In This Issue – Reviews

This issue includes four book reviews that address, from different perspectives, varied experiences and expertise, and distinct methods, the ways in which international law can both limit state violence and violations of human dignity, but also, in some respects, endorse or reproduce the dynamics that enable practices of violence and oppression of human dignity.

Françoise Tulkens reviews Linos-Alexandre Sicilianos’ La dimension humaine du droit international (2024). The book is based on Sicilianos’ 2023 General Course at The Hague Academy of International Law. Written from the vantage point of a professor and former president of the European Court of Human Rights, Sicilianos explores the complex interactions between international human rights law and general international law. Tulkens’ review describes how the book conveys Sicilianos’ rich experience of more than three decades of practice, analysis and commentary on both international human rights and international law. She praises the book’s contribution and celebrates its meticulous construction – like a Greek temple – characterized by harmony, precision, elegance and balance.

Our second book review is similarly concerned with human rights but with a very different approach. Lena Holzer’s review of Sex, Gender and International Human Rights Law: Contesting Binaries (2023) by Giovanna Gilleri analyses the role of international human rights law in categorizing individuals’ sexes and genders in male domination or female oppression. More specifically, Gilleri critically analyses the vocabulary choices of international human rights in the context of intersex children and sadomasochism. Holzer discusses the theoretical contribution of Gilleri’s application of feminist, queer, and psychoanalytical perspectives to the analysis of international human rights. Her review offers a favourable critique on Gilleri’s deconstruction of the language of human rights while questioning the possible limitations of her approach.

At a time when comments abound on what constitutes a state and the role that international law plays in this regard, the open-access book by Julia Miklasova, Secession in International Law with a Special Reference to the Post-Soviet Space (2024) shows that international law is far from remaining neutral in such instances. Florian Couveinhes-Matsumoto highlights the expertise and originality of this book, which is richly informed by a detailed analysis of state practice developed in relation to Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, Kherson and Zaporizhzia Regions, Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh and Transnistria. While he expresses a more critical opinion on two points, he also ‘underscores the depth of her thinking’ and concludes that this ‘establishes her book as a must-read for everyone interested in secession in international law’.

Finally, Carl Landauer’s review of Lauren Benton’s book, They Called it Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence (2024) discusses her historical study of small wars – an expression borrowed from Callwell in 1899 and their overlooked significance in consolidating Western empires from the 15th to the 20th centuries. Landauer’s review explores Benton’s analysis of imperial violence ‘at the margins’ and how such violence shaped categories of war and peace that would serve the interests of empires in other contexts.  Landauer situates the book within the broader context of Benton’s historical scholarship and denotes its contribution to our understanding of how atrocities and attempts to justify and legitimize them contributed to the historical sustainability of empires.