December 30, 2017

Our Most Read Posts of 2017

Written by Dapo Akande

As 2017 comes to an end we would like to thank our readers for coming back to us time and again over the course of the year. This year we have had more readers than in any previous year and more page views.

I would like to welcome Gail Lythgoe to our editorial team. Gail joins us as Associate Editor with particular responsibility for managing our social media presence. She is currently a PhD Candidate at the University of Glasgow and Managing Editor of Oxford International Organizations. Hopefully, readers have already noticed a difference in our activity on Twitter and Facebook.

To conclude 2017, I set out below our 20 most read posts of the year. We strive to cover a very wide range of international law issues on this blog, but of course it is up to readers to decide on which issues resonate more with them at particular moments. As is often the case, many of those most read pieces are those which offer timely (and may I add insightful) commentary on the big issues of the day raising questions of international law. The US missile strikes in Syria in April, Catalonia’s bid for independence and some of the issues relating to Brexit are leading examples this year. However, the list of most read pieces this year include, one by Douglas Guilfoyle and another by Marko from several years ago. Those two pieces feature as the most read post and the third most read post since the blog was established 9 years ago (with this piece being the second most read post).

Two other remarkable pieces in our top 20 for 2017 are the speeches by the UK Attorney General and another by the Australian Attorney-General setting out the understanding of those states on the law relating to self-defence and in particular, their views on issues relating to self defence in anticipation of armed attacks. We are grateful to the Attorneys General for choosing EJIL:Talk! as a forum for dissemination of the official position of their governments.

The top 20 posts are here in reverse order with the top 10 below the fold. Happy New Year to all of you for 2018!

20) Jure Vidmar, Catalonia: The Way Forward is Comparative Constitutional Rather than International Legal Argument (Oct. 2017)

19) Dapo Akande, The ICC Assembly of States Parties Prepares to Activate the ICC’s Jurisdiction over the Crime of Aggression: But Who Will be Covered by that Jurisdiction? (June 2017)

18) Marko Milanovic, Self-Defense and Non-State Actors: Indeterminacy and the Jus ad Bellum (Feb. 2010)

17) Marko Milanovic, European Court Decides Al-Skeini and Al-Jedda (July 2011)

16) Monica Hakimi, US Strikes against Syria and the Implications for the Jus ad Bellum (April 2017)

15) Monica Hakimi, North Korea and the Law on Anticipatory Self-Defense (Mar. 2017)

14) Dan Joyner, Legal Bindingness of Security Council Resolutions Generally, and Resolution 2334 on the Israeli Settlements in Particular (Jan. 2017)

13) Senator George Brandis QC (Attorney-General of Australia), The Right of Self-Defence Against Imminent Armed Attack In International Law, (May 2017)

12) Dapo Akande, ICJ Elections 2017: UN General Assembly and Security Council Elect Four Judges to the ICJ But fail to Agree on a Fifth, yet again! + Trivia Question (Nov. 2017)

11) Jeremy Wright QC MP (Attorney General of the UK), The Modern Law of Self-Defence (Jan. 2017)

10) Iryna Marchuk, Ukraine Takes Russia to the International Court of Justice: Will It Work? (Jan. 2017)