Could the prevailing view that genocide is the ultimate crime be wrong? Is it possible that it is actually on an equal footing with war crimes and crimes against humanity? Is the power of the word genocide derived from something other than jurisprudence? And why should a hierarchical abstraction assume such importance in conferring meaning on suffering and injustice? Could reducing a reality that is beyond reason and words into a fixed category undermine the very progress and justice that such labelling purports to achieve? For some, these questions may border on the international law equivalent of blasphemy. This original and daring book, written by a renowned scholar and practitioner who was the first Legal Advisor to the UN Prosecutor at The Hague, is a probing reflection on empathy and our faith in global justice.
The 'corporate social responsibility' ('CSR') movement has been described as one of the most important social movements of our time. This book looks at what the CSR movement means for multinationals,
Yaël Ronen analyses the international legal ramifications of illegal territorial regimes, namely the illegal annexation of territory or illegal declarations of independence, by reference to the stage of transition from an illegal territorial regime to a lawful one. Six case studies (Namibia, Zimbabwe, the Baltic States, the South African Bantustans, East Timor and northern Cyprus) are used to explore the tension between the invalidity of the illegal regime's acts and their effectiveness, with respect to the international relations of such territories, their domestic legal systems, the status of settlers and land transfers. Relying heavily on primary and previously unconsidered sources, she focuses on the international legal constraints on the post-transition regime's policy, particularly in the context of international human rights law.
Through an analysis of UN operations including international territorial administration, refugee camps, peacekeeping, the implementation of sanctions and the provision of humanitarian aid, this book shows that the powers exercised by the UN carry a serious risk of human rights abuse. The International Law Commission has codified and developed the law of institutional responsibility, but, while indispensable, these principles and rules cannot on their own ensure compliance and accountability. The 'liberty deficit' of the UN and of other international organisations thus remains an urgent legal and political problem. Some solutions may be available; indeed, recent state and institutional practice offers interesting examples in this respect. But at a fundamental level we need to ask ourselves whether, judged on the basis of the principle of liberty, the power shift from states to international organisations is always beneficial.
Kate Parlett's study of the individual in the international legal system examines the way in which individuals have come to have a certain status in international law, from the first treaties conferring rights and capacities on individuals through to the present day. The analysis cuts across fields including human rights law, international investment law, international claims processes, humanitarian law and international criminal law in order to draw conclusions about structural change in the international legal system. By engaging with much new literature on non-state actors in international law, she seeks to dispel myths about state-centrism and the direction in which the international legal system continues to evolve.
A breach of fair and equitable treatment is alleged in almost every investor-state dispute. It has therefore become a controversial norm, which touches many questions at the heart of general international law. In this book, Roland Kläger sheds light on these controversies by exploring the deeper doctrinal foundations of fair and equitable treatment and reviewing its contentious relationship with the international minimum standard. The norm is also discussed in light of the fragmentation of international law, theories of international justice and rational balancing, and the idea of constitutionalism in international law. In this vein, a shift in the way of addressing fair and equitable treatment is proposed by focusing on the process of justificatory reasoning.
With 'displacement' as the guiding thread, the purpose of this study is twofold. Firstly, it derives from the relevant provisions of international humanitarian law a legal framework for the protection of displaced persons in armed conflict, both from and during displacement. It contains a case study on Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the recent Advisory Opinion on the Separation Wall, and addresses such issues as humanitarian assistance for displaced persons, the treatment of refugees in the hands of a party to a conflict and the militarisation of refugee camps. Secondly, it examines the issue of displacement within the broader context of civilian war victims and identifies and addresses the normative gaps of international humanitarian law, including the inadequacy of concepts such as 'protected persons' and the persistence of the dichotomy between international and non-international armed conflicts, which is at odds with the realities of contemporary
The information revolution has transformed both modern societies and the way in which they conduct warfare. Cyber Warfare and the Laws of War analyses the status of computer network attacks in international law and examines their treatment under the laws of armed conflict. The first part of the book deals with the resort to force by states and discusses the threshold issues of force and armed attack by examining the permitted responses against such attacks. The second part offers a comprehensive analysis of the applicability of international humanitarian law to computer network attacks. By examining the legal framework regulating these attacks, Heather Harrison Dinniss addresses the issues associated with this method of attack in terms of the current law and explores the underlying debates which are shaping the modern laws applicable in armed conflict.
Alongside existing regimes for victim redress at the national and international levels, in the coming years international criminal law and, in particular, the International Criminal Court, will potentially provide a significant legal framework through which the harm caused by egregious conduct can be addressed. Drawing on a wealth of comparative experience, Conor McCarthy's study of the Rome Statute's regime of victim redress provides a comprehensive exploration of this framework, examining both its reparations regime and its scheme for the provision of victim support through the ICC Trust Fund. The study explores, in particular, whether the creation of a regime of victim redress has a role to play as part of a system for the administration of international criminal justice and, more generally, whether it has such a role alongside other regimes, at the national and international levels, by which the harm suffered by victims of egregious conduct may be redressed.
The past two decades have witnessed the rapid proliferation of private military and security companies (PMSCs) in armed conflicts around the world, with PMSCs participating in, for example, offensive combat, prisoner interrogation and the provision of advice and training. The extensive outsourcing of military and security activities has challenged conventional conceptions of the state as the primary holder of coercive power and raised concerns about the reduction in state control over the use of violence. Hannah Tonkin critically analyses the international obligations on three key states - the hiring state, the home state and the host state of a PMSC - and identifies the circumstances in which PMSC misconduct may give rise to state responsibility. This analysis will facilitate the assessment of state responsibility in cases of PMSC misconduct and set standards to guide states in developing their domestic laws and policies on private security.
This is the first attempt to deal with trusts on a comparative law basis. The book examines more than thirty countries, and submits a unified theory of trusts. The effects of the Hague Convention of 1
This is the first book to provide a thorough international legal account of the European micro-states. Jorri Duursma examines notions of self-determination and statehood in the context of internationa
This book argues that the colonial confrontation was central to the formation of international law and, in particular, its founding concept, sovereignty. Traditional histories of the discipline presen
This systematic analysis of State complicity in international law focuses on the rules of State responsibility. Combining a theoretical perspective on complicity based on the concept of the international rule of law with a thorough analysis of international practice, Helmut Philipp Aust establishes what forms of support for wrongful conduct entail responsibility of complicit States and sheds light on the consequences of complicity in terms of reparation and implementation. Furthermore, he highlights how international law provides for varying degrees of responsibility in cases of complicity, depending on whether peremptory norms have been violated or special subject areas such as the law of collective security are involved. The book shows that the concept of State complicity is firmly grounded in international law, and that the international rule of law may serve as a conceptual paradigm for today's international legal order.
When is a norm peremptory? This is a question that has troubled legal scholars throughout the development of modern international law. In this work, Daniel Costelloe suggests - through an examination of State practice and international materials - that it is the legal consequences of a norm which distinguish it as peremptory. This book sheds light on the legal consequences that peremptory norms have, for instance, in the law of treaties, international responsibility and state immunity. Unlike their substance or identification, the consequences of peremptory norms have remained under-studied. This book is the first specifically on this topic and is essential reading for all scholars and practitioners of public international law.
Since the decision of the International Court of Justice in LaGrand (Germany v United States of America), the law of provisional measures has expanded dramatically both in terms of the volume of relevant decisions and the complexity of their reasoning. Provisional Measures before International Courts and Tribunals seeks to describe and evaluate this expansion, and to undertake a comparative analysis of provisional measures jurisprudence in a range of significant international courts and tribunals so as to situate interim relief in the wider procedure of those adjudicative bodies. The result is the first comprehensive examination of the law of provisional measures in over a decade, and the first to compare investor-state arbitration jurisprudence with more traditional inter-state courts and tribunals.
That all states are free and equal under international law is axiomatic to the discipline. Yet even a brief look at the dynamics of the international order calls that axiom into question. Mobilising fresh archival research and drawing on a tradition of unorthodox Marxist and anti-colonial scholarship, Rose Parfitt develops a new 'modular' legal historiography to make sense of the paradoxical relationship between sovereign equality and inequality. Juxtaposing a series of seemingly unrelated histories against one another, including a radical re-examination of the canonical story of Fascist Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, Parfitt exposes the conditional nature of the process through which international law creates and disciplines new states and their subjects. The result is a powerful critique of international law's role in establishing and perpetuating inequalities of wealth, power and pleasure, accompanied by a call to attend more closely to the strategies of resistance that are
A paradigm change is occurring, in the course of which human beings are becoming the primary international legal persons. In numerous areas of public international law, substantive rights and obligations of individuals arguably flow directly from international law. The novel legal status of humans in international law is now captured with a concept borrowed from constitutional doctrine: international rights of the person, as opposed to international law protecting persons. Combining doctrinal analysis with current practice, this book is the most comprehensive contemporary analysis of the legal status of the individual. Beyond Human Rights, previously published in German and now revised by the author in this English edition, not only deals with the individual in international humanitarian law, international criminal law and international investment law, but it also covers fields such as consular law, environmental law, protection of individuals against acts of violence and natural
Do States, through their military forces, have legal obligations under human rights treaties towards the local civilian population during UN-mandated peace operations? It is frequently claimed that it is unrealistic to require compliance with human rights treaties in peace operations and this has led to an unwillingness to hold States accountable for human rights violations. In this book, Kjetil Larsen criticises this position by addressing the arguments against the applicability of human rights treaties and demonstrating that compliance with the treaties is unrealistic only if one takes an 'all or nothing' approach to them. He outlines a coherent and more flexible approach which distinguishes clearly between positive and negative obligations and makes treaty compliance more realistic. His proposals for the application of human rights treaties would also strengthen the legal framework for human rights protection in peace operations without posing any unrealistic obligations on the
