Compared to universal jurisdiction, active nationality jurisdiction remains one of the least understood and written about forms of extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction. This article seeks to offer a normative account of the exercise of criminal jurisdiction by states over their nationals for crimes committed abroad such as sexual offences against minors, bribery of foreign public officials, or medical “circumvention” tourism. It highlights all of the reasons that militate against such assertions of jurisdiction as a matter of policy and law. It goes on to argue that the assertion of criminal jurisdiction over nationals for crimes committed abroad must be understood beyond its permissibility under international law as a modality that manifests the interests of the state of nationality, the territorial (host) state on occasion, the relevant individuals, and, increasingly, the international community.

This article explores the issue of whether individuals who join enemy forces during international armed conflicts are entitled to prisoner of war status upon capture. It presents the long-running debate on the topic through a study of divided scholarly opinions and judicial decisions. An original analysis of the competing theories is conducted on the basis of available state practice, treaty interpretation methodology, and novel critical arguments and proposals. The article seeks to challenge the value attributed to mainstream academic opinions and judicial precedents and open the debate in an area of international humanitarian law that is still under development.

Comparison is a very common tool for international lawyers. In fact, international law is built around, and draws upon, constructions necessitating an exercise of comparison. In recent years, however, calls have been made to turn the familiar tool of comparison into a central way to engage with international law. This is the idea of those spearheading the rise of a new field called comparative international law. This article critically examines the promotion of comparison as a central mode of engagement with international law and scrutinizes some of the main features of the comparativist project. It particularly shows that the comparativist project, far from laying bare the plurality of international legal thought and practice, enables a thought-colonizing enterprise. The article ends with some reflective observations on the possibility of limiting colonizing thinking in international legal studies. In doing so, it argues that it must remain possible for international lawyers to engage with alterity in a way that does not unilaterally manufacture the “other,” silence it, and speak on its behalf. This approach is called counter-comparability.

Cet article traite des droits à la liberté de réunion pacifique et d’association tels que garantis dans le système interaméricain de protection des droits humains. Il traite d’abord des dispositions de la Convention américaine relative aux droits de l’homme se rapportant à ces droits, de même que de leur importance pour les sociétés démocratiques et la jouissance des autres droits. Il est ensuite question de la nature positive et négative des obligations qu’ont les états en la matière, puis des limites acceptables de ces libertés dans les sociétés libres et démocratiques. Il analyse l’exercice de ces droits par certains groupes particuliers, dont les défenseurs des droits humains, les leaders autochtones, les sympathisants de partis politiques et les membres d’organisations syndicales. Il est également question de l’importance, pour une société démocratique, de laisser s’exprimer ces divers groupes, pour qui les activités associatives et les démonstrations publiques constituent des moyens privilégiés d’exprimer de leurs points de vue et de participer aux affaires publiques. En se référant aux principes abordés dans les parties précédentes, cet article traite finalement de la criminalisation de la contestation civile dans les Amériques, à la lumière des événements récents au Nicaragua, au Chili, et en Bolivie.

The delimitation of maritime boundaries is a complex and multifaceted process with legal and technical aspects. The process involves the determination of a maritime boundary in a situation where two or more states are confronted with overlapping titles. In the absence of any precise rules in treaty law and established customary rules based on state practice, it has been left to the jurisprudence of international courts and tribunals to develop the applicable law of maritime boundary delimitation. This article provides a detailed examination of the complex and multifaceted processes involved in maritime delimitation law. In doing so, it highlights recent developments in the field, with an emphasis on the emerging principles of “non-cut-off” and “non-distortion.” The article also analyzes the crystalizing rules on delimitation beyond 200 nautical miles and questions the applicability of these rules to the ongoing maritime boundary dispute between Canada and the United States in the Beaufort Sea.

American trade policy under the Trump administration can be summed up in one expression, “America First,” which the US president himself has repeated many times. Driven by a rejection of multilateralism, the United States has adopted numerous measures designed to maintain or stimulate domestic industry or to tighten economic policies both domestically and towards foreign trading partners. Reflecting isolationist and nationalist economic theories, these measures are the anchor for a return of economic frontiers to the United States. Yet the United States is at the heart of globalization and cannot completely isolate itself without risking an economic meltdown. This is all the more true since it has been the driving force behind the creation of the multilateral trading system since the end of the Second World War. This change of economic vision by one of the world’s greatest powers can only be a turning point in the recent history of international economic relations. As such, one may wonder whether America First and the set of measures adopted in its name also foreshadow a phase of retreat for international trade law or whether, on the contrary, they are an opportunity for reform of an area of the law that has been struggling to evolve for several decades.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is an international non-governmental organization (NGO) with a functional organization based on a structure of national societies and committees that independently represent it and carry out its work in numerous countries around the world. An essential element of this NGO’s functions, which are indeed very special, is the emblem that marks all of the activities the organization carries out, a symbol that is truly known in every corner of the globe. Given the organization’s prestige and everything its emblem represents, the need to protect this symbol arises in all contexts where it might be used, whether by the ICRC itself or by third parties, with or without authorization. This article reviews the numerous international, national, and internal rules that seek to regulate this emblem and its protection in all such models of its potential use.

This article tracks the activism of the mining justice social movement since the late 1990s. As a starting point, this movement is conceptualized as a transnational political project that seeks to transform the terms of corporate resource extraction pursuant to the political and legal arrangements of neo-liberal economic globalization. In this context, the author reflects on the movement’s most significant human rights-oriented law reform projects in the Americas: Indigenous peoples’ right-to-consultation legislation in several Latin American countries and a series of non-judicial grievance mechanisms in Canada in response to the right to remedy norm in international law. Drawing on existing research, the author concludes that in both cases the state has responded with law and policy reforms that fall far short of achieving advocates’ objectives. The author argues that these shortcomings are due in part to the persistence of three liberal/neo-liberal ideologies in the reforms in question: formalism, voluntarism, and privatism. To better understand and explain these findings, the author turns to three critical theories of human rights legal activism: pragmatism, left critique/critical legal liberalism, and counter-hegemony. Examining the work of a range of scholars writing under the banner of each theory, the author identifies key debates and insights that may be instructive as the mining justice movement, and related social and environmental justice movements, continue to aspire towards a law reform agenda capable of addressing pressing global environmental and social justice issues.

This article takes stock of the contribution of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) to the development of international environmental law. It examines in this regard the jurisdiction of the tribunal and provides an overview of its environmental jurisprudence. It then assesses the potential role of ITLOS in relation to some marine environmental challenges ahead. In particular, it considers the possibility of a request for an advisory opinion on climate change, the settlement of disputes regarding deep seabed mining, and the potential role of the tribunal under a new legal instrument on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction.