The latest issue of the European Journal of International Law will be published next week. We will publish a number of posts outlining the contents of this issue and the editorials over the coming week. Here is the Table of Contents for this new issue, as well as the Abstracts:
Editorial
EJIL: News!: Call for Expressions of Interest for a New Co-Editor-in-Chief of EJIL; EJIL: News!: Thank you Wanshu – Welcome Abhimanyu!; In This Issue; In This Issue – Reviews; Vital Statistics
EJIL Foreword
Susan Marks, If the World Is a Family, What Kind of Family Is It?
Articles
Jarrod Hepburn, The Legal Justification for the Doctrine of Legitimate Expectations in International Investment Law
Ka Lok Yip, Demystifying the Right to Life during the Conduct of Hostilities: Theories, Methods, Practices
Jens T. Theilen, Civilizational Hierarchies and the Notion of ‘Europe’ in the European Convention on Human Rights
Roaming Charges: Places with a Soul: Kibera, Nairobi
Review Essays
Fuad Zarbiyev, Of Theory, Reality, Airplanes and Helicopters. Review of Alain Pellet, Le droit international à la lumière de la pratique : l’introuvable théorie de la réalité. Cours général de droit international
Jed Odermatt, Reimagining International Law Teaching. Review of Folúkẹ́ I. Adébísí, Suhraiya Jivraj, Ntina Tzouvala (eds). Decolonisation, Anti-Racism, and Legal Pedagogy Strategies, Successes, and Challenges; Paul F. Diehl and Charlotte Ku. Teaching International Law; Jean-Pierre Gauci, Barrie Sander (eds). Teaching International Law: Reflections on Pedagogical Practice in Context; Peter Hilpold and Giuseppe Nesi (eds). Teaching International Law
Book Reviews
Ergün Cakal, Review of Ezgi Yildiz, Between Forbearance and Audacity: The European Court of Human Rights and the Norm against Torture
Güneş Ünüvar, Review of Charalampos Giannakopoulos, Manifestations of Coherence and Investor-State Arbitration
Anni Pues, Review of Sophie Rigney, Fairness and Rights in International Criminal Procedure
Kirsten Sellars, Review of Gary J. Bass, Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia
Eran Sthoeger, Review of Carlos Espósito and Kate Parlett (eds). The Cambridge Companion to the International Court of Justice
Book Review Symposium: The Hague Academy
Juliana Santos de Carvalho, Three Feminists Walk into the Hague Academy: Ease and Discomfort in an Affective Space
Sué González Hauck, Order in and through Law at the Hague Academy: Examining a Century of Legal Influence and Controversy
Valentina Vadi, The Health of Nations at the Hague
Niccolò Ridi and Thomas Schultz, Distantly Reading the Recueil des cours: Authority and Authorities in the History of the Hague Academy of International law
León Castellanos-Jankiewicz and Momchil Milano, A Well-known Stranger: André Mandelstam – From Empire to Human Rights
Vladyslav Lanovoy, The Hague Academy and the World Court: Travelling Together in the Peaceful Settlement of Disputes
The Last Page
Gregory Shaffer, The Vineyard
ABSTRACTS
Susan Marks, If the World Is a Family, What Kind of Family Is It?
This Foreword is concerned with the trope that figures the world as a family. What ideas about the family inform, and are informed by, it? What effects does it have on the way global issues, relations and contexts are understood? In the course of exploring those questions, consideration is given, in turn, to evocations of the human family, references to the family of nations, and discussions of the need to take action for the sake of our children. The Foreword illustrates something of the variety of family types that have been mobilized in representations of the world as a family, and shows how the effects produced have been mixed. While familial language has a venerable place in emancipatory discourses, it also works to install a false notion of unity rooted in biological filiation that helps to preserve divisions, sustain hierarchies and promote depoliticized approaches to political problems.
Jarrod Hepburn, The Legal Justification for the Doctrine of Legitimate Expectations in International Investment Law
The doctrine of legitimate expectations has become a central concept in international investment law. The doctrine has no textual foundation in investment treaties, and it has been described as an ‘invention’ of arbitrators, who have not offered much plausible legal justification for the doctrine’s existence. The most frequent justification for the doctrine in the literature is that it reflects a general principle of law. However, this justification is problematic. This article canvasses four alternative legal justifications: the ordinary or special meaning of investment treaty provisions, the subsequent practice of states parties to investment treaties, agreement between disputing parties in investment treaty cases, and customary international law. The article concludes that the most practical and plausible legal justification for the doctrine is as a rule of special custom, applying between those several dozen states that have manifested acceptance of it in pleadings before investment tribunals. The article thus responds to critics describing the doctrine as a legal ‘interloper’, and it offers some legal (though not necessarily normative) legitimacy to a controversial concept in investment law. However, the article also acknowledges the remaining gaps to be filled by states, leaving the doctrine still without any formal legal basis in many cases.
Ka Lok Yip, Demystifying the Right to Life during the Conduct of Hostilities: Theories, Methods, Practices
In determining the right to life under international human rights law (IHRL) during the conduct of hostilities, the traditional approach defers to the relevant rules of international humanitarian law (IHL) as ‘lex specialis’, while the ‘normative’ approach adopts an open-ended ‘contextual application’ of ‘systemic integration’. Neither approach provides a theoretical account that speaks to the heart of the matter – the just assignment of legal responsibility for the deprivation of life in war-fighting where ‘responsibility’ implies the correct location of a ‘cause’ that is answerable or ‘able’ to provide a ‘response’ for such deprivation. The invocation of causality in the social world in turn requires an account of social ontology, the study of what exists in society to cause anything at all. This article outlines a social ontological approach that reconnects the relevant norms under IHL and IHRL with different types of causes of deprivation of life in war-fighting in order to demystify the right to life in hostilities theoretically. It then demonstrates the proper use of systemic integration together with the legally prescribed ‘context’ and analyses concrete scenarios of deprivation of life in war-fighting in order to demystify the right to life in hostilities methodologically and practically.
Jens T. Theilen, Civilizational Hierarchies and the Notion of ‘Europe’ in the European Convention on Human Rights
When the European Convention on Human Rights was adopted, several states parties were major colonial powers forcefully engaged in retaining that position. This article aims to demonstrate the continued importance of this constellation for European human rights law. Using the convention’s travaux préparatoires as a starting point, it identifies civilizational hierarchies between Europe and other regions as foundational to the European project of human rights. The article then traces how the notion of ‘Europe’ has served as a conduit for these hierarchies to persist in less explicitly racialized form, using two examples: first, that of territorial and extraterritorial applicability and, second, the interpretation of the convention by the European Court of Human Rights based on the margin of appreciation and European consensus. Colonial continuities in the form of civilizational hierarchies, as this article thus aims to show, are not only relevant for specific topics like post-colonial migration but also continue to shape the project of European human rights as a whole.
Fuad Zarbiyev, Of Theory, Reality, Airplanes and Helicopters
The general course on public international law delivered by Professor Alain Pellet at The Hague Academy of International Law deviates from the recent tendency indulged in by many general courses to approach the discipline from the angle of a particular theme. His is a course taking the phrase ‘general course on public international law’ quite literally. Despite the generalist outlook of the course, however, there is a guiding thread animating it – namely, Pellet’s vision of how the reality of international law should be approached by international lawyers – in particular, by international law academics. After a brief general presentation of the course, this review essay focuses on Pellet’s theory of the theory and reality of international law and attempts to offer some general observations about what such a theory means against the backdrop of the current state of the discipline.
Jed Odermatt, Reimagining International Law Teaching
This review essay explores contemporary challenges in teaching international law as discussed in four recent books on the subject. The books all address various approaches to improving pedagogical strategies within the discipline but vary in their aims and approaches. A key challenge identified is balancing the need for theoretical and critical depth while covering the broad scope of international law’s ‘core’ topics. The books also highlight the tension between presenting international law as a unified system and integrating diverse regional and local approaches. The review argues that international law teaching today requires more than simply introducing students to fundamental concepts; it demands equipping students with the tools to critically engage with the international legal system. As international law increasingly addresses global issues like climate change, migration and international security, effective teaching should cultivate students’ problem solving and critical thinking skills, preparing them to navigate complex problems.