This analysis investigates changing mobilization at the ILO in response to the labour and social rights shock created by EU and IMF demands in the EU sovereign debt crisis (Crisis Europe or euro-crisis). Mobilization means the purposeful use of legal norms and institutions by social movements and civil society groups to advance identified policy goals. It can be contrasted with the use of legal norms and institutions by individuals or entities to settle disputes affecting them. After introducing relevant features of euro-crisis and the ILO, the article develops an analysis that measures changing mobilization at the ILO during euro-crisis. It then shows how such an analysis makes two key contributions: first, to our understanding of the ILO and, second, to how we approach mobilization. First, by viewing the ILO as a rights mobilization structure, it shows the vitality and interest of doubted or neglected ILO supervision and complaints mechanisms. Five elements are underlined: the ILO is more than existing literature assumes; it questions the depiction of the ILO as a ‘toothless tiger’; the sharp divide between unions and NGOs is overstated; certain institutional design features make the ILO a good venue for transnational mobilization; the ILO is not transparent in terms of access to documents relevant to mobilization and compares poorly in this respect with UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies. Second, by setting it against existing literature, it is shown how measuring mobilization is distinctive within the broader human rights mobilization scholarship. The most important insights it introduces are: rejecting the assumption that mobilization inevitably follows a significant rights shock such as euro-crisis; addressing the puzzles of union ‘mobilization’ and motivation; operationalizing measurement of mobilization against the backdrop of venue choices; considering how to deal with an international organization which is both a mobilization venue and an engaged actor.

The article critically reviews the litigation framework of the Chinese International Commercial Court (‘CICC’) using a comparative approach, taking as a benchmark the Singapore International Commercial Court (‘SICC’)—another Asian international commercial court situated within the Belt and Road Initiative (‘BRI’) geography. It argues that the CICC, despite being lauded as a visionary step toward an innovative, efficient and trustworthy dispute resolution system, does not live up to those grand claims on closer scrutiny. The discussion shows that the CICC is in many respects insular and conservative when compared with the SICC. The distinctions between the two litigation frameworks may be explained by the differences in objectives. Whereas the SICC was created to compete for international judicial business and bolster Singapore as a leading dispute resolution hub, the CICC is presently designed to provide a legal safeguard in BRI disputes with Chinese elements. This article also identifies major challenges confronting the CICC and sets out proposals for change.

This article argues that a new understanding of the indivisibility of human rights has emerged through the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The CRPD has blurred the distinction between civil and political rights, on the one hand, and economic and social rights, on the other. After showing how this distinction has been blurred in the Convention, the article critically analyses the impact this has had on the concept of indivisibility, as well as its consequences for international human rights law more generally. It shows that there is now a shift away from a preoccupation with different categories of rights and towards concern for the real and actual enjoyment of human rights.

Current political challenges facing the WTO Appellate Body raise fundamental questions about the relationship between rules and values in international adjudication. This article applies insights from legal philosophy to identify the role values should play in WTO adjudication. It argues that nothing about the specifics of WTO law would justify excluding values from adjudication; that the doctrinal, political and institutional context of WTO adjudication makes a positivist account of the role of values untenable; but an anti-positivist account requires complementing established economic accounts of WTO law's purpose with an account of fairness and justice in trade and trade regulation.

Does international law govern how States and armed groups treat their own forces? Do serious violations of the laws of war and human rights law that would otherwise constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity fall squarely outside the scope of international criminal law when committed against fellow members of the same armed forces? Orthodoxy considered that such forces were protected only under relevant domestic criminal law and/or human rights law. However, landmark decisions issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) suggest that crimes committed against members of the same armed forces are not automatically excluded from the scope of international criminal law. This article argues that, while there are some anomalies and gaps in the reasoning of both courts, there is a common overarching approach under which crimes by a member of an armed group against a person from the same forces can be prosecuted under international law. Starting from an assessment of the specific situation of the victim, this article conducts an in-depth analysis of the concepts of ‘hors de combat’ and ‘allegiance’ for war crimes and that of the ‘lawful target’ for crimes against humanity, providing an interpretative framework for the future prosecution of such crimes.

The Steinfeld and Keidan campaign for ‘equal civil partnerships’ is focussed on English domestic law. However, it also has profound implications from a private international law perspective. If the UK parliament extends civil partnership to include different-sex couples, this will close a long-standing gap in English private international law. If, on the other hand, it was decided to abolish civil partnership, this would extend the existing lacuna in English private international law, and might generate further collisions with human rights norms. This article explores these lacunae and associated human rights concerns—and suggests possible solutions.

The main reason for Article 18 being one of the most opaque provisions of the Vienna Convention is that it establishes a relatively vague ‘interim obligation’ for States to refrain from acts which would defeat the object and purpose of a treaty between its signature and ratification. Although the existence of such an interim obligation has been recognized by States and in various international legal regimes, it remains problematic since Article 18 neither defines nor determines its own contours and when and under which conditions it is being breached. It goes without saying that the legal consequences of a possible breach of this provision are left equally unclear. It remains uncertain how the interim obligation of Article 18 fits into the general international law of treaties; what its legal nature and temporal scope is; which role the principle of good faith plays as a possibly underlying principle of this provision; and how we should understand the object and purpose of a treaty and how it can be defeated. Furthermore, its apparent focus seems to be on bilateral rather than multilateral treaties, but this exclusive application of this interim obligation to bilateral treaties would contravene both the expressed and implied intent of the drafters. Therefore, this article also discusses how Article 18 fits within the normative system of international law and law-making treaties, such as human rights treaties.

The effectiveness and legitimacy of the Council of Europe can be undermined by the actions of Member States which fail to comply with their international law obligations of genuine cooperation with the organization. This article first briefly examines the practice of international organizations in applying sanctions such as expulsion and suspension to their members. It then explains why it is necessary to discuss potential sanctions that the Council can apply in the context of current controversies involving the Council and Member States. It will be argued that the scale and intensity of challenges distinguish the current state of affairs from other ‘problematic’ periods in the Council's history. It proceeds to outline the considerations that should be taken into account in deciding whether a Member State should be suspended or expelled. These considerations include the implications of sanctions on the legitimacy of the Council of Europe, the level of human rights protection and the financial stability of the organization.

On 7 June 2018, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom (UKSCt) issued its decision on, inter alia, whether Northern Ireland's near-total abortion ban was compatible with the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR). This article critically assesses the UKSC's treatment of international law in this case. It argues that the UKSCt was justified in finding that Northern Ireland's ban on abortion in cases of rape, incest, and FFA was a violation of Article 8, but that the majority erred in its assessment of Article 3 ECHR and of the relevance of international law more generally.

The 2018 report issued by a High-Level Panel on Water convened by the UN Secretary-General and the President of the World Bank, and consisting of 11 sitting heads of State and government, concluded that one of the main challenges facing global water governance is integration. Finding ways of integrating the different layers and areas of global water governance will, in turn, require institutional innovation. This article explores the potential of a well-tested yet largely under-studied approach to integration, namely that provided by the UNECE/WHO-Europe Protocol on Water and Health. It proposes that the Protocol be relied on both as an instrument and as a model that can be harnessed in four main ways: accession by a State or a regional organization (eg the EU) to the Protocol; amendment to give the Protocol a global scope; as a model framework for development, cooperation and foreign policy; as a model framework for the adoption of a contextualized instrument in another regional context.

The UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) has closed hundreds of investigations into alleged ill-treatment of detainees by British troops in Iraq. This article probes one reason given for the closure of these investigations: the assertion (without further evidence) that the allegations were ‘less serious’, ‘lower-level’ or in the ‘middle’ range of severity. These terms usually appear without reference to international law, and are once defined with reference to the English criminal law of assault, so that investigations were closed if the alleged treatment resulted in less than grievous bodily harm. The MOD's terminology is wrong-headed and conceptually underinclusive: it fails to grasp the threshold of inhuman or degrading treatment in international human rights law (IHRL), and largely neglects the investigatory obligations in IHRL, international humanitarian law (IHL) and international criminal law (ICL).

This article challenges the widespread view that existing WTO rules are insufficient for dealing with State capitalism in China, which has been further emboldened by the latest rounds of State-owned enterprise (‘SOE’) reforms. Through a careful review of WTO agreements and jurisprudence, it is argued that new rules are not necessarily needed because the unique challenges created by China's State capitalism can be appropriately addressed by the WTO's existing rules on subsidies coupled with the China-specific obligations. A more realistic approach would be to encourage China to undertake market-oriented reforms through WTO litigation based on existing rules rather than trying to negotiate new rules.

In a variety of investment arbitration cases, respondent States have argued that measures impugned by investors were mandated by that State's human rights obligations. Tribunals have generally been reluctant to engage with such arguments and to interpret the relationship between investment law and human rights in a straightforward manner. This article discusses two other possibilities: harmonious interpretation and prioritization. Harmonious interpretation seeks to read provisions from investment treaties and human rights treaties together, whereas prioritization gives normative superiority to one provision over another. We conclude that harmonious interpretation is facilitated by the discretionary character of common treaty standards in both human rights and investment law, but that the final result is unlikely to be very different from prioritization, because even harmonious interpretation requires that one provision is read in the light of, and thereby subjugated to, the other.

This article discusses the importance of the recently concluded Paris Rulebook, the extent to which it limits national discretion, instils discipline and generates ambition and accountability, and the challenges that lie ahead in implementing the 2015 Paris Agreement. It discusses, in particular, the rules on mitigation, transparency, the global stocktake and the implementation and compliance mechanism, in order to highlight the choices Parties made on three overarching issues that have long bedevilled the climate change regime—prescriptiveness (the level of detail of the rules), legal bindingness (the extent to which particular rules are legally binding) and differentiation (the extent to which particular rules accommodate differences between Parties or apply uniformly to all Parties).

This article provides an analysis of the normative framework for Spanish cannabis clubs by contextualizing it within the growing body of comparative constitutional law that recognizes legal obstructions to personal drug consumption as intrusions of the right to privacy. Article 3(2) of the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, 1988 relieves State parties from the Article's obligation to criminalize drug possession and cultivation for ‘personal consumption’ when doing so would conflict with their constitution or basic concepts of their legal system. Spain relied on Article 3(2) in its decision not to criminalize conduct involving personal consumption. The Spanish judiciary has had to consider the legal implications of collective consumption and cultivation in the form of cannabis clubs. In addition to operating in a grey area of domestic law, Spain's cannabis clubs straddle the blurred boundary in international and European legal instruments between ‘personal consumption’ and ‘drug trafficking’. This article explores the theoretical and doctrinal implications of both Spanish law on cannabis clubs and comparative human rights law on drug use to outline the potential contours of a constitutionally protected zone of privacy pertaining to cannabis use in a social context.

The 2016 Morocco–Nigeria bilateral investment treaty (BIT) stands out from other such treaties because of its innovative human rights approach to the protection and promotion of foreign direct investment. Human rights permeate its approach to the regulation of investment in a manner which is most unusual in international investment agreements (IIAs). As a result, this is the most socially-responsible BIT currently concluded. Although it remains exceptional within the investment-treaty framework, the treaty reflects African initiatives to ensure that the next generation of BITs encourages more responsible investments. As such, it shows that human rights-compliant investment treaties can find fertile ground in developing African countries and it sets an example for current and future negotiations aimed at fostering respect for human rights in investment activities.

This article makes two main propositions about the role of due diligence in international law, in response to recent interest in the topic. First, a legal requirement to exercise due diligence may be a component part of a primary rule of international law, but this can only be determined by referring back to the primary rule in question (eg what degree of fact-finding does treaty provision X require a State party to that treaty to undertake, either explicitly or implicitly, to act consistently with its terms?). In other words, there is no ‘general principle of due diligence’ in international law. Second, States undertake what could be characterised as ‘due diligence’ activity (eg by introducing policy guidance for their officials), some elements of which may be a result of a legal requirement and some of which may not (eg where done solely for policy reasons). Current practice of the United Kingdom and United States is used to illustrate the point. The lack of a distinction between the ‘legal’ and ‘non-legal’ elements of conduct in a given area gives States the flexibility to act without feeling unduly constrained by international law, and at the same time actually promotes compliance with international law and may assist in its development over time. In contrast, pushing for a ‘general principle of due diligence’ in international law is unnecessary, and risks having a chilling effect on this positive legal/policy ‘due diligence’ behaviour by States.

This article discusses the data embassy, a new international legal concept created in response to a pressing problem. In 2007, Estonia fell victim to ‘distributed denial-of-service attacks’ and consequently, made Estonia's entire public sector data communications network inoperable. Their response was to strengthen their protection against and penalization for cybercrime, and to develop the concept of a ‘data embassy’. On 20 June 2017 the Republic of Estonia and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg signed an ‘Agreement on the hosting of data and information systems’, to host Estonian data in Luxembourg. Such data embassies perform a unique function and benefit from many privileges and immunities, but their legal status has been unclear. This article addresses the question concerning the legal status of the premises of the data embassy.