The present article aims to examine a set of legal constructions related to the concept of legal title in territorial disputes. Any international jurist cannot but strongly feel the need of a theoretical approach and framework explaining the acquisition and loss of territorial sovereignty. This conceptualization will be put to the test in the light of the ICI's case law, especially, but not exclusively, the most recent ones. To this end, the article is structured in three main parts in addition to introduction: the first will be devoted to the building of a comprehensive concept of territorial title while rejecting the traditional ‘modes of acquisition’ of territorial sovereignty (part 2). Part 3 will deal with the legal processes through which territorial titles are actually created, extinguished, or modified: roughly speaking, this happens by an international agreements (legal acts) or by virtue of norm-creating facts. Last, but not least, we shall examine – in part 4 – the highly debated and sensitive topic of the relations between effectiveness and formal legal title from the standpoint of the establishment or loss of territorial sovereignty. As we have endeavoured to show in this writing the concept of legal title reunites and resolves the tension between fact (effectiveness) and formal gegal title (law). In this respect four situations will be put under scrutiny in order ultimately to test our construction of a new concept of territorial title.

Military support to Ukraine has been accompanied by debates as to when Western states would find themselves ‘at war’ with Russia. This political and legal discourse reminds us that international law needs concepts to identify who is a party to an international armed conflict. Identifying parties is crucial because the international legal regulation of armed conflict remains, in many ways, structured by reference to party status – even if the legal meaning of being a party today differs significantly from the traditional implications of being ‘at war’. To capture the increasingly complex co-operation patterns of today’s and tomorrow’s wars, this article identifies the contours for a framework of legal criteria for establishing when a state has become a party to an ongoing international armed conflict. To become a party under this framework, a state must knowingly make a contribution to the conflict that is of a character such that it is directly connected to harm caused to the adversary. That contribution must be sufficiently closely co-ordinated with fellow parties to allow for involvement in the decision-making processes regarding co-ordinated military operations. Applying these criteria to key support scenarios, as exemplified in Russia’s war against Ukraine, permits reasonable distinctions, also with a view to future conflicts. More widely, the analysis of party status may enhance our understanding of the architecture of the international legal regulation of armed conflict as a whole, and its ability to respond to the realities of contemporary conflicts.

In framing investment treaty claims against host states, foreign investors routinely assert that the state’s conduct was ‘politically’ motivated. Arbitral tribunals must then grapple with these allegations. Yet, tribunals lack both a coherent conception of what constitutes politically motivated conduct and a consistent understanding of the relevance, if any, of such motivations for the disposition of an investor’s legal claims. This uncertainty points to an underlying tension within the investment treaty regime between the protection of investors’ interests on the one hand, and the legitimate scope for democratic decision-making and responsive politics on the other.

Using concepts drawn from political science, we develop a new framework to map the variety of conduct that tribunals characterize as ‘political’. Our framework draws attention to different types of influence over government decision-making, as well as differences between government actors responsible for the conduct. We use this framework to show that tribunals have adopted different conceptions of what constitutes illegitimate political influence over government decision-making in factually similar cases. We then evaluate tribunals’ competing approaches in light of normative theories spanning both public law and private law. Engaging with multiple normative theories allows us to examine whether tribunals’ different approaches to politically motivated conduct might reflect diverse underlying normative commitments. We argue, however, that many arbitral tribunals demonstrate a reflexive distrust of domestic political contestation that is difficult to justify within any of the theories that we consider.

There are, of course, a variety of arenas available for the implementation and expansion of international law. The UN Decade on International Law provides a natural occasion for assessing their relative utility at this stage of international relations. Often the emphasis is placed on procedural steps that encourage states to use judicial arenas for third-party application of international law. In this regard great attention is given to the encouragement of steps towards the formal acceptance by governments of the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, and to the insertion in treaties of compromissory clauses and dispute settlement procedures that entail a legal duty to resolve conflict through the impartial application of international law, and the related obligation to respect the outcome of such an agreed process. For major disputes between states such an app roach to the application of international law remains highly desirable, and needs to be encouraged in every possible way. Extending the domain of compulsory jurisdiction to address both disputes of regionaland inter-regional scope also tends to extend the protection of international law to weaker and more vulnerable states, especially if a stronger tradition of compliance can be established.

The liberal extension by the United States of its laws to non-resident non-nationals under a so called ‘effects’ doctrine has been the cause of much concern to its closest trading allies. Some fear the European Court of Justice's recent Woodpulp case indicates that the European Community will follow the example of the United States. Jeffrey examines the legality of the ‘effects’ doctrine before looking in detail at the ECJ's decision in Woodpulp. He concludes that the Woodpulp case will not support the use of an ‘effects’ doctrine. Instead it evidences an exciting development in Community jurisprudence within the accepted limits of international law.

In August 1993, this Journal devoted an entire special issue to the future of international arbitration in general, andthe Permanent Court of Arbitration in particular. Its editors viewed this special issue inter alia as a contribution to the UN Decade of International Law. It is not entirely coincidental that 1999, the final year of the Decade, will also mark the centennial of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA). This commemorative link is expressly acknowledged in the UN Resolution initiating the Decade.

On 25 September 2009, the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a seminal decision on the subject of complementarity in the case Prosecutor v. Germain Katanga. The outcome of the Chamber's decision is that, even if a state has initiated an investigation or prosecution against an individual, the ICC may prosecute that individual for the same crimes or even a more selective range of crimes, so long as the state is willing to close the ongoing investigation or prosecution at the request of the ICC Prosecutor. While this decision is defensible under the language of the Rome Statute, this article concludes that, absent vigilance on the part of the ICC's Office of the Prosecutor, the decision could produce consequences inconsistent with the principle that the ICC is intended to act as a court of last resort. These potential consequences, in turn, suggest that the prosecution's policy of ‘positive complementarity’ – that is, encouraging genuine national proceedings whenever possible – should be at the core of its case selection strategy. At the same time, in those instances when the ICC prosecution determines that, despite activity by a national system with respect to a particular case, it is appropriate for the ICC to take over the case, the prosecution should clearly and publicly explain the factors that led to its decision.

Taking the United Nations, its specialized agencies and the EC as a focal point, this article looks at the fiscal position of international organizations and their officials vis-à-vis their host state. Firstly, the fiscal privileges are examined from a theoretical point of view, after which a number of cases are analyzed in which international organizations and their host state differed in their views on the application of the aforementioned privileges.

From a broader perspective, this study explores the watercourse of standards which have sprung on the international level down to their application in daily life. A particular type of provision -concerning the fiscal immunities of an international organization and its officialscontained in a particular type of multilateral convention, dealing with the status, privileges and immunities of international organizations and their officials, is followed down to its application on the national level.

The principles of classical international economic law, as it developed during the 19th and the first part of the 20th century, were based upon the three fundamentals of freedom, legal equality, and reciprocity. UNGA resolutions 3201(S-VI) and 3281(XX1X) of 1974 embody the legal principles upon which a new international economic order (NIEO) should be based. These principles in their turn are based upon the three N1EO fundamentals of protection of the economic interests of developing countries, preferential treatment of developing countries, and non-reciprocity in the relationship between developed and developing countries. The present study investigates to what extent these three NIEO fundamentals have become implemented in the legal practice of a notorious classical institution, the GATT, and have thereby passed the border between UNGA recommendations and binding law. It concludes that, although GATT practice reveals a substantial effort to give implementation to the NIEO fundamentals, so far it has provided developing contracting parties with only few true preferential rights.

One of the main catalysts for the shift towards renewable energies has been the practice of support schemes in a key number of EU member states. Some of these states have since withdrawn or revoked much of their original support, which has resulted in investment treaty arbitrations being filed against them under the Energy Charter Treaty. Arguably, a balance should be found between investors’ legitimate expectations concerning the stability of the legal framework and the host states’ right to adapt regulations to new needs. This can be achieved by clarifying and delimiting the principle of fair and equitable treatment, and by encapsulating it in a more precise set of rules. Due to its open character, this principle could otherwise become too intrusive a standard of judicial review for the exercise of sovereign power by host states. It could be diluted into a rhetorical framework inviting uncertainty and subjective judgment. While the focus of this article is on energy, the concern for legal stability equally applies to all those sectors where large upfront investments are required, which can only be recouped in the long run.

The structure of the global governance system has undergone significant changes in the past few years. From a system governed primarily by global public law institutions established through multilateral treaties, it has metamorphosed into a hybrid field in which a plethora of public, private, and semi-public institutions interact in various ways. The shift to a hybrid global governance architecture presents a complex challenge for legal and political theory, with immense policy implications. In the present article, I respond to this challenge by developing a new model of transnational legal authority, which conceptualizes it as an emergent, network-based phenomenon. According to this model, the emergence of transnational networked authority is dependent on the existence of a multi-layered structure of strongly connected transnational regimes. Key factors in the emergence of networked authority are the normative and compliance synergies that arise through the densification of links across the network. I examine in this context the linkage between the sociological and the jurisprudential aspects of the authority of private transnational regulatory regimes, and develop the idea of ‘network grounding’, which emphasizes the relational structure of private transnational legality. I illustrate the thesis by reviewing findings from a network analysis of transnational corporate social responsibility networks.

The law is implicated in many of the relations that produce inequality and precarity in the global economy. It contributes in different ways to the unequal bargaining power between states, capital, and labour. One way that has attracted less attention so far relates to how the law accelerates economic relations. This article examines the role of law in the global economy not by focusing on the international economic institutions, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the European Union (EU) or the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but on the transactions that plug maquila workers and freelancers into the global economy. The argument is that the speed of these economic relations favours those who command international production, creating what Hartmut Rosa calls a ‘frenetic standstill’. Importantly, the law can also contribute to changing these bargaining dynamics by slowing down some of these transactions and facilitating their territorial re-embedding. This strategy, however, requires a better understanding of the role of law in transnational networks of contracts as well as more state and non-state international co-ordination: The opposite of nationalist attitudes, such as Brexit and Trump’s trade policy.

This article discusses whether it is permissible to cumulatively convict a superior under both Articles 7(1) and 7(3) of the ICTY Statute. After introducing the various modes of command responsibility under each provision, the discussion is premised on the double jeopardy/non bis in idem concerns underlying the case law of the Tribunal, and that of the ICTR, in relation to cumulative convictions for substantive offences. The article first presents arguments supporting the proposition that superiors should not be held cumulatively responsible under the aforementioned provisions. It then presents arguments to the contrary, including considerations in relation to the impact on sentencing. In this light, the article critically appraises the case law of both Tribunals.

The International Court of Justice has been exceptionally lucky to have had the services of Carl-August Fleischhauer for a full nine-year term.

It is hard to imagine a candidate with better qualifications. Immediately before coming to the Court Carl-August Fleischhauer had for a period of eleven years been the Legal Counsel of the United Nations. His period of tenure in this highly important but very difficult post was widely admired. He was greatly appreciated by his staff, and in turn gave considerable responsibility to those he especially valued, and was generous in his public acknowledgements of the work of his team. He exemplified the maxim that great leaders not only show the example to be followed, but also take care to express appreciation for work well done. With Fleischhauer, tactical wisdom in this matter fully coincided with his natural instincts as to how he wished to behave towards others. Fleischhauer was at the United Nations through particularly difficult and tumultuous years. His calm and careful advice allowed the United Nations to engage in certain new and imaginative activities, at the same time knowing that the legal basis for this ‘creative lawyering’ was meticulously sound. The morale at the Office of Legal Affairs was high – an equally important matter for a civil servant whether national or international.

The article discusses the complicated situation of post-German cultural property held within Poland’s borders after the Second World War. On 2 August 1945, ‘the Big Three’ decided a new layout of power within Europe. They reached an agreement that Silesia, Pomerania, the Free City of Danzig (Gdańsk), and part of East Prussia (Regained Territories) along with all the property which had been left on site, should be a part of Poland. One of the post-war priorities of the Polish Government was to regulate the legal status of post-German cultural property left within these newly-delineated borders. Although the Second World War ended in 1945, there was still a threat that the majority of post-German property could be devastated, destroyed, or even looted. There are some documented cases where such cultural property was seized inter alia by the Red Army and then transported to Russia. Since 1945, Russian museums have exhibited many of these pieces of art. This article addresses the question concerning the legal status of post-German cultural property in light of public international law. Furthermore, the article responds to the question, whether Poland is entitled to restitution of post-German cultural property looted from the Regained Territories.

NATO is a collective self-defence regional organization that was established at the time of the Cold War, and the end of East–West confrontation gave rise to the debate about its future role. In the 1999 Washington summit a new strategic concept was promulgated, according to which NATO was to act as a collective security organization as well. The community of interest previously represented by the Eastern bloc has not been unequivocally replaced by a new one. Hence there is room for national interest to play greater role in the decision-making by the alliance. This decision-making is based on consensus, which is incompatible with assertions of strictly national policy. The institutional crisis within NATO in early 2003 was largely due to the transfer to within NATO of the disagreement among its member states in the UN Security Council over dealing with Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. The crisis was ultimately resolved, but it exposed the serious limitations of the NATO decision-making process. While claims about the likelihood of NATO's survival seem premature, the recent institutional crisis may be a legitimate ground for considering institutional reform.

On 1 July 1997 the People's Republic of China recovered Hong Kong in accordance with the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 19 December 1984. On the same day, China announced the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) formally established and functioning as of 1 July 1997.