This chapter describes the first week of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the immediate sanctions and export control measures that followed. While focusing on the U.S. response, it describes key steps taken by the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Australia, and others. The chapter links developments in the ground war to the key economic responses by the forces aligned against Russia. As the extent of the Russian invasion became clear, sanctions were announced and subsequently ratcheted up extremely rapidly. The chapter also highlights the extraordinarily coordinated nature of the sanctions response.

In this chapter, Malgosia Fitzmaurice examines the procedures and mechanisms for the peaceful settlement of environmental disputes. This chapter deals with the issue of classical settlement of environmental disputes and the relatively new and still-evolving phenomenon of so-called non-compliance procedures, which are an element of the legal structure of Multilateral Environmental Agreements and administered by the Conferences of the Parties/Meetings of the Parties. This chapter explores the legitimacy of these procedures and focuses in particular on the question of State consent. It explains that, while classical means of dispute settlement do not present questions of legitimacy, their inherent bilateralism is ill-suited for the protection of the environment. Non-compliance procedures may be a more effective tool in light of their multilateral nature, and recent trends based on co-operative efforts may eliminate, to some degree, questions of legitimacy.

In this chapter, Kimberley Trapp and Jacob Smith examine the role of domestic courts in international dispute settlement. This chapter maps the variety of engagements by international dispute settlement bodies with the decisions and processes of domestic courts and explores how the particular institutional nature and contexts of international dispute settlement bodies may colour the nature and degree of that engagement. The chapter situates this engagement on a spectrum of deference to greater intrusion. It also provides an illustration of the factors that determine this engagement, including the degree of penetration of the international legal framework in domestic legal systems, the expectations that States have when submitting to means of dispute settlement, and the socio-legal context.

Chapter 8 looks at the right of States to rescue and evacuate their nationals when their lives or safety are under serious threat.

Chapter 5 examines the powers of the UN Security Council in the maintenance of international peace and security and how the notion of collective security has developed since the Charter was adopted. It also looks at the role of peacekeeping and regional organizations within the overall context of collective security.

This chapter considers the concept of permanent sovereignty over natural resources as articulated in the New International Economic Order (NIEO) project. At the NIEO’s core was the push to consolidate the legal status of ‘permanent sovereignty’ over natural resources. This idea’s champions argued that ownership and control of resources is an essential and necessary element of statehood, one that involves the right to nationalize foreign-held property. By contrast, its critics contended that no state could lawfully seize assets of foreign investors without compensation. They also insisted that the quantity of such compensation should be determined by international law, or through international arbitration, in the event of disagreement. While most aspects of the NIEO, including resource sovereignty, had been debated for some time, partly during broader discussions of neocolonialism and uneven development within the UN Conference on Trade and Development, it was only in 1974 that the project was formalized in a set of General Assembly resolutions. This project was largely the expression of a desire on the part of political and legal elites in the global South to renegotiate their roles in the world capitalist system, reforming rather than repudiating the existing international order.

Critics of international law have traditionally focused on the weakness of its enforcement mechanisms. On this view, the main problem with international law is that it lacks the sort of effective power needed for its ‘normative authority’ to mean something in a world of bullets and borders. The problem, in other words, is that international law is not ‘really law’, at least not of a sort that is likely to be backed up with coercive force. Other critics have focused on the question of whether international law is anywhere as ‘international’ as its champions have made it out to be. From this perspective, the real difficulty stems not so much from a lack of real enforcement, nor even from the problem of determining what kind of legal status should be ascribed to ‘rules’ that are often anything but rule-like and ‘norms’ that do not appear to be especially normative. Rather, the difficulty is that international law often falls short of the universality its supporters and detractors both ascribe to it. International law may well be ‘law’, whatever precisely that means, but it cannot justifiably be characterized as ‘international’.

Chapter Two identifies the current legal and regulatory arrangements related to China’s electricity sector by examining the institutions and governing authority, pricing and tariff regulations, and investment approval. These regulatory aspects often determine the market features and characteristics of an electricity system. This chapter provides the foundation for understanding the design of critical supporting mechanisms adopted by the Renewable Energy Law and their implementation, which are discussed in the subsequent chapter.