The advent of modern technology such as drones provides states with unique capabilities to acquire, with ease, high-quality information regarding acts performed by armed forces and agencies, such as (but not only) targeted killings. In some cases, this information can shed light on the facts of the case, when alleged violations of international humanitarian law or international human rights law have occurred and thus investigation is called for. However, although calls for disclosure are increasing, states are reluctant to disclose information relating to such activities. This article discusses potential sources for obligations of disclosure, whether to civil society or to certain international bodies such as the International Criminal Court. In essence, the article posits that disclosure obligations can derive from the principle of transparency, as it applies, inter alia, to investigations, augmented by an emerging positive right to receive information. These obligations must be balanced, in turn, with considerations of national security. The article suggests that this balance, across a wide spectrum of international contexts, should be conducted in light of standards of necessity, proportionality and specificity. Accordingly, blanket non-disclosure may constitute a violation of international law or result in factual inferences to the detriment of states or individuals.

The principle of proportionality, notoriously obscure in application and subjective in interpretation, has been enforced so rarely as to call into question its potency as a meaningful international legal standard. Nonetheless, international criminal tribunals, academics, and the ICRC's monumental study on customary international humanitarian law all confidently proclaim the principle as embedded in the customary international law applicable to both international and non-international armed conflicts. To assess whether these claims are accurate, and to flesh out how states interpret the principle in practice, the author and a colleague have undertaken a long-term, multinational empirical study of state practice in interpreting and enforcing the proportionality principle. This article discusses the methodological options available and explains the one chosen for the proportionality study. The limitations of the study, in spite of its deliberate methodology, suggest that the debilities of the proportionality principle may not be conceptual as much as a byproduct of unnecessary military secrecy. This article concludes that greater transparency in state compliance with the rule of discrimination and the principle of proportionality would, at least, facilitate an understanding of how the hitherto obscure principle operates in practice and, at best, could create systemic effects that would decrease the dangers to civilians in armed conflicts.

This article explores the legal situation relating to the Sea of Azov in the light of the Russian suspension of shipping on 24 February 2022. While this act received little scholarly or political attention, there is a debate concerning the legality of the suspension of shipping, mainly whether it is governed by the law of naval blockade under the laws of naval warfare. The article analyses the situation from the perspectives of both international humanitarian law (IHL) and the law of the sea (LOS) and examines how the interaction between the two legal regimes affects the analysis. The article supports the conclusion that the Russian conduct does not constitute a naval blockade but may be an accepted practice within the legal regime of naval warfare. In addition, it holds that LOS affects both the laws of naval warfare and the status of the Sea of Azov. Furthermore, the article raises doubts as to the relevance and applicability of the legal concept of naval blockade in modern international law.

Contrary to the ‘rupture thesis’ favoured in Anglo-American academic discourse, Nazi criminal law did not emerge from a vacuum; nor did it disappear after 1945. The article explains and defends this ‘continuity thesis’. In fact, Nazi criminal law adopted earlier authoritarian tendencies of German criminal law and exacerbated them (the ‘radicalisation thesis’). It is for this reason that Nazi criminal law should not lightly be dismissed as ‘non-law’, thus omitting any further engagement with it. The article will show that the same continuity and radicalisation arguments can be made, mutatis mutandis, for German Nazi criminology, which ultimately became a legitimating science (‘Legitimationswissenschaft’) for Nazi criminal justice policy. The argument is developed in four stages. First, an account is given of the racist and criminal-biologistic foundations of National Socialist criminology, including their continuity both with the past and into the future. This is followed by an explanation of the influence of criminal anthropology (particularly that of Lombroso) on the ‘scientification’ of criminology (the ‘Kraepelin and Aschaffenburg paradigms’). Third, the National Socialist radicalisation of criminology on the basis of the criminal-biological utopia of the ‘blood-based’ Volksgemeinschaft is described. Thus, Nazi criminology derived its strength from and built upon biological theories of crime, which in turn laid the foundations of the deadly Nazi criminal justice policy. The discipline became a science that legitimated National Socialism, contrary to Wetzell's thesis of a somewhat dissident ‘mainstream criminology’. With regard to disturbing developments in current German politics, all this will make clear that the approach of the (German) ‘New Right’ to criminal justice is not novel at all but is derived from the ideologically infused theories and policies of Nazi criminologists during the 1930s.

International tribunal backlash remains poorly understood: hampered by conceptual challenges, systematic research into the causes of this phenomenon remains nascent. The present article makes two contributions to advancing this endeavour. First, building on existing literature, it sets out a working definition of international tribunal backlash, tailored to facilitate mixed method empirical research into the causes of backlash across institutions and sectors. Second, drawing on international relations’ pluralist turn, the article provides an analytically eclectic theoretical scaffold for causal analysis of international tribunal backlash, enabling standardised cross-institutional and sectoral comparison without over-simplifying the complexity of backlash in various instances. The article accordingly provides the building blocks for improved understanding of the causes of – and the potential scope to manage – international tribunal backlash across institutions, regions and sectors.

Examination of the institution of the gift in the Talmud reveals that giving gifts to Gentiles is prohibited. The prohibition is generally believed to be motivated by the desire to restrict social intercourse between Jews and Gentiles. Gift-giving, it is argued, might lead to, or indicate the existence of, overly-close social relations. On this understanding of the institution, then, it is the potential consequences of the gift-giving that are problematic, rather than the act itself. I will argue that this social account of the origin of the prohibition is unsatisfactory, and that while social considerations did play a role, to regard the inhibition of fraternization with Gentiles as the sole or primary factor underlying the prohibition is a facile oversimplification. Further, I will argue that the explanation for the prohibition must be sought in the act itself, rather than in its consequences.

The Lago di Bracciano is a lake in Southern Etruria with a surface of 57.5 square kilometers. Its maximum length is 9.3 kilometers. The width goes up to 8.7 kilometers. The extent of the lake is 31.5 kilometers. Its water originates in part from some small rivers, and in part from underground springs. The lake is situated in a volcanic area, a fact which is important in our case.

The Romans called the Lago di Bracciano lacus Sabatinus. We find the lake referred to by this name on the tabula Peutingeriana. Collumella mentions the lake in his work De re rustica in the chapter on pisciculture. He points out that due to farmers' care some lakes have sea-fish, which can stand fresh water:

I have been asked to speak to you about judging in the age of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, with particular reference to remedies under the Charter. You will understand, I am sure, that my treatment of the subject will necessarily be in the nature of an overview.

Stated broadly, I will be suggesting to you that the introduction of the Charter in Canada has required a fundamental reappraisal of how judges approach their tasks, of the processes that are employed and of the relationship between the judicial and legislative branches of government.

Before developing these two propositions, however, I should first give you some basic information about our Charter; to those for whom this is very familiar ground, I apologize and promise brevity.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which was adopted by Canada in 1982, has one main animating principle from which flows one corollary. The animating principle is that certain human rights and freedoms should be part of the fundamental law of the land. The corollary is that when there is a dispute about the application or the meaning of these fundamental rights and freedoms, it is the responsibility of the courts in Canada to define and apply them through the legal process.

I first met Reuven Yaron in 1958, and we immediately became fast friends. The friendship with him and Shoshana has deepened over the years, and will continue. He and I have frequently read one another's draft papers. I thank him for many years of intellectual and emotional support, and hope he will take pleasure in this offering that he has had no possibility of criticising in advance.

The traditional date for the end of classical Roman law is 235 when the emperor Alexander Severus was murdered, or slightly later with the death of Modestinus, the last of the great known jurists. Thereafter, few original juristic books were written, and it is widely but not universally believed that a decline in legal standards began almost at once.

For many scholars there seems to exist a connection, sometimes simply implicit, between the failure of jurists to write new books, and a decline in legal standards. I should like to suggest there was a different reason for jurists ceasing to write new law books. They had already written them all! The claim that for the period, say fifty years, after around 235, all the law books had already been written seems extreme, but is easy to substantiate.

Eminent domain, or the expropriation of private property, is among the most controversial of legal arrangements. The challenges and threats that it poses to private property make it the subject of debate and dispute. Surprisingly, however, most Western jurisdictions embrace a similar formula to address expropriation, both in terms of the purposes that justify such action and the compensation that should be awarded to property owners.

This article challenges the prevailing eminent domain formula, according to which, regardless of the circumstances of the expropriation, compensation to the property owner is determined by reference to the market value of the property. By exploring the case of Israel's 2005 disengagement plan, as a result of which 21 residential communities were uprooted by expropriation, this article argues that loss of communality should be taken into account in expropriations that uproot entire communities. However, in order for the legal arrangement to be efficient, fair and, of no less importance, to reflect the values embodied in the right to property, it should be constituted within a normative infrastructure that takes into account the values that the society wishes to endorse, and the inner meaning of these values.

This review explores certain challenges related to the notion of customary international law. It seems that it was a long time ago when international law academics and practitioners ever thought that the nature of this source was a well-settled topic. Nowadays international lawmaking processes involve an extraordinary number of interactions, taking place both formally and informally. Such complex features are reflected by an exponential increase in the scholarly study of international legal sources. The legal nature, its applicability and principles regulating customary international law are addressed in the book under review (Brian D Lepard (ed), Reexamining Customary International Law (Cambridge University Press 2017)) through several topical essays. The chapters offer a comprehensive analysis of these lawmaking processes and the challenges they portray from various perspectives and in various fields, such as: What is customary international law and why is it law? Is it law because it reflects a ‘global legislative’ model? What is the current value of the persistent objector theory? Is the two-element definition of customary international law still applicable? By meticulously addressing these and other inquiries, the book presents novel arguments and represents a stimulating addition to the literature on sources of international law.

As 1984 approaches, Orwell's vision throws its forward shadow over our perception of our situation. No one ever doubted that law could be made an instrument of tyranny. But there are aspects of 1984 which prompt us to ask whether even the concept of law does not itself constitute a social problem, specifically a deprivation of certain freedoms which in other contexts we value. I shall not be concerned with the extent to which the content of particular legal systems tyrannise their subjects. Rather, my concern is with the ways in which law, by virtue of its formal nature, deprives the subjects of a legal system of freedom. So considered, there are two quite distinct accusations of tyranny which may be levelled at the law: one is so-called “legalism”, which may be regarded as a tyranny of the (intellectual) right; the other is existentialism, viewed as a tyranny of the (intellectual) left. I shall suggest that these two tyrannies in fact represent extreme points on a single spectrum, and that this spectrum may be observed not only in the operation of legal systems, but also in legal philosophy and indeed in theology. In fact, the parallels between legal philosophy and theology may be taken to reflect different (but not historically unrelated) modes of address of the same basic issue in the history of ideas.

The development of criteria for determining a just sentence in criminal cases has been the subject of considerable thought and discussion in recent years. To be regarded just, a sentence must meet criteria of proportionality, humane decency and equality. It may not be excessively severe in proportion to the moral wrong committed by the defendant. It may not be so harsh and cruel as to demean him and deny his humanity. The punishment imposed may not be significantly more onerous than that inflicted on other defendants in similar circumstances.

In this brief paper, I would like to suggest an additional factor by which punishment should be judged. I will call this factor the aptness of the penalty. By this I mean the degree to which the penalty itself — note, I say the penalty, not the act of inflicting punishment — expresses moral criticism of the crime for which it is being imposed. Aptness connotes an observable connection between the crime and the offence such that one feels almost instinctively that the particular penalty imposed is the moral consequence of the particular offence committed.

This being a presentation of a legislative enactment, not explanatory notes or a commentary on its provisions and certainly not a theoretical, comprehensive analysis of the topics considered therein, it is bound to be most concise and selective. The reader will thus encounter below a brief reference to the main subjects dealt with by the Proposal, with emphasis on the significance of proposed solutions.

The reasons why Israel requires a new penal code, generally, and, for a start, its Preliminary and General Parts, in particular, are inherent both in the process whereby the existing Law has developed, and the quality of that Law.

Israeli criminal law suffers from old age. Its direct source is the Criminal Code of Cyprus of 1928; the latter having been copied, with certain changes, from the Queensland Code of 1899, which for the most part reflected the judicial decisions of English common law, some of which were formed many years previously, and are largely outdated. Scientific standards have changed and progressed.