EJIL: Talk!

On a regular basis I am asked about the relationship between EJIL and its (very successful) blog, EJIL: Talk! There is a substantive dimension to the question and a procedural-management dimension which I will address in turn.

EJIL and EJIL: Talk! The Substantive Relationship. The internet has changed scholarship in profound ways, mostly positive, some negative, and has also changed the function and identity of scholarly journals. I recall the days when at EJIL we would scurry around to find someone who would write a quick comment, to appear in the next issue when, say, the ICJ or Appellate Body of the WTO (yes, EJIL never considered international economic law as a stepson) handed down a decision. Today, by the time the next issue appears, there will be endless commentary on the net and, in all likelihood, a few SSRN papers as well. In some ways, this has been liberating, since it has enabled EJIL to focus on the deeper and longer lasting contributions  ̶ the standard yardstick we apply to any submission in this regard is: Will this be interesting, so far as we can tell, in five years from now? Anything less than that we consider ephemera. We do not publish case notes as such or ‘recent developments’, but we are very happy with our occasional series, ‘Critical Review of International Jurisprudence’ and ‘Critical Review of International Governance’, which usually take the form of a review of a line of cases or of a certain international legal praxis, with a view not only of informing, but also conceptualizing and evaluating. We believe these contributions also have lasting value.

The push to establish EJIL: Talk! came from our conviction that the authors and readers of EJIL are among the most qualified to offer reflection and commentary on a more immediate and ongoing basis  ̶  a commentary which had been squeezed out of EJIL as explained above. Blogging seemed a promising avenue. We surveyed the blogosphere and drew some conclusions as to the identity of EJIL: Talk! It would be semi-moderated, meaning that a first posting would have to be approved by the blog masters, who would also reserve the right to remove or suggest amendments to inappropriate postings. We would not practise content censorship except in extreme situations  ̶  verified libel or opinions universally accepted as beyond the pale, such as holocaust denial and the like. But we would be quite severe as to the tone of EJIL: Talk!, insisting that all submissions and comments (!) be sober in tone and, even when in serious disagreement with an interlocutor, respectful in idiom. When it comes to content itself we welcome the radical and innovative  ̶  there have been some spectacular postings of this nature. When it comes to manner of expression we prefer to err on the side of stodginess. We have seen too many blogs descend into shouting matches and worse. On one or two occasions I think we have come close to the line, e.g. some of the commentary following our Armenia Genocide exchange (see here and here). I have asked the blog masters to be vigilant.

I consider EJIL: Talk! to be very successful by a number of yardsticks. Read the rest of this entry…

This is the time of year when we look back and collate some statistics on the publication record of EJIL.

Here is a new statistic. In a previous Editorial (‘Demystifying the Editorial Process’), I explained that the Editorial Board did not regard EJIL as a mere refereeing service of the unsolicited submissions which arrive week in, week out. We also like proactively to explore areas of international law, raise questions, set scholarly agendas typically by commissioned symposia. We believe that this approach is what gives EJIL its distinct identity. I ‘guesstimated’ that the balance between solicited and unsolicited pieces was more or less half and half. Here are the hard numbers for 2012:

• Solicited pieces: 23 for a total of 361 published pages
• Unsolicited pieces: 25 for a total of 588 published pages.

We continue to think that we strike the right balance; let us know if you think otherwise.

Now to our ‘normal’ stats for 2012. A brief reminder: data for published articles reflects submissions and acceptances which in part took place the year before.

Gender

The percentage of submissions by women rose in 2012 to 33%, 12 percentage points higher than in 2011. Read the rest of this entry…

Some years ago our Board of Editors took the decision to involve a broader range of scholars in the running of our Journal by establishing a Scientific Advisory Board.  That decision has paid off. The intellectual and creative participation of this group of committed scholars has contributed in very positive ways to the development of our Journal. The time has come to refresh our Scientific Advisory Board.   We thank Vera Gowlland Debbas and Linos-Alexander Sicilianos for their valuable service to EJIL and we welcome a new group of members: Veronika Bilková, Laurence Boisson de Chazournes, Enzo Cannizzaro, Diane Desierto, Helen Keller, Doreen Lustig, Anthea Roberts and Christian Tams. Dapo Akande and Iain Scobbie, who also act as blog masters for EJIL: Talk!, will remain on the SAB, and we thank them for their continuing service.

We have taken the extraordinary decision to devote the majority of this issue to a single topic: the enduring legacy of Michael Walzer’s Just and Unjust Wars. The first edition of this classic work was published in 1977; some time ago a special event was held at New York University School of Law to mark its approaching 35th anniversary. This issue gathers together a generous selection of the papers presented on that occasion, together with some additional reactions and comments that were subsequently commissioned, in a symposium edited by Professor Gabriella Blum of Harvard Law School and myself. We trust that the range of critical perspectives presented here ̶ including Professor Walzer’s own reflections on the subject ̶ will sustain many more years of scholarly debate and discussion.

After the rich feast of the symposium, Roaming Charges offers a quiet visual interlude, moving back from Places to Moments of Dignity with a photograph entitled ‘The Pawnbroker, Singapore’.

The book review section complements the overall theme of this issue and includes reviews on publications dealing with child soldiering, the law of armed conflict and occupation, and international criminal law.

Finally, The Last Page presents a poem by Charlotte Innes, entitled ‘Burrough Hill’, that reflects an important goal of this feature of EJIL: to stimulate a more profound degree of introspection on topics and territory where law and life meet.

This post is part of an editorial that will appear in the issue of EJIL (Vol. 23/4) that will be published this week

In a recent Editorial, both in EJIL and I.CON, I inveighed against the difficulty of finding scholars who will agree to peer review and who, once agreed, will do it in a timely fashion and with a level of detail which enables us to take meaningful decisions.

We wish to thank the following for their efforts in 2011 and 2012. We hope we have not forgotten anyone.

Dapo Akande, José Alvarez, Stelios Andreadakis, Antony Anghie, Helmut Aust, Petra Bard, Eyal Benvenisti, Nehal Bhuta, Leora Bilsky, Michael Bothe, Kieran Bradley, Jutta Brunée, Karine Caunes, Cai Congyan, Luigi Crema, Jean d’Aspremont, Kevin Davis, Gráinne de Búrca, Katherine Del Mar, Bruno de Witte, Isabel Feichtner, Francesco Francioni, Giorgio Gaia, Kirsty Gover, Vera Gowlland-Debbas, Andrew Guzman, Laurence Helfer, Robert Howse, Jan Klabbers, Nico Krisch, Andrew Lang, Brian Lepard, George Letsas, Doreen Lustig, Marina Mancini, Petros Mavroidis, Marko Milanovic, Christoph Möllers, Sonia Morano-Foadi, Liam Murphy, Burt Neuborne, Tzvika Nissel, Georg Nolte, Alexander Orakhelashvili, Joost Pauwelyn, Jacqueline Peel, Anne Peters, Diarmuid Phelan, Arie Reich, Adam Roberts, Anthea Roberts, Iain Scobbie, Joanne Scott, Gregory Shaffer, Malcolm Shaw, Alexander Sicilianos, Bruno Simma, Guy Sinclair, Thomas Skouteris, Maya Steinitz, Alan Khee Jin Tan, Antonello Tancredi, Ruti Teitel, Ingo Venzke, Frans Viljoen, Armin von Bogdandy, Tania Voon, Matthew Waxman, Wouter Werner.

If there remain any lingering doubts regarding EJIL’s commitment to cutting-edge scholarship – or its inveterate eclecticism – the first two articles in this issue should put them to rest. In his article, Jens David Ohlin takes a fresh and exciting look at the significance of game theory for international law. And for something completely different, Mark Neocleous makes an important contribution to critical scholarship on international law by introducing the concept of ‘primitive accumulation’, central to Marx’s account of capitalism and colonialism, into international legal theory.

Our two occasional series, Critical Review of International Governance and Critical Review of International Jurisprudence, return in this issue. In the first, Laurence Boisson de Chazournes and Edouard Fromageau analyse the judicial features and development of the World Bank’s sanction process, while Arman Sarvarian examines the ethical standards applicable to agents and counsel appearing before the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. In the second rubric, Juliane Kokott and Christoph Sobotta reconsider that well-worked topic, the Kadi case, and find something new and interesting to say about it; their piece will help scholars and practitioners alike to frame and consider the issues to be addressed in the forthcoming second Kadi ruling.

Roaming Charges brings us back from Moments of Dignity to Places, this time Places of Kitsch, with a photograph of tell-tale signs from Orlando, California.

This issue presents a collection of essays offering diverse reflections on Nino Cassese’s last work, Realizing Utopia: The Future of International Law. All written by past and present members of EJIL’s Editorial Board and Scientific Advisory Board, the collection provides a fitting homage to our late, dearly missed colleague.

We continue with a wonderful addition to our series of Impressions, a book review rubric that invites distinguished scholars to reflect on a book that strongly influenced their intellectual development. Having rediscovered Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj Or Indian Home Rule later in his career, as he writes, B.S. Chimni reveals how insights from that text into the significance of the ethical and spiritual self might complement and correct failings in a Marxist analysis of the material structures of global capitalism.

We round out the issue with a special treat on The Last Page: Le Droit des Nations, Ode, by Eusebe Salverte. The poet was a young French republican who lived through the tumultuous times of the French Revolution and its aftermath. Having previously served briefly in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – he was forced to resign because of his sympathy for the Revolution – he earned a living as a teacher and achieved some prominence as a writer of both fiction and non-fiction on a wide variety of topics. Later in life he enjoyed a highly successful career in politics, and was repeatedly elected to the legislature in Paris. The Ode itself was initially published as a pamphlet circa 1799, apparently in reaction to a brutal attack upon three French plenipotentiaries as they were leaving the unsuccessful Congress of Rastatt in April of that year. All but ignored for nearly 200 years, it was reprinted in its original form (including the poet’s own annotations), together with a learned introductory essay by Edward Gordon, in the 1995 Finnish Yearbook of International Law [Gordon, ‘Salverte’s Ode’, 6 Finnish YB Int’l L (1995) 479]. We thank Mr. Gordon for contributing the Ode to EJIL, and hope its appearance here will reawaken interest in the poem and its author.