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In This Issue – Reviews – EJIL: Talk! – Go Health Pro

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In This Issue – Reviews – EJIL: Talk! – Go Health Pro

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.

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What should states do to combat the sabotage of submarine cables and pipelines beneath the high seas/EEZs? – EJIL: Talk! – Go Health Pro

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In This Issue – Reviews – EJIL: Talk! – Go Health Pro

Submarine cables and pipelines are vitally important for energy supply, global communications and economic activity. But several recent high-profile incidents have exposed their vulnerability to deliberate damage from state and non-state actors. In April 2021, Norway reported that several kilometres of its fibreoptic cables disappeared from the Svalbard archipelago, leaving Norway unable to monitor submarine activity in the region. These cables formed part of an extensive network of high-tech cables and sensors used for scientific research and maritime surveillance. Better known, on 26 September 2022, a series of explosions damaged the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, which were built to transport gas from Russia to Germany. While suspicions initially fell on Russia, Dutch intelligence suggest that the explosion was caused by experienced divers belonging to a ‘pro-Ukrainian group’.

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Israel’s Use of Force Against Syria and the Right of Self-Defense – EJIL: Talk! – Go Health Pro

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In This Issue – Reviews – EJIL: Talk! – Go Health Pro

On December 8, the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), augmented by other rebel forces, successfully overthrew the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad following more than five decades of rule by his family. As Assad’s regime fell, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) began a bombing campaign involving hundreds of air strikes in Syria against missiles, air … Read more

Is There Anything New Under the Sun After All? ICC Arrest Warrants at the Crossroads of PIL and EU Law – EJIL: Talk! – Go Health Pro

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In This Issue – Reviews – EJIL: Talk! – Go Health Pro

ICC and Hungary – Do We Know Each Other?

It is widely known that all EU member states are parties to the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The European Union and its member states have been among the institution’s most significant proponents since its creation. Among other things, the EU and the ICC pledged to cooperate in an international treaty. However, it is perhaps less well-known that Hungary, despite ratifying the Statute as early as the end of 2001 (during Viktor Orbán’s first cabinet), has not yet incorporated it into its legal system by promulgating it as an Act of Parliament.

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In this Issue – EJIL: Talk! – Go Health Pro

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In This Issue – Reviews – EJIL: Talk! – Go Health Pro

The Articles section in this issue begins with a contribution by Anna Hood, Madelaine Chiam and Monique Cormier, which brings attention to international law open letter writing. They analyse the open letters that were written in the first three months after the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022 and the Israel-Gaza conflict in 2023. They conceive of such open letter writing as a particular type of international legal practice serving three main purposes of advocacy, solidarity and public education.

The second article, by Taylor St John, Malcolm Langford, Yuliya Chernykh, Øyvind Stiansen, Tarald Gulseth Berge, and Sergio Puig, problematizes the common assumption of full compliance in investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). Evidence shows a wide array of post-award behaviours of states. These behaviours, the authors argue, suggest that the ISDS compliance process can better be conceptualized as bargaining rather than states fulfilling their obligations under the ‘fixed standards’ set by the awards.

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