprisals even in turbulent international times.

Seminar: The European Union and international law in times of Trump II

On April 16, 2025, a seminar on "The European Union and international law in times of Trump II" will take place at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, in Milan. Details are here.

Calls for Papers: IG Workshops – 2025 ESIL Annual Conference (Updated)

In the context of the 2025 ESIL Annual Conference in Berlin, some ESIL Interest Groups are inviting submissions for their pre-conference workshops. The calls currently open include:

• IG on International Criminal Justice: Reconstructing International Criminal Justice as It Unfolds (deadline: April 1, 2025)
• IG on the International Law of Culture: The Future and Past of ‘Progress’ in Cultural Heritage Law (deadline: 4 April 2025)
• IG on Migration and Refugee Law: De/Re-Constructing Asylum: New Actors, Processes and Spaces (deadline: 11 April 2025)
• IG on Feminism and International Law: Feminist Visions for Reconstructing International Law (deadline: April 15, 2025)
• IG on International Business and Human Rights: Reconstructing International Law: Structural Shifts Under the UN Binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights (deadline: 15 April 2025)
• IG on International Environmental Law: Reconstructing International Environmental Law Through Adjudication (deadline: 20 April 2025)
• IG on International Human Rights Law: The Reconstruction of Victimhood in International Human Rights Law (deadline: 20 April 2025)
• IG on International Organizations: (Re-)constructing International Organizations in the Work of the United Nations International Law Commission (deadline: 20 April 2025)
• IG on Energy and International Law: Reconstructing International Energy Law in Times of Crisis (deadline: 25 April 2025)
• IG on International Health Law: Global Health Law under Pressure: Facing Acute and Chronic Challenges (deadline: 10 May 2025)

Skordas & Mardikian: Research Handbook on the International Court of Justice

Achilles Skordas (Univ. of Bristol) & Lisa Mardikian (Brunel Univ. London) have published Research Handbook on the International Court of Justice (Edward Elgar Publishing 2025). The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:

This Research Handbook presents an in-depth examination of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Contributing authors dissect the global governance functions of the ICJ and its impact on national legal orders worldwide.

Incorporating a comprehensive analysis of the key functions of the ICJ, including the attainment of international peace and law-making, leading experts situate the jurisprudence of the Court in a broader theoretical framework. They identify its core judicial practices and delineate its interactions with international and supranational courts and tribunals such as the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the Court of Justice of the European Union and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Ultimately, this Research Handbook interrogates the centrality, power and authority of the ICJ and encourages further research in the field.

New Issue: La Comunità Internazionale

The latest issue of La Comunità Internazionale (Vol. 80, no. 1, 2025) is out. Contents include:

• Articoli e Saggi
• Irini Papanicolopulu & Daniele Mandrioli, Combating Transnational Crime at Sea: The Unfinished Integration Between UNTOC and UNCLOS
• Giada Giacomini, Emanuele Fratto Rosi Grippaudo, Spectrum of Anthropocentric Approaches to the Ecological Continuum: Environmental Protection Effectiveness and Legal Standing in Italy’s New Constitutional Framework
• Marco Argentini, La nozione di “contratto internazionale di investimento” alla luce dei lavori del working group UNIDROIT-ICC: un’estensione applicativa del test Salini?
• Osservatorio Diritti Umani
• Michela Chianese, La confisca di beni culturali illecitamente acquisiti dinanzi alla Corte europea dei diritti dell’uomo: riflessioni a margine del caso dell’Atleta di Fano
• Osservatorio Europeo
• Andrea Maria Pelliconi, La decisione Fronte Polisario II della Corte di giustizia dell’Unione europea e il diritto all’autodeterminazione del popolo Sahrawi
• Note e Commenti
• Mariaida Cristarella Oristano, Ancora sul dialogo tra corti e il primato del diritto dell’Unione europea: la sentenza della Corte costituzionale n. 181 del 2024

New Issue: International Journal of Refugee Law

The latest issue of the International Journal of Refugee Law (Vol. 36, no. 4, December 2024) is out. Contents include:

• Mariana Ferolla Vallandro do Valle, Fleeing Deprivation: Deducing Non-Refoulement Obligations from Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
• Erna Bodström, A Matter of Individual Discretion: Facilitating Performative Credibility in Asylum Interviews
• Arjumand Bano Kazmi, Pakistan’s Judicial Engagement with International Refugee Law
• Özlem Gürakar Skribeland, The Turkish Council of State’s Engagement with International Refugee Law in Cases Involving ‘Non-European’ Refugees

Arato: The Institutions of Exceptions

Julian Arato (Univ. of Michigan - Law) has posted The Institutions of Exceptions (Michigan Journal of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

International economic law binds states’ hands in the interest of liberalizing markets in various ways, including cross border trade in goods and services (trade) and capital (investment). The treaty regimes for both trade and investment do this by disciplining states through legal rules, while preserving a modicum of governmental power over policy. Though not always recognized as such, the preservation of policy space in these regimes typically involves exceptions-style reasoning by adjudicators – formally in the case of most trade and some investment treaties, and informally in the investment treaty regime more generally. This "exceptions paradigm" of justification has worked well in the trade regime, where it has been especially key to securing a workable balance between market disciplines and regulatory policy space in the WTO/GATT context. But it has been less successful at striking a reasonable balance in the investment regime – irrespective of whether the paradigm has been formally codified in an exceptions clause. This Article seeks to explain why, by focusing on the institutions within which this mode of justification is embedded. Certain institutional differences between these regimes help explain the varied success of exceptionalism in trade and investment, in particular: the right of action (public vs private); the degree of judicial centralization (ad hoc arbitration vs court system); and the available remedies (retrospective compensation vs prospective injunctive relief). I argue that it is trade law’s public-oriented institutions that have made the exceptions clause workable – not the other way around. By contrast, investment law’s private-oriented institutions make that system particularly inhospitable to exceptions-style justification.

Conference: Cambridge International Law Journal 14th Annual Conference

On April 28-29, 2025, the Cambridge International Law Journal will hold its 14th Annual Conference at the University of Cambridge. The theme is: "Navigating a Multipolar World: Challenges to the Post-WWII Status Quo of International Law." Details are here.

Lecture: Mälksoo on “Russian and Soviet justifications of war and approaches to jus ad bellum: from the Great Nordic War (1700-1721) to Ukraine in 2022”

On April 7, 2025, Lauri Mälksoo (Univ. of Tartu - Law) will give the next lecture of the TwoLaW Lecture Series on the Laws of War. The topic is: “Russian and Soviet justifications of war and approaches to jus ad bellum: from the Great Nordic War (1700-1721) to Ukraine in 2022.” Details are here.

Call for Papers: Asian Cities and the International Legal Order

A call for papers has been issued for a workshop on “Asian Cities and the International Legal Order,” to take place July 10-11, 2025, at the Yong Pung How School of Law, Singapore Management University. The call is here.

New Issue: European Journal of International Law

The latest issue of the European Journal of International Law (Vol. 35, no. 4, November 2024) is out. Contents include:

• Editorial
• Editorial: EJIL: News!; In This Issue; In This Issue – Reviews; EJIL Role of Honour; EJIL Peer Review Prize; Are We Missing Your Peer Review?; On My Way Out – Advice to Early Career Scholars VIII: Best Practice for Workshopping Projected Edited Collections (Books, Symposia) in 10 Not So Easy Steps; My Patria Is The Book: 10 Good Reads 2024
• EJIL Interview
• Sarah M H Nouwen & Joseph H H Weiler, ‘On my way out … for real!’ A Conversation with Joseph H.H. Weiler on the Occasion of His Stepping Down as EJIL Editor in Chief
• Articles
• Radha Ivory, The Concept of International Law Reform and the Case of Negotiated Settlements in Foreign Bribery Matters
• Andreas Buser, Exercising Planetary Jurisdiction: On the Legality and Legitimacy of Unilaterally Mitigating Planetary Ecological Footprints
• Jedidiah J Kroncke & Haimo Li, The Global Scope of Competitive Legalities in the Early 19th-Century South China Sea: The Topaz Incident
• Roaming Charges
• Places with a Soul: A Darkening World
• Book Review Symposium: International Law and Techology
• Dimitri Van Den Meerssche, International Law and Technology as a Critical Project: A Collective Reading
• Abhimanyu George Jain, In/visibilities
• Marie Petersmann, Refusing Algorithmic Recognition
• Christine Schwöbel-Patel, In the Service of Keeping Capital Moving
• André Dao, A Historiography of Amnesia: Beyond Data, Big Tech and the (Re)Turn to Human Rights
• Angelina Fisher, From In(-)formation to Infrastructural Turns: The Digital Futures of Human Rights Law and Practice
• Review Essay
• Vladyslav Lanovoy, Due Diligence in International Law: A Useful Renaissance or ‘All Things to All People’?
• Book Reviews
• Renske Vos, reviewing Deval Desai. Expert Ignorance: The Law and Politics of Rule of Law Reform
• Silvia Steininger, reviewing Laurence Burgorgue-Larsen, The 3 Regional Human Rights Courts in Context: Justice That Cannot Be Taken for Granted
• Book Review Symposium: The Hague Academy
• Phattharaphong Saengkrai, A Transcivilizational Perspective at the Hague Academy: A Critical Review
• Mario J A Oyarzábal, The Hague Academy of International Law and Latin America
• Rodolfo Ribeiro C Marques, Contestation, Emulation, Reformation: Latin American Legal Thought at the Hague Academy of International Law
• Justina Uriburu, Windows to Worlds: Eduardo Jiménez de Aréchaga’s Teachings at the Hague Academy
• The Last Page
• Thus Spoke JHH Weiler

Call for Papers: Annual Postgraduate Conference in International Law and Human Rights

The International Law and Human Rights Unit of the University of Liverpool's School of Law and Social Justice has issued a call for papers for its Annual Postgraduate Conference in International Law and Human Rights, to take palce July 21-22, 2025, in Liverpool. The call is here.

Workshop: EU Accession to the ECHR: Procedural Hurdles and Prospects Before the ECtHR

On May 15-16, 2025, the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki's Faculty of Law and the University of Liverpool's School of Law and Social Justice will co-host a workshop on "EU Accession to the ECHR: Procedural Hurdles and Prospects Before the ECtHR," in Thessaloniki, with the first day held in a hybrid format. Details are here.

Call for Panel Proposals: International Law Weekend 2025

The American Branch of the International Law Association has issued a call for panel proposals for International Law Weekend 2025, which will take place in New York City on October 23-25. The theme is "Crisis as Catalyst in International Law." The call is here. The deadline is April 20, 2025.

New Issue: International Criminal Law Review

The latest issue of the International Criminal Law Review (Vol. 25, no. 1, 2025) is out. Contents include:

• Matthew Gillett, Georgia Moloney, & Anne-Lise Chaber, Proving Ecocide: The Plight of Pangolins as a Case Study for Fusing Ecological Science with International Law
• Linda Mushoriwa & Windell Nortje, A Failure by African States or a Gap in the Law? An Appraisal of the African and International Legal Framework for the Protection of Child Soldiers
• Ana Martin, Intersectional v. Narrow Approaches to Sexual and Gender-Based Crimes: Contrasting Outcomes and Gleaning Useful Techniques
• Livia Benschu, Gender Persecution and the Sarah O. Case: Strengthening the Rome Statute through Domestic Trials
• Evelyne Owiye Asaala, African Philosophical Contributions to International Criminal Law
• Kamil Sobański, Evolution of Remote Participation of the Accused and Victim in International Criminal Proceedings

Ainley & Kersten: Hybrid Justice: Innovation and Impact in the Prosecution of Atrocity Crimes

Kirsten Ainley (Australian National Univ.) & Mark Kersten (Univ. of the Fraser Valley) have published Hybrid Justice: Innovation and Impact in the Prosecution of Atrocity Crimes (Oxford Univ. Press 2025). The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:

The last decade has seen the unexpected re-emergence of hybrid and internationalised courts - institutions which operate with varying combinations of national and international law, procedure, and staff. Whilst the establishment of the permanent International Criminal Court should have made hybrid mechanisms largely obsolete, hybrids have recently been established or proposed for atrocity crimes committed in Chad, South Sudan, Israel/Palestine, the Central African Republic, Kosovo, Syria, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, The Gambia, Liberia, and Ukraine.

Hybrid Justice critically examines the resurgent promise of hybrid courts. Focusing on the fields, practices, innovations, and of hybrid courts, the contributors evaluate hybrids' success, and in doing so, help to clarify the conditions and mechanisms that makes hybrids likely to succeed in their mandates and impacts. The authors focus on hybrid courts and resilience: the resilience of hybrid mechanisms to withstand political and other pressures to deliver justice and accountability, and the potential contribution of hybrids to the resilience of affected communities.

Borne out of a collaboration between lawyers, academics, and activists, this edited volume provides a uniquely comparative account of the development of hybrid courts in recent years.

Hamilton: The Arms Trade and International Criminal Law: Reframing Accountability for Complicit Weapon Suppliers

Tomas Hamilton has published The Arms Trade and International Criminal Law: Reframing Accountability for Complicit Weapon Suppliers (Oxford Univ. Press 2025). Here's the abstract:

Despite the establishment of UN embargoes, the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), and the EU Common Position, arms export regulation suffers from significant legal and practical limitations. This book critically evaluates the existing body of 'Arms Trade Law', highlighting its inadequacies in preventing weapons from reaching perpetrators of mass violence.

Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and empirical research to assess the perspectives of judges and lawyers, it also explores the International Criminal Court's narrow focus on prosecuting political and military leaders. Arguing that institutional attitudes and commitments contribute to a legal culture that obscures the potential for an arms trader case, the book illustrates these dynamics through a case study of the UN Security Council's response to the Second Congo War and the ICC's investigations in the DRC Situation, elucidating missed opportunities to enforce accountability against the entire spectrum of actors responsible for international crimes.

Through detailed examination of the arms trade's complexities, The Arms Trade and International Criminal Law foregrounds the structural causes of atrocity and argues for broader accountability. It investigates how individuals-including corporate executives, state officials, and arms traffickers-can be held directly accountable for atrocities under international law, even when their actions are geographically or causally distant from the violence itself. Furthermore, by advancing a specific interpretation of the actus reus and mens rea elements of accomplice liability under Article 25 of the Rome Statute, this book argues for a robust legal basis upon which the ICC can prosecute arms traders. It therefore underscores how international criminal law can complement existing regulations by leveraging its expressive function to condemn all those who profit from atrocity.

New Issue: Virginia Journal of International Law

The latest issue of the Virginia Journal of International Law (Vol. 65, no. 2, March 2025) is out. Contents include:

• Peter G. Danchin, Jeremy Farrall, Jolyon Ford, Shruti Rana & Imogen Saunders, International Law and the Rise of Populism
• Jens David Ohlin, War’s Rustic Code of Honor
• Ryan Liss, Complementarity and the Normative Structure of International Criminal Law

Seminar: Beyond Disasters: Environmental Chronic Emergencies in International Law

On March 28, 2025, the University of Florence's Department of Legal Sciences will host a seminar on "Beyond Disasters: Environmental Chronic Emergencies in International Law." Remote attendance is available. Details are here.