Concerns over the weaponization of energy during the war in Ukraine have revived state anxieties about overreliance on certain foreign energy sources. This Essay argues that instruments of energy trade and investment protection have helped to lock states into dangerous dependencies. Trade and investment law can inhibit energy security strategies designed to diversify away from unreliable sources and to block suspicious investors. With energy used as a weapon, reform of the liberal energy regime is needed to allow states to prevent the creation of dependencies and protect their energy security in the new geopolitical reality.

The 1965 Convention on the Service Abroad of Judicial and Extrajudicial Documents in Civil or Commercial Matters has increasingly been used by its member states to demonstrate their territorial claims, including in the Falklands dispute and the Israel-Palestine conflict. This has now arisen in the Russo-Ukrainian war, as conflicting declarations have been formulated by eight states under the Convention. This Essay analyzes the legal dilemmas brought by these declarations and proposes preliminary solutions.

This Essay explores the sanction of “non-participation,” which has been used against Russia following the start of the war in Ukraine. After mapping out the multifaceted instances of Russia's exclusion from international organizations, the analysis considers the legality of measures adopted that do not have an explicit basis in institutional rules. The Essay concludes with broad reflections on the use of international organizations as platforms to stigmatize and isolate the violator and outlines some consequences and functions that the sanction of “non-participation” has today.

As global crises become more frequent, international organizations increasingly invoke emergency powers to address them. But the study of international organization emergency governance remains in its infancy. We consider the EU response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The EU built on the emergency to accelerate EU integration and introduce unprecedented reforms in defense and security, migration and asylum, and energy. We map the techniques the EU deployed to achieve this and argue that they are not as alarming as critics have suggested.

The crime of aggression requires that the perpetrator be in a position effectively to exercise control over—or to direct—the political or military action of a state. This requirement, called the “leadership clause,” has led to the view that private individuals are excluded from criminal responsibility because they lack the necessary authority over the state policy. In this Essay, I argue against this dominant view and outline an analytical framework for criminal complicity in a war of aggression.