Study of International Law

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Are sovereignty referendums but a tool to legitimize territorial claims of the powerful?

December 1, 2022

This is the impression one could be left with in the wake of the popular votes organized by Russia in the occupied Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia. This impression might be reinforced by the fact that, as recently shown by Sze Hong Lam on these pages, these were by far not the first referendums to be (mis)used to justify the reallocation of sovereignty. Invocations of popular self-determination to legitimize annexations of territories can be traced back to the time of the French Revolution. The wider picture Considering that more than 600 referendums on sovereignty have been held across the world, it can, however, hardly come as a surprise that some of them should have been manipulated by those with the power to do so. As with any other instrument, one cannot do justice to the sovereignty referendum by focusing exclusively on its misuses. That voters are forced at gunpoint to cast their ballot is the exception, not the rule. Instead of Donetsk, Kherson,…

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Project 2100—Is the International Legal Order Fit for Purpose?

November 29, 2022

It is in the darkest moments that we must ask the hardest questions and peer through the gloom in an attempt to see the light. The events to the east of us raise stark questions—about the current world order; about the place and effectiveness of the United Nations; about what the U.S. long-term assessment of global…

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Facts, intuitions and uncertainties in the jus ad bellum

November 4, 2022

Lawyers disagree about international law governing the resort to force. That much is obvious and evident in numerous posts on this and other sites and in the extensive literature studying controversies in the jus ad bellum. Disagreements between lawyers representing states are easy to attribute to their clients’ clashing interests and ideologies, rather…

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Democracy and the (Non)Statehood of Taiwan

November 3, 2022

Introduction Much ink has been spilled on Taiwan’s legal status since the Formosa Question first arose in the 1950s. Yet, after Taiwan gradually emerged as a free democracy through a series of constitutional reforms following the martial-law rule’s end in 1987, the question of Taiwan’s status in international law has been lent a new…

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A Brechtian Way of Mooting

October 24, 2022

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…

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