Article 38, paragraph 1(b), of the Statute of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is universally considered to be an authentic definition of custom as a principal source of international law, not least by the International Law Commission (ILC) in its recently completed work on the identification of international customary law. At the same time, though, the formula has constantly met with severe strictures concerning its very formulation. Given the text as it stands, this paradoxical dissonance cannot be satisfactorily resolved, but it can at least be tentatively explained by retracing the genesis of the clause a century ago, at the price, however, of a complete reappraisal of the whole of Article 38. Notoriously, Article 38 originated in a proposal of Baron Descamps, the president of the Advisory Committee of Jurists in charge of devising the Statute of the Permanent Court of International Justice (PCIJ). Yet the ambivalent but crucial role of the Descamps Proposal in drafting the article has not hitherto been realized. In fact, owing to the debates it aroused and to its misapprehension as a draft article instead of a merely exploratory basis of discussion, it has directly led to the shortcomings of Article 38 and especially of its clause on customary law.

There is widespread anxiety about human rights ‘inflation’: positing too many human rights, it is said, will lead to their devaluation. This article seeks to disentangle the inflation objection from other concerns about rights expansionism and to critically assess it. It considers the scope and implications of the inflation objection by reference to several issues – e.g., which modes of human rights proliferation it covers and which restrictions follow from it – and argues that it is characterized by a formal emptiness since it lacks any specific criteria to indicate which human rights lead to inflation and which do not. The formal emptiness of the inflation objection does not, however, mean that it is politically neutral, for despite its inability to generate closure it does generate a sense of closure by drawing strict boundaries around the corpus of ‘proper’ human rights. This sense of closure, the article argues, entrenches currently dominant (neo)liberal understandings of human rights while generating suspicion of claims to far-reaching social transformation. In light of this, an alternative to the anti-inflation mindset is suggested: a mindset of wonder, which understands human rights claims outside of dominant understandings not as a threat, but as an opportunity to question the status quo.

Against the context of pending judicial proceedings between the State of Palestine and the United States of America (US) at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), this article critically examines the United Nations (UN) commitment to the international rule of law through an examination of its consideration of Palestine’s 2011 application for membership in the organization. The universality of membership of the UN is a foundation upon which the organization rests. The international law governing UN admission has accordingly been marked by a liberal, flexible and permissive interpretation of the test for membership contained in the UN Charter. In contrast, an assessment of the UN’s consideration of Palestine’s application for membership demonstrates that it was subjected to an unduly narrow, strict and resultantly flawed application of the membership criteria. An examination of the contemporaneous debates of the Council demonstrates that the main driver of this was the US, which used its legal authority as a permanent member of the Council to block Palestine’s membership. The principle argument used against membership was the US’s view that Palestine does not qualify as a state under international law. Notwithstanding, the State of Palestine has been recognized by 139 member states of the UN and has acceded to a number of treaties that furnish it with access to the ICJ. While a number of articles have been written about Palestine’s statehood, little has been written on the UN’s consideration of Palestine’s 2011 application for membership. Palestine v. USA provides a renewed opportunity to do so.

This article explores the quest for sovereign equality by China and Japan as it unfolded in a specific historical moment, the third quarter of the nineteenth century. It does so by focusing on the debate around the ‘coolie trade’, i.e., the traffic of Chinese indentured labourers, which offered an opportunity for non-Western countries such as China and Japan to position themselves with respect to Western conceptions of ‘modernity’ or ‘civilization’ and thereby advance their quest for ‘parity with all nations’. Through a study of the Maria Luz case, decided in the early 1870s by Czar Alexander II and drafted by de Martens, the article sheds light on the different approaches of Japan and China with respect to international law at this critical historical juncture. Specifically, it shows that, although the coolie trade mostly affected China, it was Japan who first managed to reap a parity dividend by firmly condemning the practice, whereas China’s action was steered by the circumstances. Eventually, however, China’s growing interest in Chinese populations abroad paved the way for the establishment of its first permanent diplomatic representations overseas. For both countries, the events encapsulated by the Maria Luz case unveil an important, yet overlooked, moment in their quest for parity with all nations and, more generally, in their engagement with international law.

This article examines how the encounter between China and international law is narrated in the English-speaking and Chinese literature and sheds light on the politics thereof. It particularly shows that the English-speaking and Chinese-speaking literature diverge as to the order of meaning in which the encounter between China and international law is registered. It demonstrates that the divergences between these bodies of literature are everything but innocent.

At the intersection of imperial rule and private power, Shanghai rose to international prominence in the second half of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. It did so by taking advantage of the extraterritorial status and the dynamic, cosmopolitan population of the International Settlement. In evaluating the fate of the Shanghai Municipal Council, we seek to ascertain how private authority could have been constituted on a transnational basis within the framework of a treaty port. The rise of Shanghai was linked to some of the ambiguities of overlapping imperial rule and the possibilities it created for legal and governance experimentation. This is particularly clear in realms most associated with sovereign power, namely the International Settlement’s attempts to claim some taxation power and maintain law and order. That power, however, was interstitial at best and the product of fragile balances, as shown by the Council’s ultimate failure to secure a full international legal status for Shanghai. Nonetheless, the rise and fall of the International Settlement at Shanghai are worth reflecting upon, not only in relation to the history of China, imperialism and international law, but also as a way of thinking how the authority of large metropolitan centres might be constituted.

The article explores the current stagnation in multilateral law-making based on an analysis of recent treaty attempts across various subfields of international law. It further examines why the law of the sea has continued to evolve despite this trend. The article demonstrates that states still regularly seek multilateral treaties to address new challenges. While there is some evidence of general treaty saturation, it is the current inability of traditional great powers to negotiate new binding norms which is the most constraining factor on multilateral law-making. This in turn is related to deeper geopolitical shifts by which traditional great powers, notably the United States and its allies, have seen their relative influence decline. Until the current great power competition ends or settles into a new mode of international co-operation, new multilateral treaties with actual regulatory effect will rarely emerge. The law of the sea has avoided the current trend of stagnation for primarily three reasons (i) a global commitment to the basic tenets of the law of the sea; (ii) a legal framework that affords rights and obligations somewhat evenly disbursed, allowing less powerful states to use their collective leverage to advance multilateral negotiations, despite intermittent great power opposition; and (iii) the avoidance of entrenched multilateral forums where decisions are reached by consensus only.

This article presents a theoretical framework by which to understand how disasters are reconciled with a state’s existing obligations under international law. This ‘reactive’ model of disaster regulation hinges on two regulatory techniques, ‘disapplication’ and ‘exculpation’, both of which involve a deviation from the ordinary application of a norm owing to the occurrence of a disaster or to measures adopted by a state in relation to it. It proceeds to outline the various doctrines and mechanisms across different subfields of international law, including international human rights law, investment law and trade law, which may operationalize these techniques in disaster situations. Finally, it argues that the applicability of certain disapplication and exculpation mechanisms to disasters relies on an anachronistic view of such disasters as rare and episodic occurrences beyond human control. This puts these mechanisms at odds with the central objectives of international disaster law and their underlying sociological and scientific premises, which emphasize the need for an ‘adaptive’ model of comprehensive and prevention-oriented disaster regulation. Accordingly, this analysis exposes the conceptual limitations of the reactive model for disaster regulation and explains and validates the inclination toward an adaptive model within international disaster law. It also indicates how mechanisms within the reactive model could be recalibrated to better regulate disasters.

The UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council should amend their rules of procedure to create gender parity on the bench of the International Court of Justice. Only 3.7 per cent of all judges on the ICJ have been women. The UN Charter, ICJ Statute, and long-standing practice of the Court underscore the importance of representation, but the focus has been on geographical representation. Using the law of international organizations, combined with the law of treaty interpretation and international human rights law, this article argues that Article 9 of the ICJ Statute should be interpreted to include a requirement of gender parity. Established practice, subsequent practice, and the UN’s multi-decade gender parity in staffing policy establish an evolutive interpretation of what is required to fulfil equality at the UN and the ICJ. The nomination and election procedures for ICJ judges are sufficiently flexible to facilitate this interpretation.