BLOGGING BREAK: No new posts between 24 December and 6 January 2020

(image source: Blogger)

The ESIL IGHIL's blog will not post new announcements between 24 December and 6 January 2020.

The Steering Committee wishes you all the best for 2020 !

JOURNAL: European Journal of International Law XXX (2019), No. 3

(image source: blogger)

• Editorial
  • On My Way In – I: Impressions of a New Editor-in-Chief’s First Months in the EJIL Engine Room; On My Way Out – Advice to Young Scholars VI: WeakPoint, On the Uses and Abuses of PowerPoint; In This Issue
• Articles
• Paz Andrés Sáenz de Santa María, The European Union and the Law of Treaties: A Fruitful Relationship
• Vera Shikhelman, Implementing Decisions of International Human Rights Institutions – Evidence from the United Nations Human Rights Committee
• Máximo Langer & Mackenzie Eason, The Quiet Expansion of Universal Jurisdiction
• Symposium: International Commissions of Inquiry
• Michael A. Becker & Sarah M.H. Nouwen, International Commissions of Inquiry: What Difference Do They Make? Taking an Empirical Approach
• Eliav Lieblich, At Least Something: The UN Special Committee on the Problem of Hungary, 1957–1958
• Hala Khoury-Bisharat, The Unintended Consequences of the Goldstone Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights Organizations in Israel
• Mohamed S. Helal, Two Seas Apart: An Account of the Establishment, Operation and Impact of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI)
• Roaming Charges: Moments of Dignity: Mekong River
• EJIL: Debate!
• Jeffrey Kahn, The Relationship between the European Court of Human Rights and the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation: Conflicting Conceptions of Sovereignty in Strasbourg and St. Petersburg
• A. Blankenagel, The Relationship between the European Court of Human Rights and the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation: A Reply to Jeffrey Kahn
• EJIL: Debate!
• Heike Krieger, Populist Governments and International Law
• Marcela Prieto Rudolphy, Populist Governments and International Law: A Reply to Heike Krieger
• Paul Blokker, Populist Governments and International Law: A Reply to Heike Krieger
• A Fresh Look at an Old Case
• Amedeo Arena, From an Unpaid Electricity Bill to the Primacy of EU Law: Gian Galeazzo Stendardi and the Making of Costa v ENEL
• Review Essay
• JHHW, FIFA – The Beautiful Game – The Ugly Organization
• Sahiba Gill, Edouard Adelus and Francisco de Abreu Duarte, Whose Game? FIFA, Corruption, and the Challenge of Global Governance. Review of J. Sugden and A. Tomlinson. Football, Corruption and Lies: Revisiting ‘Badfellas’, the Book FIFA Tried to Ban; D. Conn. The Fall of the House of FIFA: The Multimillion-Dollar Corruption at the Heart of Global Soccer; H. Blake and J. Calvert. The Ugly Game: The Corruption of FIFA and the Qatari Plot to Buy the World Cup; B. Mersiades. Whatever It Takes: The Inside Story of the FIFA Way; J. Chade. Política, Propina e Futebol: Como o Padrão FIFA Ameaça o Esporte Mais Popular do Planeta
• Book Reviews
• Roger O’Keefe, reviewing William A. Schabas, The Trial of the Kaiser
• Anna Chadwick, reviewing Honor Brabazon (ed.). Neoliberal Legality: Understanding the Role of Law in the Neoliberal Project
• Richard Gardiner, reviewing Joseph Klingler, Yuri Parkhomenko, Constantinos Salonidis (eds). Between the Lines of the Vienna Convention? Canons and Other Principles of Interpretation in Public International Law
• The Last Page
• Antjie Krog, Litany

Read the issue on the OUP website.

(source: IL Reporter)

ESIL IGHIL: Steering Committee Composition after Athens Conference

The membership of the ESIL Interest Group History of International Law had the occasion to renew the composition of its Steering Committee.

We thank Martin Clark (LSE), Hossein Piran (Iran/US Claims Tribunal) for their appreciated and valuable contribution in the past period.

Jaanika Erne (Tartu) and John Morss (Deakin) joined the board.

The current composition of the Steering Committee is as follows:

Markus Beham

Following a successful first term with the Coordination Committee, I would hope to continue the direction in which we have steered the IG these last two years together with my fellow colleagues. What I feel strongly for and would like to carry forward into the next term is our emphasis on the use of original archival material, out-of-the-box creativity in both topics and research questions, and further encouragement of diversity in all respects within our panels. Part of my personal agenda is promoting the exchange among historians, legal historians, and international lawyers working on legal history through mutually inclusive common events. I am currently an Assistant Professor at the Chair for Constitutional and Administrative Law, Public International Law, European and International Economic Law at the University of Passau, Germany and am an adjunct at the Section for International Law and International Relations of the University of Vienna, Austria. Having also studied history with a focus on Eastern European history, where my research interests were the ‘long 19th century’ with the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the history of population exchanges and deportations throughout the 20th century, I have been exploring selected aspects of these topics in our calls for papers.

Frederik Dhondt

I am grateful for the ESIL IGHIL's memberships trust to continue running the ESIL IGHIL Blog, which attracts between 3500 and 4000 pageviews a month. This blog was created after the ESIL Conference in Vienna in 2014. I studied law (Ghent, 2007), history (Ghent/Paris-Sorbonne, 2008) and International Relations (Sciences Po Paris, 2009), and obtained the degree of doctor of law in 2013 (Ghent). I currently am an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law and Criminology of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (since 2015) and a Visiting Lecturer at the Law Faculty of the University of Antwerp since 2016. I teach international legal history, comparative constitutional history and political history. My research interests concern legal argumentation and diplomacy in the 18th and 19th centuries, and the interaction between constitutional and international law. I published on Franco-British diplomacy after the Peace of Utrecht (Balance of Power and Norm Hierarchy. Franco-British Diplomacy after the Peace of Utrecht, Brill, 2015) and on Belgian permanent neutrality between 1830 and 1914 (e.g. my chapter in International Law in the Long Nineteenth Century, eds. Inge Van Hulle and Randall Lesaffer, Brill, 2019). At the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, I am the director of the Research Group Contextual Research in Law (www.vub.be/CORE). More detail can be found on my personal website.  

Jaanika Erne

Prior to having B.A. and M.A. in law from the University of Tartu, LL.M. in public international law from the University of Helsinki, and M.A. in EU law from King’s College London, I was a student of theology at the Institute of Theology of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church from 1987 to 1999 and at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Tartu from 1996 to 1997. I am writing up my Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Tartu, where I am aiming at understanding a legal-political concept - conferral of state powers, in its evolution in national and transnational contexts. From 1997 until 1999 I was a Fellow, and from 1999 until 2000 a Master Student at EuroFaculty section at the University of Tartu. In 2000, I began my studies as an Erasmus exchange student at the University of Helsinki, where I graduated from the LL.M. Programme in 2003. Thereafter I worked at the Eurodocumentation Centre at the Library of the University of Tartu from where I left for the traineeship programme of the European Commission in the fall of 2003. From 2004 to 2012 I was teaching public international law, EU law, and law concepts at Estonian and Finnish universities. In 2002 I was a successful examinee at the University of Thessaloniki Institute of Public International Law and International Relations’ 30th session ’International Challenges to Peace and Security in the New Millennium’. After that I have attended several international workshops and seminars in public international law and EU law, and some of my research articles and book reviews have been published in Juridica International, Acta Martensis Societatis, Trames, Nordic Journal of International Law, Baltic Journal of International Law, Thesaurus Acroasium, Ius Antiquum, Finnish Yearbook of International Law, etc. More details at the Estonian Research Portal. I believe in common intellectual and research space and think that comparative historical analysis could assist in building a bridge for understanding and explaining the opposites individual/state, science/politics, ideas/ideologies, but also systems and autonomies. jaanika.erne@ut.ee

Jan Lemnitzer

I am Assistant Professor at the Center for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark and was formerly Director of Studies at Oxford’s Changing Character of War programme. I have published on the history of international law in Diplomacy & Statecraft, the International History Review and the European Journal of International Law. My LSE PhD thesis on the 1856 Declaration of Paris has been published with Palgrave Macmillan under the title Power, Law and the End of Privateering. The books argues that the 1856 Declaration marks the beginning of the codification of international law, and my current work explores the 19th century expansion of international law more generally, and in particular what it can teach us about norm creation in novel and highly globalized areas such as cyberspace. In addition, I continue to work on the origins of the norm of civilian immunity and the history of international criminal law. I have served as the chairman of the Interest Group for the last two years.

John Morss

I grew up in London UK and first studied psychology (BSc Sheffield, PhD Edinburgh), taking a lecturing post at the Ulster Polytechnic (subsequently the University of Ulster), which is located in the northern zone of Ireland. Having migrated to Aotearoa/New Zealand in the mid 1980s to teach in an education department, my psychology scholarship turned increasingly from empirical to historical and theoretical issues around development, evolution, progress and similar tropes (The Biologising of Childhood: Developmental Psychology and the Darwinian Myth, 1990). Around the turn of the millennium I retrained in law at the University of Otago, and relocated to Melbourne Australia, gaining a post at Deakin University where my scholarship has been a mix of legal philosophy and international jurisprudence eg International Law as the Law of Collectives, 2013, and a paper on the status of the Vatican/Holy See in the European Journal of International Law, 2015, both of which include a smattering of amateur historiography.

BOOK: Alfred H.A. SOONS (ed.), The 1713 Peace of Utrecht and its Enduring Effects [Nova et Vetera Iuris Gentium; Vol. 31] (Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhoff/Brill, 2019), 224 p. ISBN 978-90-04-35157-8, € 176

(image source: Brill)

Book abstract:

The 1713 Peace of Utrecht and its Enduring Effects, edited by Alfred H.A. Soons, presents an interdisciplinary collection of contributions marking the occasion of the tercentenary of the Peace of Utrecht. The chapters examine the enduring effects of the Peace Treaties concluded at Utrecht in 1713, from the perspectives of international law, history and international relations, with cross-cutting themes: the European Balance of Power; the Relationship to Colonial Regimes and Trade Monopolies; and Ideas and Ideals: the Development of the International Legal Order. With contributions by: Peter Beeuwkes, Stella Ghervas, Martti Koskenniemi, Randall Lesaffer, Paul Meerts, Isaac Nakhimovsky, Sundhya Pahuja, Koen Stapelbroek, Benno Teschke, Jaap de Wilde

Table of contents:

Preface Notes on Contributors 
Behaviour of Negotiators   Paul Meerts and Peter Beeuwkes 
Part 1 The Peace of Utrecht: the European Balance of Power 
1 Balance of Power: Adversarial Pair of Scales or Associational Arch?   Jaap de Wilde 2 Envisioning Europe after Utrecht: Voltaire and the Historiography of the Balance of Power   Isaac Nakhimovsky 3 The Peace of Utrecht, the Balance of Power and the Law of Nations   Randall Lesaffer 
Part 2 The Peace of Utrecht: Relationship to Colonial Regimes and Trade Monopolies 
4 “The Long Peace”: Commercial Treaties and the Principles of Global Trade at the Peace of Utrecht   Koen Stapelbroek 5 The Social Origins of 18th Century British Grand Strategy: a Historical Sociology of the Peace of Utrecht   Benno Teschke 6 Public Debt, the Peace of Utrecht and the Rivalry between Company and State   Sundhya Pahuja 
Part 3 The Peace of Utrecht: Ideas and Ideals; the Development of the International Legal Order 
7 Peace of Utrecht (1713) and the “Crisis of European Conscience”   Martti Koskenniemi 8 In the Shadow of Utrecht: Perpetual Peace and International Order, 1713–1815   Stella Ghervas 
Subject Index Name Index 

On the editor:

Alfred H.A. Soons is professor emeritus of public international law at Utrecht University 

(source: Brill)

BOOK: Marija DORDESKA, General Principles of Law Recognized by Civilized Nations (1922-2018): The Evolution of the Third Source of International Law Through the Jurisprudence of the Permanent Court of International Justice and the International Court of Justice [Queen Mary Studies in International Law, Volume: 39] (Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhoff/Brill, 2020), ISBN 978-90-04-40018-4, € 299

(image source: IL Reporter)

Book abstract:

In General Principles of Law Recognized by Civilized Nations (1922-2018) Marija Đorđeska offers an account of the origins, theory and practical application of the general principles in the jurisprudence of the Permanent Court of International Justice and International Court of Justice between 1922 and 2018. Are general principles rules of international law? What is their relationship to custom and treaties? What are the types of general principles and where do international courts find them? This monograph answers these and other questions and offers a detailed overview of over 150 general principles identified in the jurisprudence of the Permanent Court of International Justice and the International Court of Justice.

On the author:

Marija ĐorđeskaMarija Đorđeska, S.J.D. (2016), the George Washington University is an Associate at Lindeborg Counsellors at Law (UK), admitted to the New York State Bar 

CALL FOR PAPERS: Prominent Figures of French Diplomacy (19th-20th Century) (Paris: Sorbonne Université/Archives Diplomatiques, DEADLINE 31 DEC 2019)

(image source: Wikimedia Commons)

Summary;

The seminar aims to study the key period of the early 20th century during which diplomacy become more official and adapted to major changes in international life. Two diplomats of the same generation, one who had a traditional background (Hanotaux) and the other a laureate of the recruitment exam which had recently been established at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Jusserand), represent this era. Sharing an interest in French-American relations, they helped define the major areas of foreign policy but also left behind a body of work in the intellectual milieu of their time.

Elaborate presentation:

Seminar held by the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs (Archives Directorate), Sorbonne Université (Centre for 19th-Century History) and France-Amérique The seminar aims to study the key period of the early 20th century during which diplomacy become more official and adapted to major changes in international life. Two diplomats of the same generation, one who had a traditional background (Hanotaux) and the other a laureate of the recruitment exam which had recently been established at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Jusserand), represent this era. Sharing an interest in French-American relations, they helped define the major areas of foreign policy but also left behind a body of work in the intellectual milieu of their time. A student at the École des Chartes and then lecturer at the Écoles des Hautes Études, Gabriel Hanotaux (1853-1944) entered the Foreign Ministry to conduct his research on Richelieu in the archives. Originally working as an unpaid attaché (volunteer intern), he rose through the ranks and worked in the Private Offices of three Ministers, including Gambetta (1881-1882) and Jules Ferry (1883-1885), before obtaining a unique post in Constantinople, which was unexpectedly interrupted (1885-1886). After leaving the Foreign Ministry for three years to work in politics (he was elected Member of the Chamber of Deputies), he returned in a senior role before being appointed Foreign Minister for four years (with a hiatus from November 1895 to April 1896). During his time in office, he focused on colonial expansion up until the Fashoda crisis. However, while on the continent, he worked on finding a balance and European cooperation by seeking to reconcile with Germany (to counter English colonial competition), Russia and Italy. After leaving the Foreign Ministry in 1898 he continued his diplomatic work. He was a delegate to the League of Nations (1920-1924), founded the Comité France Amérique, then dedicated his time to his work as a historian. Jean-Jules Jusserand (1855-1932) held a degree in Law and Literature when he took the recruitment exam for consular work (1878). His academic and professional development went hand in hand. He perfected his knowledge of English language and literature in London where he was named student-consul (20 September 1878), after defending his thesis for his PhD in Literature on a 12thcentury English poet, Josephus Exeter (22 November 1877). After working in the Private Office of Minister Barthélémy-Saint-Hilaire, he published his work “Literary History of the English People”, which earned him the esteem of the son of the French politician and historian, François Guizot, a professor at the Collège de France. In 1880, he became Deputy Political Director, while pursuing his literary career. He was also involved in organizing the Protectorate of Tunisia in which he supported his friend Paul Cambon (1882-1887). He obtained his first post as Minister of France in the Legation to Copenhagen (1898), before succeeding Jules Cambon as French Ambassador to Washington, D.C.. His ambassadorship was exceptional due to its length (23 years), the esteem and the friendship which bound the Ambassador and President Theodore Roosevelt, the popularity he enjoyed among the American people, and his effective diplomatic action. He is credited with securing the United States’ support at the time of the Moroccan crisis and the Conference of Algesiras and its entry into World War One in 1917. Jean-Jules Jusserand is the perfect example of a diplomat who completely understood the culture and social and economic context of his country of residence, living by the principle that it is now less important for diplomats to persuade a prince and his minister than to understand a nation.

 Select themes:

We will talk about the following themes linking the two prominent figures:

• Their social and intellectual profile

• Do the two diplomats stand out from 19th century diplomats in terms of their family backgrounds, their education, and their path to the Foreign Ministry?

• Scholarly, artistic, intellectual, literary sociability and friendships: Jusserand and his American networks, Hanotaux and the Parisian circles.

As a friend of Taine’s, Jusserand was part of College de France circles in Paris and frequented avant-gardists in London. In the United States, he was very close to academia. Hanotaux was appointed to the Academie Française in 1897 as a historian and had regular contact with academic literary and artistic circles.

• Their work and writing

Hanatoux, as a historian of his era and biographer of Richelieu, Jusserand as a fluent English speaker, a specialist in English literature and theatre having written a work that could be studied to evaluate their reach and modernity.

• Their conception of France’s foreign policy

• A republican patriotism strengthened by the defeat of 1870, colonial expansion to compensate for the loss of Alsace-Lorraine.

Jusserand visited Egypt amid the fully blown Mahdist Revolt and attended to Tunisian issues. Coming from Picardy, marked by the defeat of 1870, Hanotaux closely followed colonial issues. He was involved in the Fashoda crisis and helped to resolve it before Delcassé.

• Their view of the world, their approach to major international problems

• The end of the Concert of Europe and its being replaced by a system of alliances between powers.

• The rise of the United States on the international stage

Hanotaux, the first to understand the power of the United States on the international stage by sending a prominent political figure there: Jules Cambon. Hanotaux, founder of the Comité France-Amérique in 1909.
Jusserand, ambassador and observer, before, during and after the World War I, his diplomatic action, his teams and his friendships among American political personnel, the reputation he acquired and the outreach of his embassy.

• The impact of World War I and changing diplomacy

Jusserand was criticized for not being able to convince the United States to enter the war sooner. He was competing with the presence of a High Commission in Washington D.C. and the role of the interallied committees.
Diplomacy underwent huge changes because of the War, including an increase in the machinery of the State, the role of interallied committees, an increasing number of experts, weighty economic, monetary and financial issues, and cultural diplomacy.

• The new world order resulting from the Paris Peace Conference (arbitration, League of Nations, people’s rights, role of public opinions, disarmament)

Guidelines for submission:

 A CV with a proposal of 1,500 characters must be sentby 31 December 2019
to: isabelledasque@orange.fr and stanislas.jeannesson@univ-nantes.fr, copied to isabelle.nathan@diplomatie.gouv.fr et emnataud@hotmail.fr

Scientific committee:

• Isabelle Dasque, Sorbonne Université

• Emmanuelle Haim, PhD student, INP

• Robert Franck, Professor Emeritus, Université Paris 1 – Panthéon Sorbonne

• Stanislas Jeannesson, Université de Nantes

• Isabelle Nathan, French Diplomatic Archives

(source: calenda)

CALL FOR PAPERS: Liability and Responsibility in Legal History XXVIth Annual Forum of Young Legal Historians Istanbul, 10 – 13 June 2020

(image source: AYLH) 

Our next gathering aims to investigate liability and responsibility through legal history. Such topic necessitates a multidisciplinary approach as legal liability concerns both civil law and criminal law and can arise from various areas of law, such as contracts, torts, taxes, or fines given by government agencies. Instead legal responsibility concerns legal obligation; a measure of mental capacity, used in deciding the extent to which a person can be held accountable for a crime (such as diminished responsibility); specific duties imposed upon persons to care or provide for others, such as the parents duty to the child or the guardianship of a ward; and a person’s role in causing an event to happen. That is to say, a chain of causation means an individual is responsible for an event. This is actually part of the law of legal liability and public liability.

By analyzing these topics through a historical point of view, we can understand how the development happened and at the end we might answer the question of “why did it happen”. For instance, the general principle in Roman legal thought was that there should be no liability for others: Gaius writes that "our condition can be made better but not worse through our slaves"; a fortiori, it could not be made worse by those who were not members of the family.

Further, in legal history, it is important to understand the interactions between these two terms (liability and responsibility) and their differences. Both terms might be interlinked but as to their consequences and their application there appear a difference.

We believe that the conference gives young legal historians a unique opportunity to present their research in the field and to get acquainted with the interdisciplinary approaches presented by their colleagues from around the world.

If you would like to present a paper during the conference, please send an application including an

abstract of not more than 250 words and your CV to aylh2020istanbul@gmail.com before 21st of February 2020. Presentations have to be in English and should not exceed 20 minutes each. Presentation in Turkish language will be allowed together with simultaneous translator. The conference fee will be € 100, - and does not include travel and accommodation.

After 21st of February accepted papers will be informed and will be contacted further to complete the registration by paying the conference fee. Registration link could be found in our web-site.

Please note that registration is limited to a number of people. Therefore, early registration is strongly recommended!

We look forward to welcoming you to Istanbul.

Dr. Sinem Ogis on behalf of the Organizing Committee.

CALL FOR PAPERS: Pre-Conference Event Interest Group History of International Law: "The Founding of Solidarity in the International Community" (23-24 APR 2020) (DEADLINE 15 JAN 2020)

(image source: ESIL)

The ESIL Interest Group History of International Law will host a pre-conference workshop on “The Founding of Solidarity in the International Community” for graduate and Ph.D. students as well as early career scholars at the 2020 ESIL Research Forum at the University of Catania. The event is destined at uniting papers from various legal traditions and cultures, across all ages. We also invite contributions from disciplines other than law.
We are especially interested in papers investigating:

• The intellectual genesis of the community of states
• The interplay between religion, philosophy and the foundational utopias of international law
• The political use and instrumentalisation of international law by political actors
• The appropriation and acculturation process of European international legal principles in the age of Western imperialism

(see also ESIL Website)

BOOK: Lucien BÉLY, Guillaume HANOTIN & Géraud POUMARÈDE (dir.), La Diplomatie-monde. Autour de la paix d'Utrecht 1713 [Histoire de la diplomatie et des relations internationales] (Paris: Pedone, 2019), 592 p. ISBN 9782233009289, € 38

Book abstract:

Ce livre a l’ambition d’ouvrir une nouvelle dimension pour l’histoire des relations internationales en étudiant la naissance, en Europe, d’une diplomatie prenant en compte le monde entier, où les Européens cherchent à être présents en ce temps de première mondialisation. Les traités de paix, signés à partir de 1713 à Utrecht puis à Rastatt et à Baden, mettent fin à un conflit qui dure depuis 1701, la guerre de Succession d’Espagne, et ils règlent en particulier le sort de l’immense monarchie espagnole qui contrôle des territoires sur tous les continents. Depuis les traités de Westphalie de 1648, le congrès diplomatique s’est imposé comme l’instrument des grandes recompositions géopolitiques destinées à établir la paix. Une telle réunion de négociateurs correspond à une confrontation maîtrisée où sont évalués les résultats des campagnes militaires et où sont cherchés des expédients pour faire accepter l’arrêt des hostilités. Pour des siècles trop souvent considérés comme des successions de guerres, par lesquelles des États en formation s’imposent en s’opposant, ce recueil d’études propose d’approcher l’histoire de l’Europe et du monde sous un autre angle, plus lumineux : celui de la négociation, puisque l’affrontement débouche aussi sur l’élaboration de pratiques destinées à résorber à tout prix la violence entre les pays européens. Néanmoins, cela conduit aussi à esquiver des litiges ou des souffrances collectives pour ne pas retarder ou empêcher la conclusion des traités. Finalement, une paix durable, comme celle de 1713-1714, fait de tous les belligérants des mécontents, tout en les obligeant à accepter un oubli général des traumatismes subis. Ces discussions intègrent les questions économiques, commerciales et coloniales, ce qui permet de parler de diplomatie-monde, afin d’aborder le dialogue avec des populations lointaines mais aussi des drames humains comme la traite des esclaves africains. Cet ouvrage se propose de considérer également les fondements d’une culture de paix, à travers l’émergence d’une opinion publique internationale, la réflexion sur la paix perpétuelle, la construction d’un événement historique qu’il faut célébrer et commémorer.

On the editors:

Des historiens, venus d’horizons variés, donnent ici des études d’une grande rigueur, offrant une somme de connaissances historiques d’une incomparable richesse, et ils proposent des analyses originales et des interprétations novatrices, renouvelant en profondeur l’histoire des relations internationales, de la diplomatie et des sociétés des Temps modernes.

List of contributors:

Joaquim Albareda i Salvadó, Antonella Alimento, Bruno Arcidiacono, José Manuel de Bernardo Ares, Fabrice Brandli, Guido Braun, François Brizay, Bruno Demoulin, Frederik Dhondt, Indravati Felicité, Marsha & Linda Frey, Guillaume Hanotin, Gilles Havard, Stéphane Jettot, Bernd Klesmann, Maria Viginia León Sanz, Sylvain Lloret, Victoria Lopez-Cordon, Pierpaolo Merlin, Maria de los Angeles Perez Samper, Rik Opsommer, François Pernot, Laurent Perillat, Géraud Poumarède, Núria Sallés Vilaseca, Eric Schnakenbourg, Simon Surreaux, François Ternat, Ferenc Toth, Massimiliano Vaghi, Caroline Le Mao, Philippe Hrodej.

More information with the publisher.

COLLOQUIUM: La prohibition de l’esclavage et de la traite des êtres humains (23-24 January 2020, Paris)

(Source: Portail universitaire du droit)

We learned of an international colloquium on the abolition of slavery and the slave trade in Paris coming January.

Particulièrement attentatoire à la dignité de l’homme, au même titre que la torture, l’esclavage fait l’objet d’une prohibition relativement ancienne et d’une grande fermeté. Énoncée dans la convention de Genève relative à l’esclavage du 25 septembre 1926, la prohibition absolue de l’esclavage, quelles que soient les circonstances, est reprise dans l’ensemble des déclarations et conventions protectrices des droits de l’homme. Au sein des États, l’abolition est progressive.

Le Pakistan clôt, en 1992, un processus engagé deux siècles auparavant en 1777 (abolition de l’esclavage dans le Vermont). La réduction en esclavage, autrefois rouage de l’économie (traite négrière), est devenue un crime contre l’humanité (art. 7 Statut CPI).

L’esclavage institutionnel n’existe plus, mais il doit désormais être saisi dans sa réalité factuelle afin de lutter efficacement contre tous les trafics et toutes les formes d’exploitation ayant pour objet des êtres humains, hommes, femmes et enfants. Il perdure dans toutes les régions du monde y compris dans ses manifestations les plus archaïques comme en attestent les marchés aux esclaves en Libye et le traitement réservé aux femmes Yézidies par l’État islamique.

L’esclavage est non seulement une réalité contemporaine, mais il est également un amer souvenir de la conquête du monde et de la colonisation par les européens.

Quelles réponses juridiques, quels recours offrir aux victimes de cette pratique odieuse ? Quelle signification revêt ou devrait revêtir l’esclavage sans pour autant diluer la notion en l’appliquant à des situations licites dans certains États (notamment la gestation pour autrui) ? Quelle distinction opérer entre esclavage, servitude, travail forcé et traite ? Quelle valeur possède le consentement de la victime à son exploitation ? Comment affronter l’esclavage dans ses multiples modalités ainsi que dans ses dimensions spatiales et temporelles ?

L’esclavage est une pratique d’hier et d’aujourd’hui. Les plaies du passé peinent à cicatriser ; le ressentiment des descendants d’esclaves demeure vivace. Entre devoir de mémoire et réparation, comment assumer le passé ? Au présent, la lutte contre l’esclavage associe tant les États que les opérateurs privés, en particulier à travers le devoir de vigilance imposé à certaines entreprises multinationales afin d’éviter qu’elles n’entretiennent indirectement le phénomène par leurs filiales ou sous-traitants établis à l’étranger. Le colloque a pour ambition de réfléchir à ces différentes questions et aux réponses qu’elles sont susceptibles de recevoir.

The full conference program can be found here
(source: ESCLH Blog)

BOOK: Andrew FEAR & Jamie WOOD (eds.), A Companion to Isidore of Seville [Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition, vol. 87] (Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhoff/Brill, 2019), ISBN 978-90-04-41545-4

(image source: Brill)

Book abstract:

A Companion to Isidore of Seville presents nineteen chapters from leading international scholars on Isidore of Seville (d. 636), the most prominent bishop of the Visigothic kingdom in Hispania in the seventh century and one of the most prolific authors of early medieval western Europe. Introductory studies establish the political, religious and familial contexts in which Isidore operated, his key works are then analysed in detail, as are some of the main themes that run throughout his corpus. Isidore's influence extended across the entire Middle Ages and into the early modern period in fields such as church governance and pastoral care, theology, grammar, science, history-writing, and linguistics – all topics that are explored in the volume.

More information with Brill.

BOOK: Peter Maxwell STUART, Steve MURDOCH & Leos MÜLLER (eds.), Unimpeded Sailing. A Critical Edition of Johann Gröning's Navigatio Libera (extended 1698 edition) [Brill Studies in Maritime History; 6] (Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhoff/Brill, 2019), ISBN 978-90-04-35269-8, 162 p. € 95

Book abstract:
The original Latin text of Johann Gröning’s Navigatio libera has never before been translated into any modern vernacular language. Gröning’s intention was to set out the position of neutral nations (in this case the Danes and Swedes), and their right to pursue trade during the wars of the great maritime powers (particularly the English and the Dutch). It specifically sought to engage with and refute the work of Hugo Grotius while taking cognisance of the critique of Gröning’s work by Samuel Pufendorf. The text serves as a bridge between 17th-century polemical discourse surrounding the ‘free sea’ versus ‘enclosed sea’ debate and later 18th-century legal literature on the rights of neutrals and the continuation of free trade in time of war.

On the editors:

Peter Maxwell-Stuart, Ph.D. (1994) is Reader in History at the University of St Andrews. He is widely published in the fields of Greek and Latin literature and history, and in the occult sciences of Mediaeval and early modern Europe. He is about to publish a translation of Gomez Pereira’s scientific treatise, Antoniana Margarita, and Martin Delrio’s chef d’oeuvre, Disquisitiones Magicae. Steve Murdoch, Ph.D. (1998) is Professor of History at the University of St Andrews. His major monographs include; Network North: Scottish Kin, Cultural and Covert Associations in Northern Europe, 1603-1746 (Brill, 2006) and most recently with Alexia Grosjean, Alexander Leslie and the Scottish Generals of the Thirty Years’ War, 1618-1648 (Pickering & Chatto, 2014). Among maritime scholars he is best known for his award winning monograph The Terror of the Seas? Scottish Maritime Warfare, 1513-1713 (Brill, 2010). Leos Müller, Ph.D. (1998), is Professor of History and Director of the Centre for Maritime Studies, Stockholm University. He has published on Swedish early-modern and maritime history, e.g. Consuls, Corsairs and Commerce. The Swedish Consular Service and Long-Distance Shipping, 1720–1815 (Uppsala University, 2004), together with Stefan Eklöf Amirell, and Persistent Piracy. Maritime Violence and State-formation in Global Historical Perspective, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

(source: Brill)

BOOK: Peter MACALISTER-SMITH & Joachim SCHWIETZKE (Hrsg.), Treaties and Other Acts in Multilateral Conference Diplomacy 1641 to 1924. A brief Calendar of State Practice 1641 to 1924 [Arbeitshefte der Arbeitsgemeinschaft für juristisches Bibliotheks-und Dokumentationswesen, Band: 27] (Wien: Neugebauer, 2019), 440 p. ISBN 9783853763278, € 39,8

(image source: Buchhandel.de)

Book abstract:

The Calendar surveys over 450 treaties and other official acts worldwide in relation to 111 multilateral conferencesand congresses convened by states from the 17th century to the era of League of Nations.

On the editors:

Joachim Schwietzke Library Director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg, Germany. Peter Macalister-Smith is a member of the editorial board of JUS GENTIUM, Journal of International Legal History (Lawbook Exchange, Clark NJ, USA).

 More information with the publisher.

BOOK: Rose PARFITT, The Process of International Legal Reproduction: Inequality, Historiography, Resistance (Cambridge: CUP, 2019), 534 p. ISBN 9781108655118, 95 GBP

(image source: CUP)

Book abstract:

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 generated in that process.

On the author:

Rose Parfitt, Kent Law School, University of Kent and Melbourne Law School, University of MelbourneRose Parfitt is a Lecturer in Law at Kent Law School and a Senior Fellow at Melbourne Law School, where she holds a Discovery (DECRA) Award from the Australian Research Council. She also teaches regularly at Harvard Law School's Institute for Global Law and Policy (IGLP) workshops.

Read more on the CUP-website.

(source: IL Reporter)

JOURNAL: Finnish Yearbook of International Law XXV (2019)

(image source: Hart)

The Finnish Yearbook of International Law publishes theoretically informed, high-quality contributions on all aspects of public international law - in-depth articles, shorter notes, commentaries on current developments, book reviews and overviews of Finland's state practice. The Finnish Yearbook characterizes itself as firmly grounded in traditional legal scholarship but open for new approaches to international law and for interdisciplinary analyses.

Volume 25 of the Finnish Yearbook addresses a general topic - autonomy for minorities, and the special topics - “law, war and new technology” and “the ideal of the international - principles, backlash and resistance’. The context of this selection has, on the one hand, been connected with transformations in warfare due to scientific and technological evolvement and, on the other hand, with the rise of nationalism and populism in liberal democracies. The calls for Papers for the 25th Volume and the 26th Volume (merged with Vol. 25) were waiting for contributions discussing how could international law deal with such transformations at the time where the core principles of international law (solidarity, humanitarianism, cooperation, trusteeship, and responsible leadership) seemed to be under attack.

Volume 25 contains also book reviews and introduces the recent doctoral dissertations in international law defended at the University of Helsinki. Vol. 25 can be accessed here. https://www.bloomsburyprofessional.com/uk/finnish-yearbook-of-international-law-volume-25-2015-9781509927166

Table of Contents:

General Section

Athanasios Yupsanis, Autonomy for Minorities: Definitions, Types and Status in International Law

Special Section One: Law, War and New Technology

Sia Spiliopoulou Akermark, Old Rules and New Technology: Drones and the Demilitarisation and Neutralisation of the Aland Islands

Isabella Brunner, Marija Dobric and Verena Pirker, Proving a State's Involvement in a Cyber-Attack: Evidentiary Standards before the ICJ

Natalia Jevglevskaja, Legal Review of New Weapons: Origins of Article 36 of AP I

Kenneth Kraszewski, Classification of Cyber Operations under International Law

Special Section Two: The Ideal of the International – Principles, Backlash and Resistance

Nikolay Marin and Bilyana Manova, The Rise of Nationalism and Populism in Liberal Democracies as a Challenge for Public International Law

Book Reviews

Edited by Tuomas Tiittala

Jaanika Erne

Martti Koskenniemi, Walter Rech and Manuel Jiménez Fonseca (eds), International Law and Empire. Historical Explorations [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, xvi + 395pp., h/b. ISBN 9780198795575“: different embodiements of power and techniques of empire have been contextualized in historical events from early modernity to late modernity, while the main concern lies with the relationship between naturalism, positivism and leadership.]

Yihong Zhang

Wenhua Shan and Jinyuan Su (eds), China and International Investment Law: Twenty Years of ICSID Membership

David M Scott

Wayne Sandholtz and Christopher A Whytock (eds), Research Handbook on the Politics of nternational Law

Tuomas Tiittala

William A Schabas and Shannonbrooke Murphy (eds), Research Handbook on International Courts and Tribunals

New Finnish Doctoral Dissertations in International Law

Paolo Amorosa

The American Project and the Politics of History: James Brown Scott and the Origins of International Law

Karen Knop

The American Project and the Politics of History: James Brown Scott and the Origins of International Law by Paolo Amorosa, Doctoral Dissertation, University of Helsinki, 2018

Maija Dahlberg

Developing the Reasoning of the European Court of Human Rights Would Improve its Judicial Legitimacy

Julia Jansson

The Death of the Freedom Fighter – How the Threat of Terrorism is Suffocating the Protection of Political Criminals

Saskia Hufnagel and Christopher L Blakesley

The Death of the Freedom Fighter – How the Threat of Terrorism is Suffocating the Protection of Political Criminals by Julia Jansson, Doctoral Dissertation, University of Helsinki, 2018

Jens Kremer

The End of Freedom in Public Places? Privacy Problems Arising from Surveillance of the European Public Space

Iain Cameron

The End of Freedom in Public Spaces? Privacy Problems Arising from Surveillance of the European Public Space by Jens Kremer, Doctoral Dissertation, University of Helsinki, 2017

Taina Tuori

From League of Nations Mandates to Decolonization: A History of the Language of Rights in International Law

Jochen von Bernstorff

From League of Nations Mandates to Decolonization. A History of Rights by Taina Tuori, Doctoral Dissertation, University of Helsinki, 2016

The Call for Papers for the Volume 26 discussing issues of international environmental law can be accessed here.

http://fsil.fi/fybil/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Call-for-Papers-vol.-26.pdf

(source: Jaanika Erne)

LECTURE: David ARMITAGE, George III and the Law of Nations [2nd Arthur Berriedale Keith Lecture] (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, 5 DEC 2019)

(image source: Edinburgh Uni)

Lecture abstract:

The British Crown is the apex of the British Commonwealth as it was of the British Empire—a fact of which A. B. Keith, author of the monumental The King and the Imperial Crown (1936), was particularly aware. Yet just how British monarchs experienced ruling such vast and heterogeneous territories and peoples and what tools they used to navigate the challenges of imperial (and, later, Commonwealth) constitutionalism are understudied subjects. This lecture focuses on George III, the monarch who oversaw both the empire’s greatest expansion— in South Asia and North America after the Seven Years’ War—and its first major anticolonial rupture, the American Revolution. In particular, it examines how from his early years as Prince of Wales in the 1750s through to the twilight of his active rulership in the early nineteenth century, George III was educated in constitutionalism and the law of nations, how he gathered and processed information about imperial and international affairs, and how this constitutional and juridical knowledge shaped his understanding of international relations, the American Revolution, and the abolition of slavery, among other pressing contemporary questions. The conclusion will reflect on how the experiences of the first Hanoverian monarch who “gloried in the name of Briton” might be relevant for conceivably the last monarch to rule over a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

On the speaker:

DAVID ARMITAGE is the Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History at Harvard University and an Affiliated Professor at Harvard Law School. He is also an Honorary Professor of History at both the University of Sydney and Queen’s University Belfast and an Honorary Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. He is the author or editor of eighteen books, among them The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (2000), The Declaration of Independence: A Global History (2007), Foundations of Modern International Thought (2013), The History Manifesto (2014, co-auth.), and Civil Wars: A History in Ideas (2017). He has held fellowships and visiting positions in Australia, Britain, China, France, Germany, South Korea, and the United States, and this year he is the Sons of the American Revolution Visiting Professor at King’s College London in association with the Georgian Papers Programme and the Royal Archives 

(source: University of Edinburgh)

BOOK: Martti KOSKENNIEMI, International Law and the Far Right: Reflections on Law and Cynicism. Forth Annual Asser Lecture (The Hague: Asser Institute, 2019), 31 p. ISBN 9789067043601 OPEN ACCESS

(image source: Asser)

Book abstract:

Since the emergence of the profession in the 1870s, international lawyers have lent themselves to supporting various political projects, from ruling of empire to decolonisation, from supporting national self-determination to arguing in favour of global governance of the transnational economy. They have celebrated sovereignty and supported human rights. The recent backlash against global rule and the international institutions of the liberal 1990s, should be viewed as a political attack from a relatively privileged part of the world on the system of values and distributive power that have governed post-1968 internationalism. This backlash is often treated as a social pathology, arisen from the anger felt by European and American middle classes “left behind” by globalisation. I do not share this analysis. Whatever the social composition of the “backlash”, the policies of its leaders are neither reformist nor “conservative”. They are reactionary, and the question is, how to devise an effective policy to counter them. The coming struggle will be about whether reactionary, colonialist, white and male supremacist values will play a role in the international world after globalisation. If international law is not to become a servant to far right policies, or fall into irrelevance, it had better sharpen its strategic insights. Alongside self-criticism, this involves taking a break from the interminable production of minor reforms. Greater openness is needed. Not to “populist” leaders, but to problems of global inequality.

(source: IL Reports)