EJIL

10 Good Reads 2024 – EJIL: Talk! – Go Health Pro

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10 Good Reads 2024 – EJIL: Talk! – Go Health Pro

Here, again, is my pick of ‘Good Reads’ from the books I read in 2024. I want to remind you, as I do every year, that these are not ‘book reviews’, which also explains the relative paucity of law books or books about the law. Many excellent ones have come my way this year, as in previous years, but an excellent law book is not always, in fact rarely is, a ‘good read’ in the sense intended here: curl up on the sofa and enjoy a very good read, maybe even as a respite from an excellent law book. I should also point out that some of these ‘good reads’ are not necessarily literary masterpieces – and yet, still, they are very good reads.

You may note the new title to the series. Given my peripatetic life and persona, I am regularly asked: Where are you truly from? Where is your Home? Hogar? Heimat? Bayit? Casa? Maison? Dom? My my, the enduring power of territoriality as a signifier.  Maybe a better question would be: Where do you feel mostly ‘at home’? Here my answer is easy: my Patria is The Book, the quintessential Wandering (and Wondering) Jew – at home everywhere and nowhere.

My own reading habits are eclectic – so I hope there is something for everyone – as a Christmas gift or even a gift to oneself.

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Greening CERD? The ICJ’s (Over)Cautious Stance on Environmental Harm as Racial Discrimination in Azerbaijan v. Armenia – EJIL: Talk! – Go Health Pro

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10 Good Reads 2024 – EJIL: Talk! – Go Health Pro

On 12 November 2024, the International Court of Justice (ICJ, ‘the Court’) delivered its ‘twin’ judgments on Azerbaijan’s preliminary objections on jurisdiction in Armenia v. Azerbaijian, and on Armenia’s preliminary objections on jurisdiction and admissibility in Azerbaijan v. Armenia. Both cases, brought in late 2021, invoked Article 36(1) of the ICJ Statute and Article 22 … Read more

Corporate Climate Responsibility After “Milieudefensie vs. Shell” Court of Appeal Decision – EJIL: Talk! – Go Health Pro

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10 Good Reads 2024 – EJIL: Talk! – Go Health Pro

Introduction. Tort Law Climate Litigation The recent decision by The Hague Court of Appeal on 12 November 2024 in the case Milieudefensie vs. Shell was eagerly awaited in both legal academia and the oil and gas industry. It overturns the path-breaking initial 2021 judgment, in which the Shell group was ordered to reduce its aggregate … Read more

Not Having Your International Law and Eating It. On the Nicaragua Moment of International Criminal Justice   – EJIL: Talk! – Go Health Pro

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10 Good Reads 2024 – EJIL: Talk! – Go Health Pro

You probably assume that you know what the word “expat” means. The writer Lucy Mushita first heard that word from European and American professionals who had come to work in her home country (Zimbabwe); they used it to describe themselves. She looked it up in a dictionary and found out that “expat” designates someone who goes to live or work in a country that is not his or her own. Later, however, she discovered that the word had a more limited scope than what its dictionary meaning suggested. “When I arrived in France and introduced myself as an expat, people looked at me with wide eyes,” she describes in her latest book Expat Blues. “They asked me if I’d fled poverty, misery or war, and I replied that I hadn’t. I was an expat. I was an expat who had followed her husband to France. But I realized that the word didn’t work for black people in the Western world.”

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A moment for accountability? Syria and the pursuit of entrepreneurial justice after Assad – EJIL: Talk! – Go Health Pro

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10 Good Reads 2024 – EJIL: Talk! – Go Health Pro

For those Syrians waking up to a shattered country devoid of its dictator or those exiled by war, no superlative can quite capture the enormity of events that have transpired in the last few days. Assad’s fall not only marks the end of the Ba’ath regime (as occurred across the border in Iraq in 2003), but it also signals a seismic shift in the fortunes of the country’s 14-year civil war and 54 years of brutal rule by father and by son. I myself lived in Damascus in 2008-2009 studying Arabic. The personal security and safety I had experienced during my time there before the civil war was only possible through palpable fear and extreme repression. An unspoken rule – or a ‘social contract’ of sorts – seemed to prevail: I could only continue to presume that the chances of being mugged or assaulted were miniscule while I continued to observe the requirement of political silence. In exchange for everyday safety as provided by an authoritarian regime, Syrians had to sacrifice any scope for criticising or challenging the nature of Ba’ath rule. Memories of the Sunni rebellion in 1982, which resulted in the regime’s annihilation of Hama’s old town and its population, prompted most Syrians to repress all political inclinations. Infamous interrogation centres and prisons were located in suburban streets or on the edge of towns, serving as ready reminders of the repercussions that would result in the wake of any form of dissent. Yet while this edifice of securitised repression appeared impregnable to me and to many Syrians, this illusion was shattered in 2011 once the regime responded to peaceful protests in the wake of Tunisia’s and Egypt’s uprisings with overwhelming force and depravity. Perhaps the level of brutality came as a shock, but once the regime responded so harshly, it was impossible to rewind the clock: violence spawned more violence such that once again the space for any form of political expression radically narrowed. The country soon slid into a stereotypically-wrenching civil war that was made far worse by an assortment of intervening states.

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