International Court of Justice

For almost eighty years, United Nations Member States have behaved as if a mandate required them to maintain regional continuity in elections to the International Court of Justice. Yet, the Court's Statute contains no such rule. Article 9 requires only that the Court, taken as a whole, represent “the principal legal systems and civilizations of the world”;…

The last fortnight has seen commentators focus primarily on conflict, climate, and immigration. A mini-symposium has ranged over a number of legal questions raised by a potential Russia-Ukraine peace treaty: from  VCLT rules on treaty validity and security guarantees, to free economic zones and the question of the reconstruction of Ukraine through seized assets of the Russian Central…

Introduction The first eighteen months of the second Trump administration have witnessed a sustained assault on scientific infrastructures enabling understanding of anthropogenic climate change. This has taken the form of cuts to national science agencies; freezes and dramatic reductions in grants to universities; and attempts to…

A month ago, the United Nations General Assembly took a position significantly less ambiguous than the ICJ on a question of existential importance to island States threatened by climate-induced sea-level rise. Referring to the Climate Change Advisory Opinion, it recalls that the Court “found that, once a State is established, the disappearance of one of its constituent elements…