On the 9th of April, 1911, the Hague court will celebrate its first decennial. The first decade of the court was opened by the submission on the part of the United States and Mexico of the Pious Fund case to the tribunal for its decision, and of the eight cases so far submitted to the court and brought to trial during the first decade, the United States has been a party in four, and in a fifth, the Japanese House Tax case, the United States agreed to abide by the result. The last case to be tried was the Orinoco Steamship Company case submitted by the United States and Venezuela.

Both the Pious Fund and the Orinoco Steamship Company case raised important questions vitally affecting the future of international arbitration. Both cases were peculiar in that they dealt with a question which had already been once before decided by an arbitral tribunal. In both cases the effect of the previous arbitral decision was submitted as a preliminary question to the Hague court. In the Pious Fund case the preliminary question submitted was as to whether the claim, as a consequence of the former decision of Sir Edward Thornton, umpire under the convention between the United States and Mexico of 1868, was within the principle of res judicata. The court sustained the contention of the United States, by holding that the rule of res judicata applies to international arbitral sentences “ rendered within the limits of the jurisdiction fixed by the compromise,” and accordingly rendered judgment in favor of the United States, without considering the merits of the claim.

This essay proposes a matrix for understanding the dynamics of investment treaty reform. It tracks incremental, systemic, and paradigmatic reform options as applied across procedure, substance, and form. Although stylized and thus unable to capture all the nuances of individual positions, the reform matrix creates a framework for understanding some of the main debates about investment treaty reforms and offers a template for locating and comparing the approaches of key international actors, including the United States, the European Union, and Japan, together with Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (the BRICS).

Sara Mitchell and Andrew Owsiak's examination of the impact of UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and Article 287 declarations on the peaceful resolution of maritime disputes significantly advances the literature on the relationship between international law/international courts and maritime issues. To their credit, the authors employ a wide range of empirical tests in the article to provide readers with confidence in the empirical results. Nonetheless, there are some important limitations in their approach. Drawing on insights from the causal inference literature, I argue that Mitchell and Owsiak's empirical analyses suffer from two biases that both (1) raise concerns about the causal relationships identified in the article, and (2) suggest some important scope conditions in its empirical findings. I investigate the biases and propose suggestions for legal scholarship to produce more credible results.

In this essay, we describe the overlapping phenomena of new legal hubs (NLHs), international commercial courts, and arbitral courts. We survey their impact on the law and geopolitics of international commercial dispute resolution, identifying key issues these new dispute resolution institutions raise. While the rise of international commercial courts spans authoritarian and liberal states, Western and Asian states, common law and civil law traditions, it also highlights and builds upon regional differences. We question the assumption that the establishment of new courts is always consistent with an increase in the rule of law, particularly in non-democratic states. We close with thoughts about the potential influence and future role of these institutions. Some of the procedural innovations discussed here may lead to shifts in international commercial dispute resolution for years to come, but the question of whether there is sufficient demand for these new institutions lingers.

Professor Anthony D’Amato’s “Groundwork for International Law” (Groundwork) is an extremely pedagogical project. Despite its apparent simplicity, each rereading reveals a new layer of complexity, reflecting the depth of his lifelong engagement in the scholarship of international law. Moreover, from a certain perspective, his reexamination of the foundations of international law expresses a radicalism that reaches beyond the analysis of legal forms to provoke reflection on the nature and purpose of the international legal system.

On January 21, 2021, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or Court) issued its judgment in the interstate case of Georgia v. Russia (II). Georgia complained that Russia committed systemic human rights violations in the course of the 2008 war in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Both of these regions are de jure parts of Georgia, but they have not been effectively governed by central Georgian authorities since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. During the night of August 7–8, 2008, Georgian artillery attacked Tskhinvali (the administrative capital of South Ossetia). Russian forces entered South Ossetia and Abkhazia the next day. Russian and Georgian troops engaged in hostilities for five days, before agreeing a ceasefire on August 12, 2008. Since then, a significant military contingent of Russian troops has remained in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The Georgian authorities complained of systemic violations of European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) Articles 2 (right to life), 3 (prohibition of torture), 5 (right to liberty), and 8 (right to privacy), ECHR Protocol 1 Articles 1 (right to private property) and 2 (right to education), and ECHR Protocol 4 Article 2 (Freedom of movement).

With the Trump administration's reimposition of financial sanctions on Iran, the power of the weaponized dollar is yet again making headlines—and putting distance between the United States and its allies. The dollar's special status as the world's key currency affords the United States an unrivaled sanctioning power. Because access to dollars is a near-necessity for multinational businesses and financial institutions, the United States can unilaterally impose costly sanctions by denying such access to a target—whether a state, company, or individual. This capability is one form of the “exorbitant privilege” afforded to the United States by the dollar's international role. This essay considers why the dollar's status affords the United States this sanctioning power and how the United States exercises it. I first summarize the nature of the dollar's role. Next, I explain the means by which the United States has weaponized that role, especially through financial sanctions. I conclude by offering some potential limitations on that power and exploring the ways in which other countries might seek to erode it.

A Thousand peace proposals doubtless could be accounted for in the last five hundred years. Some of them for one reason or another are famous. Dubois, Crucé, Podebrad, Henry IV, Rousseau, Kant, Bentham, Penn, Ladd, are names in this connection quickly recalled to memory.

Now why did all these proposals fail to be heeded by war-weary humanity? Two reasons may be given: first, for the most part they were paper proposals; there was not sufficient driving power behind them; they were written out, the ink dried, and the task was done. No more can a peace proposal organize itself on paper than can a corporation manufacture steel billets with a red-ribboned charter. There must be responsible and powerful initiative, and this initiative must come from a state. Of course, every paper proposal helps to fertilize the ground against the time when nature in its blind way is ready with a favorable wind to implant the germinal substance of a harvest, be it only of thistles or ragweed.

A romantic view of life has it that law grows, that it can not be created. Another similarly romantic allied notion is that man is a product of the earth like a plant. We would not deny the element of truth in these views which flourish or have flourished in the shadow of great names. But is not there something of one-sidedness in this; is not there some exaggeration? Does not destiny hold out some encouragement in the achievement of metaphysical purpose, of final ends, to the use of man’s creative intelligence as a part of the process? It is fortunate for these reflections that on this philosophical jousting-ground, the beliefs, the practices, habits, and experiences of most men are often — or seem to be — favorable to effort.