Principle of Non-Intervention

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International Law as a Dual State or How Not to Cope with Failure

September 19, 2025

One day in May 1933, Ernst Fraenkel, a German labor lawyer, was formally notified that, being Jewish, he was prohibited from representing clients before the courts of the Third Reich. As a veteran of the First World War, he was ultimately able to obtain an exemption and practice law in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1938. It is this close-up experience with the legal architecture of the Nazi regime that enabled him to write what is today described as “one of the most erudite books on dictatorship even written” – The Dual State. A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship (Jens Meierhenrich in The Dual State. A Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship, OUP, 2017, at xxvii). Relatively simple to state, Fraenkel’s argument in The Dual State is devastatingly unsettling. Reduced to its essence, the argument consists in dividing National-Socialist Germany into two states: the “Normative State”, described as an administrative body endowed with elaborate powers for safeguarding the legal order as expressed in statutes, decisions of the courts, and activities…

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Trump’s “Tarifaço” Against Brazil: a Breach of the Non-Intervention Rule

July 18, 2025

On 9th of July 2025, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, sent a letter to the Brazilian President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva communicating that the US will impose a 50% tariff over Brazilian imports starting August 1st. The letter was released in Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, and came as a relative surprise…

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A customary rule against unilateral economic sanctions of the nature of the Helms-Burton Act? Regarding another (potential) vote in the United Nations General Assembly against the “bloqueo”

October 21, 2024

Introduction Presumably, in November 2024, within the framework of the General Assembly session, Cuba will once again submit a resolution for a vote emphasising the “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial, and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba”. This is an opportune moment to analyse whether the overwhelming support of the…

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Mexico and Ecuador at the ICJ: A Plea for Taking the Latin American Experience Seriously

May 1, 2024

On 5 April 2024, Ecuadorian special operation agents broke into the Mexican Embassy in Quito, Ecuador. Security footage released by Mexico captures the moment the agents forcefully subdued Deputy Chief of Mission Roberto Canseco Martínez as he attempted to prevent their entry. During the raid, the agents apprehended Jorge David Glas Espinel, the former Vice-President…

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