Two Weeks in Review

‘We like lists, because we don’t want to die.’ At least according to Umberto Eco. He had in mind our love of all things limitless when confronted with our own very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. But it applies equally to editorial introductions. The last two weeks have ranged wider than sensible categorisation can enclose—leaving the list as the…

The last fortnight has seen commentators focus primarily on conflict, climate, and immigration. A mini-symposium has ranged over a number of legal questions raised by a potential Russia-Ukraine peace treaty: from  VCLT rules on treaty validity and security guarantees, to free economic zones and the question of the reconstruction of Ukraine through seized assets of the Russian Central…

“The test of a first-rate intelligence,” according to F. Scott Fitzgerald, “is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” For international lawyers in these times of the Board of Peace and the Gaza Riviera, this kind of functional cognitive dissonance has become less a…

The last two weeks have primarily grappled with the implications of the Chişinău Declaration, along with Israel’s continued policies concerning occupied Palestine: the establishment of ad hod military courts and its blockade of the Sumud Flotilla. Criminal proceedings in Iranian courts around the Minab school bombing raise questions about the prosecution of war crimes in the absence of…