This article explores the League of Nations' role in state formation in Third World or peripheral states and its legacy for contemporary understandings of Third World sovereignty. It examines Iraq under British Mandate, and UN and Coalition of the Willing interventions. This research was prompted by the international-law community's outrage when the Coalition invaded Iraq in March 2003. While the invasion was seen by many as an affront to international law, there was also something faintly familiar about the Coalition's reasoning for the invasion. This feeling of déjà vu escalated once regime change was followed by lengthy nation-building. The idea of recreating Iraq was not a new one. The British were tasked with something similar under the League of Nations Mandate System. UN interventions into failed states also attempt comparable transformations. Indeed, the more one contemplates international law's interventions in Iraq, the less shocking the Coalition's invasion becomes. It starts seeming foreseeable and even inevitable.

S. Zappalà, Human Rights in International Criminal Proceedings, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. ISBN 0199258910, 308 pp., £67.50.

The recognition of Baltic independence in 1991 led to a number of challenges in their relationship with Russia. The legal status of large Russian-speaking minorities in Latvia and Estonia, the unresolved border questions, and the particular situation of Kaliningrad have proved to be the most pressing of these. This article tries to link these topical political issues with international law practice on state continuity. It refers to competing visions of Baltic statehood and its political and legal consequences, particularly in the context of the forthcoming enlargement of NATO and the EU.

On 16 June 2003, the first Prosecutor of the newly established International Criminal Court (Court), Luis Moreno Ocampo, was inaugurated. He faces enormous challenges ahead in the short term, including the need to increase the number of states ratifying and implementing the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and to demonstrate that criticisms of the Court and his powers made by the current administration of the United States of America in the course of its campaign to undermine the Court are unwarranted. This article describes the background to the establishment of a permanent independent Prosecutor within the Court, able to open, subject to extensive statutory and judicial constraints, investigations on the Prosecutor's own initiative. It then describes the statutory provisions establishing the post and defining the powers and duties of the Prosecutor. The article concludes with a discussion of the imaginative way in which he is setting up the Office of the Prosecutor and his innovative overall strategy as a leader in the global fight against impunity. As the Prosecutor demonstrates his independence, impartiality, fairness, and effectiveness in conducting trials, and his ability to inspire states to fulfil their obligations to complement his efforts by investigating and prosecuting these crimes themselves, the long-term prospects for the Court will become increasingly promising.

Can an occupier invoke the right of self-defence against terrorism stemming from territories which it occupies? In its Advisory Opinion on the Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory the International Court of Justice responded to this question in the negative. This article critically analyses the reasoning presented by the Court concerning the specific question of the right of self-defence, not least in the light of the fact that it was harshly criticized by a number of judges in their individual opinions and by the Supreme Court of Israel in the subsequent Mara'abe (Alfei Menashe) case. It is also suggested that the issues discussed in this article, such as state responsibility for an armed attack, the principle of effective control, and the interplay between jus ad bellum and jus in bello, loom beyond the scope of the concrete question and concern more theoretical issues of international law.

This article reviews the case concerning Kasikili/Sedudu Island with reference to acquisition of title to territory under international law. It traces the ICJ's use of evidence of African use and occupation to establish territorial sovereignty in a European state. The tests adopted by the Court are based on Eurocentric assumptions that only the consent of European states is necessary to adjudicate nineteenth century claims of title to territory. International law still carries forward within it the colonial notion that treaties between colonial powers in the nineteenth century extinguished pre-existing title to territory based on African use and occupation. The decision gives probative value to economic intentions of colonizing powers and geographical and scientific evidence in determining title to the disputed island while Africa use and occupation of territory is sidelined. Africa is treated as an unconscious geographical entity – a feature referred to as geographical Hegelianism in this article.

In March 2014, a meeting of CARICOM states approved a ten-point plan of the Caribbean Reparations Commission to achieve reparatory justice for the victims of slavery, genocide and racial apartheid in the Caribbean. With assistance from the London-based law firm Leigh Day, the aim is to reach a negotiated settlement with the governments of Britain, France and the Netherlands. What makes this case different from previous discussions on Caribbean reparations is that the claim includes an indigenous component, with ‘native genocide’ included in the title and an ‘indigenous peoples’ development program’ included within the ten-point plan for reparations. Yet reparations are problematic in the Caribbean context due to the ongoing violation of indigenous rights internally. This article analyzes the various dimensions of the Caribbean reparations discourse with regard to contemporary indigenous communities in the region. It highlights the problems at regional level with regard to state responsibility and indigenous rights, particularly in relation to land, and argues that this presents a problematic element in the claim due to the fact that violations are being perpetrated against indigenous peoples by the same states who are representing them in the Caribbean Reparations Commission. Finally, it discusses the onus on European governments to acknowledge past wrongs and the potential of ‘cultural reparations’ to contribute to the Caribbean reparatory justice programme more generally.

The workload of the International Court of Justice in recent years has increasingly featured cases of disputes classified either as ‘territorial disputes’ or as ‘boundary disputes’, or otherwise involving the Court in considerations of the law relating to acquisition or transmission of territory, or to the creation, location and effect of territorial frontiers. The present survey analyzes the contributions to international law of the Court's decisions in these recent cases. Matters examined include the significance of the terms ‘boundary dispute’ or ‘territorial dispute’; the definition of what constitutes sovereign territory; titles and effectivités as bases for territorial claims; decolonization and the uti possidetis juris; use of natural features or of straight lines as boundaries; and relations across a frontier once established.

This article offers an analytical overview of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the establishment of an African human rights court, which entered into force in January 2004. The article seeks to answer the questions of whether and, if so, to what extent the Protocol strengthens the African human rights protection system.

The recent decision of the Appeals Chamber of the Special Court for Sierra Leone in Prosecutor v. Samuel Hinga Norman not only addresses the status of child recruitment as a war crime, but also provides an insight into how international criminal tribunals determine what conduct is criminal in international law. However, the authority of the decision is weakened by the unconvincing evidence relied upon by the Appeal Chamber in coming to its conclusions and by a strong dissent from Justice Robertson. The decision's faults, however, merely reflect problems in the process whereby violations of international humanitarian law are criminalized.

On 22 February 1991, Portugal filed a case against Australia in the Registry of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) instituting proceedings in a dispute concerning “certain activities of Australia with regard to East Timor”. The impetus behind the case was the conclusion of the Timor Gap Treaty between Australia and Indonesia in December 1989. The application alleged that Australia's conduct had caused “particularly serious legal and moral damage to the people of East Timor and to Portugal, which will become material damage also if the exploitation of hydrocarbon resources begins.” Jurisdiction was founded on the parties' declarations under Article 36(2) of the Statute.

The impartial and nearly unanimous advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice in the Wall case put the role of politics and diplomacy in the settlement of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in its proper place, within the context of the rule of law. The significance of the opinion goes far beyond the illegality of the construction of the wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). The Court wisely and courageously seized the opportunity of its first direct involvement in the conflict to speak in plain legal terms about the tricky political problems that have ruined the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. It ascertained the present responsibility of the United Nations to protect Palestine's statehood. It affirmed the applicability of the prohibition of acquisition of Palestinian territory by Israel and confirmed the illegality of the Israeli settlements in the OPT. Moreover, the existence of the Palestinian people as the rightful claimant to the OPT is no longer open to question. One may only regret that the UN was not able to ask the Court to throw light on the Palestinian question at a much earlier stage.

Since 2008, a global ‘land rush’ has been unfolding and so have efforts by international, national and regional actors to position themselves as the principal authorities in the determination of appropriate usages of land. This article examines three of the most influential ‘soft law’ instruments: the Principles for Responsible Agricultural Investment; the Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems and; the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure. Despite their substantive differences, all three documents share a specific form of state-centrism. They imagine the host state of such large-scale investments as internally unitary and externally independent and entrust it with the bulk of responsibilities regarding the management of land investments. However, I argue that this particular form of state-centrism obscures the legal and administrative realities of the post-colonial state that is often legally bifurcated and subject to pervasive forms of international authority. Rather, an appreciation of the multitude of actors who claim jurisdiction over the lands of the South enables a better understanding of the legal mechanics of land-grabbing. Sierra Leone, which has been positioned as a ‘poster child’ for the implementation of such ‘soft law’ instruments, serves as the focal point of this jurisdictional approach to land-grabbing. In this context, the promise of ‘soft law’ instruments to make the post-colonial state the guarantor of universally beneficial large-scale land acquisitions is shown to be a false one.

On 15 December 1994, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 49/75K by which it decided:

to request the International Court of Justice urgently to render its advisory opinion on the following question: ‘Is the threat or use of nuclear weapons in any circumstance permitted under international law?’

International criminal law is being pulled in different directions by various conflicting considerations – deterrence, retribution, justice for victims, reconciliation, and setting the historical record. This trend is detrimental to the survival of the system as it erodes coherence and undermines its legitimacy. One may suggest that international criminal law needs a principle objective to bring order to the system. This article argues that while this statement may be true, it is equally important to have a discussion about pragmatic policy choices underlying the system. Acknowledging that the role of international criminal law is symbolic assists with constraining over-ambition implicit in the discipline. Treating symbolism as a policy consideration places necessary checks on other goals proclaimed by international courts and UN executive bodies and also serves as a tool informing the exercise of discretion in international criminal law.

While civil society groups have been urging the World Bank to integrate human rights concepts into its policies, borrower countries have increasingly made the case for flexibility and deference to domestic standards in the implementation of bank-funded projects. This article analyses how the World Bank has navigated these conflicting legitimacy demands in the context of its 2016 Environmental and Social Framework (ESF). Drawing on insights from organizational sociology, we focus on practices of decoupling, which allow organizations to correspond to legitimacy demands by different audiences while not having to substantially adjust their core activities. The labour and indigenous peoples’ safeguards serve as cases in point. Specifically, the article argues that the Bank has decoupled its discourse concerning the ESF from the framework’s actual content by making statements about the ESF’s coherence with key human rights concepts which, upon closer scrutiny, do not fully correspond to its actual requirements. The article also shows how the design of the ESF furthers a decoupling of relevant requirements from its actual implementation. In particular, the confined scope ratione personae of the relevant safeguards and the discretion granted to the Bank’s staff and the borrower to add meaning to undefined key concepts may render their human rights-related requirements in a number of cases inconsequential. By and large, the decoupling practices identified regarding the Bank’s ESF entail problematic effects for the normativity of relevant human rights concepts and may, in the long run, undermine the Bank’s legitimacy as a whole.

On 11 April 1997, the text of the Convention on the Law of the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses was presented by the Working Group of the Whole (WG) of the United Nations General Assembly Sixth Committee to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). This Convention is based on the 1994 Draft Articles on the same topic prepared by the International Law Commission (ILC). These Draft Articles were approved on second reading by the ILC during its 46th session in 1994 and subsequently submitted to the 49th session of the UNGA in 1994 for consideration by states. By its Resolution 49/52, the UNGA invited states to present written submissions to comment on the Draft Articles and at the same time it proposed that a working group on the whole of the UNGA Sixth Committee be established to convene during the 51st session of UNGA (September-December 1996) to elaborate the text for a convention. During its first session, the WG did not manage to accomplish this task. The final text submitted to the UNGA on 11 April 1997 was the result of the second session of the WG which had deliberated during the period from 24 March to 4 April 1997.

The emergence of new international criminal courts in the 1990s intensified an existing professional contest to define international crimes. This ongoing competition concerned which crimes should be termed international and consequently become the subject of international institution-building and prosecution. The article draws upon Pierre Bourdieu's analytical tool of the ‘field’ in order to investigate how legal professionals located in different fields of practice have crafted and promoted specific crimes as international, in successive phases. The focus of the analysis is on two stages of this development. The first is the protracted emergence of a field of ‘core crimes’ centred on a specific set of crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The second is an emergent contestation of this focus on ‘core crimes’ embedded in the careers of legal professionals engaged in the field of anti-corruption. By adapting the impactful narratives developed around core crimes, this second phase of contestation becomes a new frontline in the wider endeavour to define the role of criminal law in a larger international space of governance and politics.

Article 121(5) Rome Statute provides for a specific regime for amendments to Articles 5–8 of the Statute. Its final clause precludes the exercise of the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court over a crime covered by an amendment when committed by a national or on the territory of a state party which has not accepted the amendment. This provision has been understood as derogating from the Statute's general rules on jurisdiction. The present article argues that a stringent reading of the clause as well as a systematic and teleological approach warrant an alternative interpretation in conformity with the jurisdictional system of the Statute.

The late critical geographer Brian Harley forewarned that modern cartography had come to control and even ‘imprison’ spatial understandings of the earth. Where does this leave international lawyers when they encounter a quintessential ‘World Map’? Quite bluntly: tied to an inscriptive institution that has embodied the modern legibility and visualization of earth space. When speaking about the global arrangements of economic and political power constituted through law, what emerges, therefore, is the need for an expanded spatial literacy among international lawyers that critically engages the graphic legacy and influence of the geometric map. To enhance that literacy, I reach beyond the doctrinal field to engage a powerful spatial critique that has thus far encompassed scholarship across geography, international relations (IR) and sociology. A critique that took impetus over 20 years ago with John Agnew's assertion that modern social science had become captured by a ‘territorial trap’. The article attempts to enrich that critique with Mark Salter's insight on material power, Marshall McLuhan's emphasis on the medium of communication, and Bruno Latour's critique of cartographic naturalism. Specifically, I introduce the concept of cartogenesis as a way of underlining the deeper legacy and consequence of modern cartography, and specifically how the map medium should be grasped as a historical actant that has inscribed a particular ‘ground map’ of international authority. Lastly, the article looks at how geometric mapping now confronts new inscriptive ordering in the forms of transnational lists and contracts, which assert a growing scale of authority over earth space to an extent not seen since the Mercator Projection was recognized as an overriding geographic model.