In his recent review of Neil Boister's book, An Introduction to Transnational Criminal Law, Robert Currie praises the author for shedding light on a field of law that has suffered from inattention. Transnational criminal law (TCL), the ‘other’ branch of what was traditionally called international criminal law, has been overshadowed by international criminal law ‘proper’ (ICL). The establishment of international criminal tribunals after the end of the Cold War, culminating in the establishment of the ‘flagship’ court, the International Criminal Court (ICC), came with a spectacular rise of ICL as a separate legal discipline. As a result, ICL stole the limelight at the expense of TCL. Currie deplores this since TCL presents features and issues that are worthy and in pressing need of in-depth study. Also, in his view the attention to ICL is unjustified: ICL ‘as an academic and legal inquiry or study has become distended by over-study’. While he supports the mission of international criminal justice in general, Currie points out that ICL as an academic discipline is saturated; each article, paragraph and subparagraph of the ICC Statute has been pulled apart and dissected.

No international lawyer bats more than the proverbial eyelid nowadays at states intervening militarily in states which host non-state armed groups. Neither drone strikes nor what used to be called ‘invasion’ quicken the pulse of the jus ad bellum lawyer; this is now a matter for humanitarians; the ‘how’ matters much more than the ‘whether’. We have become inured to relatively small-scale military interventions. Those who remember that 20 years ago international lawyers were more likely to find such actions illegal than justified should (but do not) collectively raise an eyebrow at this rapid change.

This contribution investigates restrictivist reasoning on the origin of armed attacks, and concentrates on the interpretation of Article 51 of the UN Charter and the use of state practice. One particular aspect is examined: the linkage of the armed activities of non-state actors to a state required for an exercise of the right of self-defence to be justified in relation to that state. Many authors have moved away from a restrictive interpretation of Article 51 of the Charter and customary international law, and have proposed various legal constructs –complicity, aiding and abetting, harbour and support, unwillingness or inability to act– to allow for the invocation of self-defence even when armed activities of non-state actors cannot be attributed to a state and its substantial involvement is doubtful. Noticeable among authors generally, with certain exceptions, is a certain lack of concern to account for whatever method of interpretation or analysis they employ.

Recent developments in legal scholarship evidence that the orthodoxy on the law on the use of force has dramatically switched from a restrictivist to an expansionist perspective. This article seeks to analyse this recent shift, especially with respect to the law of self-defence, from an expansionist point of view. Its purpose is to examine the argumentative landscape which currently exists on the expansionists’ side about that law. It observes that such argumentative landscape has significantly changed, as expansionists tend to pay less attention to the traditional arguments based on state practice and increasingly rely on policy considerations in order to strengthen and to go deeper in their wide conception of the law of self-defence. It calls into question such increasing recourse to policy oriented arguments and argues that those arguments cannot justify alone any evolution of the law of self-defence, while emphasizing that state practice remains central in that respect and explaining the different ways through which this practice may play such a role.

This article, prepared for the symposium on ‘The Future of Restrictivist Scholarship on the Use of Force’, examines the current trajectory of restrictivist scholarship in the United States. In contrast to their counterparts in continental Europe, American restrictivists tend to devote less energy to defending narrow constructions of the UN Charter. Instead, they generally focus on legal constraints outside the Charter's text, including customary norms and general principles of law such as necessity, proportionality, deliberative rationality, and robust evidentiary burdens. The article considers how these features of the American restrictivist tradition reflect distinctive characteristics of American legal culture, and it explores the tradition's influence on debates over anticipatory self-defense and the use of force against non-state actors abroad. The article concludes by examining how the American restrictivist tradition is beginning to shape the United States’ approach to the use of force in response to cyber attacks.

This article examines the debate on the use of force ‘from the periphery’, both in the geographical sense and outside the mainstream discourse. It offers an alternative reading of the evolution of the law on the use of force, starting not with the end of the Cold War, but with the process of decolonization. My argument is that this reading is missing from the debate framed as an opposition between a restrictivist and an expansionist camp. Yet it is crucial if one wants to understand the normative pull that is left of legal concepts such as non-intervention, aggression, and self-determination.

This article examines the challenges surrounding the enforcement of decisions of international courts, using the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) as the fulcrum of the analysis. When sitting in its original jurisdiction, the CCJ adjudicates claims arising from the Revised Treaty of Chaguaramas and the operation of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy. However, there is no clear route for the enforcement of original jurisdiction decisions. The Agreement Establishing the CCJ leaves the issue of enforcement to the states themselves, who in turn have either failed to enact enforcement legislation or have provided for enforcement to be carried out ‘in like manner’ as the decisions of domestic courts. This phraseology raises the spectre of the Crown Proceedings Act and its legislative progeny which bar the pursuit of enforcement proceedings against the state. Several solutions to this enforcement conundrum are discussed, ranging from a regional enforcement treaty, akin to the New York Convention, to enforcement at common law using the Fick case, with the merits and demerits of each examined in turn.

Arbitral tribunals have traditionally encountered difficulties in drawing the distinction between jurisdiction and admissibility. The various approaches range from the rejection of the concept of admissibility in arbitral proceedings to an overly expansive interpretation of the concept of admissibility so as to include aspects of jurisdiction. With BG Group v. Republic of Argentina, the US Supreme Court has further complicated the problem in what has become the first decision in its history on the interpretation of a bilateral investment treaty. The present article sets forth a test for distinguishing jurisdiction from admissibility which is in line with international jurisprudence and takes due account of the normative and institutional particularities of international investment arbitration proceedings.

On 2 April 2015, the full International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) rendered its first advisory opinion in reply to a request of the Sub-Regional Fisheries Commission regarding illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. Unlike any other court or tribunal with advisory competence, including the Seabed Disputes Chamber, ITLOS’ advisory jurisdiction is not explicitly enshrined in its constituent instrument, but was rather asserted in the Tribunal’s, homemade, rules of procedure. In spite of strong objections from various states, ITLOS affirmed a broad advisory jurisdiction ratione materiae and personae, and found that there were no compelling reasons to exercise its discretionary power to dismiss the request. The request and the Tribunal's handling thereof raise interesting questions regarding the opportunities and risks inherent to, and the outer limits of, the advisory jurisdiction of international courts and tribunals. This contribution takes a look at the advisory jurisdiction of the full Tribunal, having regard to the experiences of other international courts and tribunals.

As the list of contentious cases concerning issues of state responsibility brought before the International Court of Justice (the Court) continues to grow, a closer consideration is demanded of the most common remedy granted by the Court – the declaratory judgment. In particular, while the Court continues to issue declarations intended to constitute ‘appropriate satisfaction’, it also appears that the Court is – or is attempting – to use declarations more creatively in certain circumstances. This immediately provokes a question as to not only the proper role of declaratory judgments, but also whether and to what extent variations in the nature of the obligations owed by states, or the nature of their internationally wrongful acts, gives rise to a coherent differentiation in the remedies granted by the Court.

International criminal justice is on one level a project of hubris and promise, but on another level a project arguably riddled by anxieties. These anxieties are linked to the dizziness of choices available to it, and the degree to which every move to compensate for anxieties produces its own form of anxiety. This article surveys ten distinct anxieties that are deemed to be constitutive of the movement. Ultimately, it argues that the neurotic nature of international criminal justice can be the source of its creativity and resilience.

The defendant in international trials is presumed innocent until proven guilty but is often judged by the ‘court of popular opinion’ even before the trial begins. This article provides reflections on how the image of a malevolent individual emerges with regard to those brought/to be brought before international courts. In such a situation, coming before the Court and subsequently being convicted or acquitted can mean little. It is coming before the Court that is, in itself, the end of the line. The manner in which the International Criminal Court has functioned has contributed, both advertently and inadvertently, to the maintenance of the image of the defendant as a malevolent being. Specifically, the purposes of historiography and the ever present discourse of deterrence, breed the suspicion that this ‘demonizing the defendant’ effect might be endorsed by the manner in which the Prosecutor has popularized the Court and it's functions and aims. This is a conflict that gets to the heart of international criminal law. It is the dilemma of how one must simultaneously fulfil two of the law's essential aims: to presume innocence (and thus abide by a fundamental tenet of international criminal law) and to deter, educate and pacify (and thus for the law to have a reason to exist).

The decisions of international courts and tribunals affect how we read history. Alternative tribunals, such as peoples’ tribunals, attempt to write alternative histories to counter the official versions. This article locates controversies over the Armenian genocide in debates about the relationship between history and international law. It considers ways of reading archives and the role of archives in informing those debates. It compares the Istanbul war crimes trials held in 1919–1920 before the Ottoman Military Tribunals with the Paris session of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal held in 1984 that dealt with questions of history and memory through the juridical format of a hearing. A century after the events of 1915, the contested historiography of the Armenian genocide influences how international lawyers and historians seek to pass judgment on the past.