For the first time since the Corfu Channel case of 1949, the International Court of Justice (Court) has awarded damages. The Court did so on June 19, 2012, in its third judgment in the Diallo case, brought by the Republic of Guinea for human rights violations committed against a Guinean citizen by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The judgment was also the Court’s first on damages in a human rights case.

North Korea's Chairman, Kim Jong Un, agreed to work toward the Korean peninsula's denuclearization at a Singapore summit meeting with President Trump on June 12, 2018. The encounter marked the first time in history that the president of the United States and the leader of North Korea have met in person. It came after an intense year and a half of interactions between the two countries, including the exchange of nuclear-laced military threats, the imposition of new sanctions by the United States and the UN Security Council, and, eventually, a touch of détente. Since the meeting occurred, North Korea has taken several steps consistent with commitments it made, including returning remains said to be those of American service members, refraining from missile launches, and beginning to dismantle its testing facilities. Also since the meeting occurred, the United States has suspended its usual joint military exercises with South Korea, consistent with a statement made by Trump at the summit, while leaving in place existing sanctions against North Korea.

The shade of distinction sought to be shown by the title of this paper may require explanation. Imperfect wording involves either carelessness or ignorance; bad faith indicates dishonesty; nonexecution or disregard implies laxness in the government, if not carelessness; adverse or hostile municipal or judicial action connotes lack of coordination between the internal and external affairs of the State. It follows that such adverse action may be considered from a practical point of view as almost a normal kind of violence against international contracts. It is not to be excused on that account, but it may be considered as a frictional incident almost inseparable under some conditions from the existence of a State. Given either a government of definitely separated elements, such as the United States, or a government without much stability, or a State founded on a type of civilization different from the European order, and this sort of violation of treaty may be forecasted with certainty. Fortunately, however, the instances that cause contractual friction of this sort are of the grosser kinds of personal violence, or are commercial; they are not of a political character, cannot be said to involve policy, and only by a stretch of the imagination involve the tweedledum and tweedledee of international relations, “national honor and vital interest.” They are consequently extremely susceptible to simple and orderly solution.

In the final months of his administration, President Donald Trump issued a variety of pardons and commutations, including a number related to foreign relations. His decision to issue full pardons to four former Blackwater contractors, who were convicted of killing Iraqi civilians in the 2007 Nisour Square incident, drew particular condemnation and continued a pattern of clemency grants related to war crimes committed abroad. Trump also granted clemency to his former national security advisor, Michael Flynn, and other associates who were convicted as a result of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Additionally, Trump pardoned the Israeli handler of Jonathan Pollard, a convicted U.S. spy.

This piece is adapted from an address delivered to a conference sponsored by the Council of Europe and PluriCourts on The Long-Term Future of the European Court of Human Rights in Oslo, Norway on April 7, 2014.

This post addresses the successes and challenges for the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), as seen from the outside. It draws upon my co-authored research on human rights systems outside of Europe to explain how these systems have responded to some of the same challenges now facing the Council of Europe and the ECtHR. My main contention is that international human rights courts, wherever they are located, require sustained political and material support if they are to thrive and grow over time.

In the last few years, states have advanced various proposals for cooperation in the use of countermeasures. In this Article, we ask whether, and if so under what conditions, states may lawfully collaborate in the taking of countermeasures against other states. We distinguish five different types of collaboration: (1) independent but coordinated action; (2) secondment; (3) joint action; (4) aid and assistance; and (5) what we term “proxy countermeasures”—the idea of taking a measure at the request and on behalf of another state. We consider the permissibility of each, both where the acting state is itself entitled to resort to countermeasures and where it is not. We also draw attention to certain legal and policy considerations relating to, and to plausible avenues for, the development of international law.

Ongoing deep seabed mining negotiations evoke two competing visions of the ocean: as a vast (social) emptiness rich in wealth for the taking; or as a place where deep human connections exist despite arbitrary lines drawn to distribute states’ legal authority over it. The first tends to be the prevailing view, and the second is a challenger grounded on culture and identity. In this essay, I wish to unpack the roles of traditional knowledge and cultural heritage in deep seabed mining negotiations. I argue that attention to states’ broader international legal obligations requires the deep seabed mining regime to take heritage and identity more seriously than it does at present, and thus to provide better pathways for communities with cultural links to the ocean to be involved in deep seabed mining negotiations. In particular, I show that intangible cultural heritage, a form of cultural heritage largely absent from deep seabed mining negotiations thus far, provides more solid doctrinal and practical ground for the regime's engagement with culture and identity.

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.

In nearly all regions, politico-legal projects for regional organization and integration often prioritize infrastructure construction and maintenance. In West Africa, the development of a regional organization by the post-colonial independent states, in particular the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) formed in 1975, has enabled states to allocate certain powers to formal and informal regional political institutions with the aim of building state effectiveness and capacity and hence increasing public support and popular legitimacy. In this Essay, I argue that regional organizations serve as governance structures whose infrastructural and institutional mechanisms contextually address the needs of states and their citizens. This account particularly applies to West African electricity arrangements overseen through an unusual ECOWAS-linked regional infrastructural organization, the West African Power Pool (WAPP). The case of WAPP demonstrates how the energy infrastructure shapes and modifies regional institutional rules and practices.

One of the most important developments in international law for the protection of displaced women and girls—the implied non-refoulement obligation in the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women has received little scholarly or jurisprudential attention. This Article presents, for the first time, a doctrinal analysis of the full corpus of asylum complaints decided by the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (Committee). It analyzes the early development of a prohibition on return to real, personal, and foreseeable risks of serious forms of discrimination against women; highlights critical shortcomings in the Committee's asylum practice; identifies key areas for improvement; and reflects on the Committee's as-yet-unrealized potential to contribute to international law in this area.

Most trade scholars treat agriculture as a commodity, and in a sense, agriculture workers and their technological replacements as commodities as well. From a food sovereignty perspective, however, agriculture is part of a food system and what is at stake in trade law is people's way of life. Peasants' and Indigenous peoples’ (and workers’) resistance against the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been an existential struggle. Most trade law scholars, with notable exceptions, have ignored social movements’ demands, including their call to end the WTO. By in effect disregarding the costs and violence of the existing trade system against food producers, trade scholarship makes social movements’ language and political demands less cognizable in international law. In this essay, I provide some context and language that may encourage trade law scholars to engage with the food sovereignty movement. I first explain what is at stake in trade law for the food sovereignty movements. I then briefly describe the underlying three pillars supporting the Agreement on Agriculture, and highlight the limits of trade law. I conclude by offering three principles—dignity, self-sufficiency, and solidarity—that could open trade law to wider perspectives. These principles blur the line between trade and the right to food in order to ensure that neither one is dominant nor an “other.”