Study of International Law

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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 lease of life in the brinkmanship between China and the West: should Taiwan be recognized as a State in terms of international law? In making the case for Taiwan’s Statehood, it is argued that Taiwan has already satisfied all the four objective criteria for Statehood under the Montevideo Convention and achieved the requirement of independence. As Taiwan looks like a State, acts like a State, and speaks like a State, it must be a State and should be recognized as such. This duck test for Taiwan’s putative Statehood is complemented by a theory of democratic Statehood: through continuous democratic elections since its transition from autocracy to democracy in the 1990s,…

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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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Women, Life, Freedom: Have international lawyers run out of words?

October 10, 2022

We have entered the fourth week into the Iranian protests (under the moto of “women, life, freedom” ) sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman from Iranian Kurdistan, following her arrest by the Iranian morality police for allegedly breaching the veiling laws. Since then, Amnesty International has reported that the government’s ultra-violent response…

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Jurisdictional Hierarchies between Form and Fact: A Rejoinder to Roger O’Keefe

October 3, 2022

To what extent is the law of jurisdiction implicated in (hierarchical) structures of global governance? My article, ‘Jurisdiction Unbound: (Extra)territorial Regulation as Global Governance‘, pursues this question and traces how the current law of jurisdiction, quite in contrast with the often territorial, sovereignty-based imagery surrounding it, is highly permissive, especially when it comes to extraterritorial business regulation.

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Piercing the State’s Corporate Veil: Using Private Actors to Enforce International Norms

March 17, 2022

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a tragedy of statehood: a state no longer recognises its neighbour’s right to exist. Yet, the wider resistance to this invasion has highlighted the role of private individuals and corporations in enforcing fundamental international law norms. The involvement of the private sector has helped to globalise the conflict. Individuals and companies have come…

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