Study of International Law

The times has come to do something about the scourge of war. It is shocking that, in the twenty-first century, the interacting of the minds of two men could cause a world war affecting all human beings everywhere. Despite the notoriously impulsive nature of their personalities, much analysed by commentators, these two men could have known…

My latest article, ‘Statehood and International Organization: Rethinking Their Conceptual Relationship with Reference to Customary International Law’, addresses whether, how, and to what extent, doctrinal propositions that we accept about the legal personality of states can be extended to international organizations. I argue that our theories would make much more sense if we let go of the…

In the wake of relentless violence being live-streamed onto our phones for the last two years, the international legal community has been confronted with questions about the relevance and legitimacy of international law: ‘Is international law dead?’ ‘Is it in crisis?’ ‘What is it like to teach international law in times like…

There is now a whole genre of scholarship in which international lawyers ruminate on the disastrous state of the world – Philippa Webb and Lydia Kim recently did a good survey of it here on the blog. Driven partly by a fear of missing out on all the angst, and partly by the need for self-therapy,…