Domestic policy choices concerning the non-medical use of cannabis are generating increased interest in what has been usefully called the global drug prohibition regime. Commentators are questioning whether the UN-based treaty system can accommodate national policy approaches that deviate from the regime's prohibitive ethos. As tension around cannabis “legalization” builds it becomes ever more urgent to relieve systemic pressure, a process to which inter se treaty modification may be key.

International practice, including international instruments and case law, confirms that states generally accept that they have a duty to provide prior notification of planned measures that may have a significant adverse effect upon co-riparians. The principle of “prior notification” is framed differently in various instruments, and it can broadly include the duty to “notify” and “consult” on planned measures. Prior notification helps to prevent and mitigate disputes, as underlined by the ICJ. Notification and consultation create the conditions for cooperation among riparian states and for ensuring the protection of international watercourses. On the contrary, the lack of notification and consultation may aggravate disputes as in the case of the Great Renaissance Dam along the Nile River. The UN Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses (Watercourses Convention) provides a detailed procedural framework on prior notification and consultation. This essay outlines the established characteristics of the prior notification and consultation duty, then argues that the duty should be viewed not only as an inter-state obligation but also as including the obligation to inform and consult local communities.

Human rights courts and bodies do not rely on the concept of incidental jurisdiction. As far as I am aware, they never have. Given that these courts and bodies are in many ways typical examples of international courts, this is at first glance surprising. However, a closer look suggests that human rights bodies employ rival techniques to tackle the same problem to which incidental jurisdiction is supposedly responding. This essay sets out, first, that there is nothing unique about the institutional set up of human rights courts and human rights bodies in international law that might explain the absence of incidental jurisdiction. Second, I offer a plausible reconstruction of this absence. I argue that it is not only a rational response to the particular demands of human rights litigation, but that it may even be normatively preferable. The tension between dispute settlement and state consent is modified and heightened in international human rights law; this justifies treating incidental questions with the weight usually attached to the main issues of a case by turning them into questions of treaty interpretation. Third, I illustrate these rival techniques in two areas: jurisdiction in international human rights law, and cases involving armed conflicts.

I very much appreciate the seriousness with which Tom Ruys read my comments on his article. Rather than convince me that his thesis about Article 2(4) is correct, however, his reply provides further support for the opposing view. Minor force is excluded from Article 2(4) but regulated under other legal principles. Here are some examples:

1. • He accepts that there are many cases where states and courts have treated low level uses of force as regulated under rules other than Article 2(4). He also argues, and I agree, that some cases are unclear as to whether they support an Article 2(4) threshold or not. Yet, he fails to deal with the really important point in my comment that the great weight of authority clearly supports the threshold. In his reply he even cites with favor the recent report of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Conflict in Georgia, but the report supports the view that low level uses of force fall below the Article 2(4) threshold.

2. • Ruys concedes that some low-level uses of force are outside Article 2(4). In his reply he provides a new hypothetical of such a minor use of force, a bar fight in Afghanistan between soldiers of different nationalities. He says it is a matter of common sense that such a use of force is excluded from Article 2(4). Yes, common sense is one of the reasons to conclude low-level force is excluded. Given that he agrees on this, his article should be about where the threshold is, not an argument that there is no threshold at all. I argue that various other rules of international law from the principle of non-intervention to human rights law to the law of countermeasures indicate where the threshold is. In his reply he takes up an example I provide on “targeted killing,” asking where is the legal distinction between knifing an individual and launching a Hellfire missile at an individual, as opposed to launching a Hellfire at a group of people—the example I used. I categorize all Hellfire attacks as covered by Article 2(4) because of the amount of firepower involved. The Hellfire was developed as a tank-killing weapon. The number of persons targeted is not as significant as the fact the Hellfire involves more too much firepower to conform to the rules governing lawful law enforcement (police) deployment of lethal force. Lawful deployment of a Hellfire must comply with one of the exceptions to Article 2(4).

3. • Saying minor force is excluded from Article 2(4) is not the same as saying such force is lawful. The example just mentioned of knifing an individual, say by the intelligence services of one state acting on the territory of another state, implicates non-intervention, human rights, and countermeasures, among other rules relevant to regulating minor uses of force. In his reply, Ruys criticizes the adequacy of some of this law. No doubt some of the law is inadequate, but that is a different issue from the one he is examining, which is what law applies to minor uses of force.

4. • If Article 2(4) included minor uses of force states could not lawfully employ countermeasures involving minor uses of force in, for example, rescue and arrest efforts. Using force under today’s law, which does not include Ruys’s proposal to expand the right to use force in self-defense, requires Security Council authorization. This is clearly a problem for his analysis. States simply do not do this. The United States did not go to the Security Council to get permission to try to rescue the American journalist, James Foley, beheaded by ISIL militants in Syria in August or to detain Abu Khattala in Libya in June. Both operations followed the rules regulating lethal force by police and were lawful in my view, but not in Ruys’s view of the current law.

In this essay, I discuss whether and to what extent the framing of the main dispute and incidental questions can have a gatekeeping function in relation to the jurisdiction and applicable law of a dispute settlement body. Recent cases have attached critical importance to the identification of the “real” main object of the dispute, and the “characterization” of claims to then determine which issues are incidental to the dispute, rather than focusing on which issues are within the tribunal's ratione materiae jurisdiction. Through an examination of selected case law, I argue that this “characterization approach” could in effect elevate a subjective framing of the “main” dispute to a jurisdictional gatekeeper. This approach introduces unnecessary evaluative determinations while obscuring normative clarity regarding the limits of consent-based jurisdiction and its relationship to incidentally applicable law.

Many applications of international law receive but little attention from the general public. Unpublicized or little-publicized settlements involving relatively obscure persons and comparatively small amounts of money tend to be undramatic. They may seem of little importance during a period of major, kaleidoscopic developments in a worldwide conflict. But the fact remains that in numerous instances rules have become the bases for the disposition of practical questions which were of importance to the individuals immediately involved and of some concern to their respective governments. Collectively, these dispositions may help to attest the vitality of the principle of legality. At a time when the world situation puts in question the very fundamental elements of an international legal system, there may still be justification for drawing attention to the manner in which settlements of private claims against governments have been and are effected.

The fundamental role of international law is to provide a framework for the coexistence of and cooperation among states. If international law and institutions work well, their contribution to the management of international affairs remains in the background. This essay seeks to illuminate the largely unnoticed work of river commissions in preventing and resolving cross-border water disputes. Among the oldest of international organizations, river commissions have long been at the forefront of technical and diplomatic interactions between countries. Similar to other international organizations, river commissions were created to better coordinate interstate interactions and more efficiently pursue common goals. They differ from other international organisations in the focus on water, a unique substance that cuts across so many aspects of human existence and requires specific treatment depending on the hydrological, political, social and economic context. Given the diversity of the contexts, river commissions differ from each other in their design and the tasks assigned to them. Therefore, a river commission is an umbrella term that encompasses a diversity of joint arrangements for cooperation between the riparian countries over their shared waters. This essay argues that river commissions helped to prevent, mitigate, and resolve many cross-border water disputes by building communities over water, enhancing technical knowledge and routinizing organisational transformations.