International law has long recognized that the power of a state to identify its nationals is a central attribute of sovereignty and firmly within the purview of domestic law. Yet these boundaries may be shifting, in part due to the effect of international human rights norms. In 2011, citizenship scholar Peter Spiro asked, “[w]ill international law colonize th[is] last bastion of sovereign discretion?” Ten years later, this essay reframes the question, asking whether the international law of Indigenous Peoples’ rights will “decolonize” the discretion, by encouraging its exercise in ways that respect and enable Indigenous connections to their traditional land. It considers this possibility in light of two recent cases decided by courts in Australia and Canada, both of which ascribe a distinctive legal status to non-citizen Indigenous persons: Love v. Commonwealth, Thoms v Commonwealth (“Love-Thoms,” Australian High Court) and R. v. Desautel (“Desautel,” British Columbia Court of Appeal, currently on appeal before the Supreme Court of Canada). In each case, the court in question recognized that some Indigenous non-citizens have constitutional rights to remain within the state's territory (and perhaps also a correlative right to enter it), by virtue of their pre-contact ancestral ties to land within the state's borders.

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.

Feminicidio is a Mexican adaptation of the radical feminist concept of femicide, usually defined as the misogynous murder of women by men because they are women. In this essay based on original fieldwork, I seek to contribute to Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) scholarship by providing a brief analysis of the engagement of Mexican grassroots feminist activists with international human rights law in their struggle against the systematic abduction, murder, and sexual abuse of hundreds of women and girls in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and the widespread impunity enveloping these crimes. As a result of this grassroots activism, these murders became known as feminicidios. Feminicidio expanded the existing concept of femicide by exposing the complicity of the state in the killing of women by sustaining the institutionalization of gender inequality. Indeed, activists consistently claimed that the state’s tolerance for impunity perpetuates the notion that women are disposable, and violence against them is not serious. Moreover, they linked this notion to the patriarchal regime of neoliberal capitalism that supports the maquiladora industry in Ciudad Juárez. Activists further drew on international human rights law. They invoked the due diligence obligation to conceptualize the responsibility of the Mexican state for failing to effectively prevent, investigate, and punish the murder of women—despite evidence of a systematic pattern of gendered violence that could only be understood by taking into consideration the intersecting structural gender and class inequalities that feminicidio revealed.

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.

If a defeated Japan is to be “ pared back to her volcanic core,” China will be a prime beneficiary. The Cairo Declaration promised to return to her Formosa, the Pescadores, and Manchuria. But what of those parts of the Japanese colonial empire which were not Chinese? Some other arrangements must be made for Korea and the Japanese mandated islands. Liquidation of Italy's African empire raises similar questions.

With multilateral negotiations to reform investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) now underway, it is legitimate to wonder about the outcome. Many seem to hope for a single, global reform, but that may be unrealistic in the near future. Indeed, the article by Sergio Puig and Gregory Shaffer and the essay by Anthea Roberts both suggest that states are pursuing a wide range of changes to the current system, some of which are incompatible with one another. A number of states prefer investment arbitration. Others favor an investment court. Still others reject international dispute settlement altogether. In this essay, I identify a collection of these options and argue that their number and variety, combined with the intensity of state preferences on the matter of ISDS reform, are likely to preclude a multilateral solution for the foreseeable future and lead to continued fragmentation.

The past sixteen years have witnessed the proliferation of international commercial courts around the world. However, up until recently, this was largely an Asian and a Middle Eastern phenomenon. Only during the past decade have Continental European countries, notably Germany, France and the Netherlands, joined the bandwagon and started to create new judicial bodies for international commercial cases. Driven by the desire to attract high-volume commercial litigation, these bodies try to offer international businesses a better dispute settlement framework. But what are their chances of success? Will more international litigants decide to settle their disputes in these countries? In this essay, I argue that, despite its recently displayed activism, Continental Europe lags behind on international commercial courts. In fact, although the various European initiatives are laudable, most cannot compete with the traditional market leaders, especially the London Commercial Court, or with new rivals in Asia and the Middle East. If Continental Europe wants a role in the international litigation market, it must embrace more radical change. And this change will most likely have to happen on the European––not the national––level.

In “Achieving Sex-Representative International Court Benches,” Nienke Grossman begins with embarrassing statistics. Despite decades of progress on gender equality, women are still quite scarce on international benches. Grossman reframes the debate on gender equity in a powerful way. Most promisingly, she suggests that greater meritocracy and greater gender equity go hand in hand. As she argues, “international judgeships are often used to reward political loyalty” and “political horse-trading among states” abounds. For these reasons, reforms to broaden the pool of candidates and to increase the transparency of the selection process would also result in the appointment of more women, in all likelihood. In addition, Grossman puts forth a provocative legal claim—she argues that “states are legally required to take steps to understand and remedy the paucity of women judges on most international court benches.”