This issue of the Journal features four regular reviews, and the second batch of contributions to our (ongoing) Hague Academy Centenary Symposium.
Two of the reviews focus on aspects of international environmental law in a broad sense. In their enriching review of Gabrielle Hecht’s Residual Governance: How South Africa Foretells Planetary Futures, Tracy-Lynn Field and Michael Hennessy Picard point us to major problems resulting from wastes of gold and uranium mining. Hecht’s work captures these as a problem of residual governance; as the reviewers note, it ‘does not offer easy solutions but rather stays with the rubble of racial capitalism’. Jelena Bäumler‘s review centres on a topic that has entered the international law mainstream, climate change litigation. She is impressed with the ‘world map of climate change litigation’ presented in Climate Change Litigation: Global Perspectives (edited by Ivano Alogna, Christine Bakker, and Jean-Pierre Gauci), but felt the book could have offered more ‘guidance on the factors that account for the failure or success of climate change litigation’ in its very diverse contexts.
Two further reviews address classic topics of general international law. Daniel Müller is not quite convinced that Lukas Vanhonnaeker’s ‘vigorous plea in defence of shareholder claims’ will fare well in current UNCTRAL reform debates. But he ‘applauds’ the effort and considers Vannhonnaeker’s Shareholders’ Claims for Reflective Loss in International Investment Law to be a ‘valuable contribution to the ongoing controversy’. Lastly, Imogen Saunders’ General Principles as a Source of International Law: Art 38(1)(c) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice is reviewed by Diego Mejía-Lemos, who engages seriously with Saunders’ ‘valuable’ insights, which ‘strike[] a balance between the seemingly inclusive positivist perspective underpinning the monograph and competing jurisprudential perspectives, notably critical approaches to international law’.
Beyond the regular reviews, in this issue we continue our symposium reflecting on a century of scholarship at the Hague Academy of International Law. Our second batch of reflections focuses on the Academy’s inter-war era: four articles shine a spotlight on pieces of the ‘Hague mosaic’ that our symposium – as noted in our opening comments – seeks to depict. Moritz Koenig and Artur Simonyan highlight Turkish and Russian perspectives, respectively (as seen through the lens of courses delivered by Boris Mirkine-Guetzévitch and Ahmed Reşid). Karin van Leeuwen recalls the Academy as a space of encounter, where Dutch lawyers were exposed to Georges Scelle’s thinking (with lasting effects). Diane Marie Amann traces the footsteps of Aline Chalufour, a ‘Nuremberg Woman’ whose ‘shining post-war achievements’ would belatedly, and very gradually, be recognized – and whose experience at the Academy ‘shed [s] light on how women fared more generally within and on the margins of international law during the Academy’s interwar years’. The symposium will continue in the next issues.
