International Legal Profession

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A Brechtian Way of Mooting

This year, international legal education reached a (cinematic) milestone. The documentary film African Moot (Shameela Seedat, African Moot, 2022) was showcased at the international documentary festival HotDoc and entered several other film festivals across the world. The film follows a group of law students who take part in the annual African Human Rights Moot Competition. The audience gets to know their dreams and ideals, but also their desire to shine and win the competition. The film familiarizes a broader audience with mooting practices no doubt well known to readers of this blog: the selection of students, the training and preparation, the fun and struggles, the tensions within teams, the excitement when the competition starts, the sense of victory, disappointment or frustration about the scores awarded by judges.

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Self-Constitution of Mankind without Constitutional Constructivism?

Philip Allott’s recent essay on EJIL: Talk! criticized power-oriented conceptions of ‘international law among sovereign states’ that privilege the self-interests of governments and contribute to the ‘collapse of global government’. His description of international relations as ‘a lawless world’ and ‘a legal wasteland in which those involved in events and transactions can pick and choose among competing…

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Still Losing: A Short History of Women in Elections (and By-Elections) for the UN International Law Commission

On 12 November 2021, the UN General Assembly held the sixteenth regular election for the International Law Commission (ILC). As the Assembly extended the mandate of the current members until the end of 2022, in response to the exceptional situation created by the pandemic, the newcomers, numbering 18, will have over a…

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Closing the Gaps: Pre-Deployment Role of the Military Legal Adviser

As US involvement in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan comes to an end after twenty years, it is worth taking stock of how things stand in relation to the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC). This law serves dual purposes: military necessity (which permits measures which are necessary to fulfil a legitimate military purpose provided they are…

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Editorial – A Modest Proposal on Zoom Teaching

No preliminaries are necessary here. One result of Covid-19 has been a shift to online teaching by Zoom (or similar platforms). In some law faculties all teaching is online. In most faculties most teaching is online with some hybrid teaching, and in a few (privileged) places in-person teaching remains viable. It is also a commonplace that…

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