In this Issue: Vol. 21/4 [EJIL Editorial]

We begin this fourth and final issue of EJIL’s Volume 21 with a mini-symposium on sovereign immunity, which includes two papers. The first, by Dapo Akande and Sangeeta Shah, distinguishes the various categories of immunities conferred under international law. The second paper by Jasper Finke examines competing conceptions of immunity before arguing that it is best understood as a binding principle. It is our hope that these papers will spark new discussions on this fundamental topic of international law.

Four articles follow our mini-symposium. The first is a piece by Annie Bird on Third State Responsibility for human rights violations, a piece which we find follows well from our short symposium. Next we publish a detailed investigation into the role of atypical acts in EU external trade and intellectual property policy. This piece by Henning Grosse Ruse-Khan, Thomas Jaeger and Robert Kordic is sure to be a useful contribution for both practitioners and theorists working in this particular field. Weaving once again into topics raised by our mini-symposium authors, we publish a piece by Sarah M. H. Nouwen and Wouter G. Werner, which focuses on the explicitly political effects that the jurisprudence of the International Criminal Court is having in Uganda and the Sudan. The authors offer an innovative lens, examining the jurisprudence and also its use by political actors through the friend-enemy distinction. Last, we believe our readers will enjoy the piece by Mehrdad Payandeh on the concept of international law in the jurisprudence of H. L. A. Hart

In our occasional series, Critical Review on International Jurisprudence we publish a piece by Sujitha Subramanian which looks at the EU Microsoft decision.

In early 2008 we published an article by Laurence Helfer entitled, ‘Redesigning the European Court of Human Rights: Embeddedness as a Deep Structural Principle of the European Human Rights Regime’.  In this issue, we continue this important conversation concerning the role of the European Court of Human Rights with a fresh perspective by authors Helen Keller, Andreas Fischer and Daniela Kühne, ‘Debating the Future of the European Court of Human Rights after the Interlaken Conference: Two Innovative Proposals’, published under our Critical Review of International Governance rubric.

In this iteration of the series, we also include an article by Wenhua Shan and Sheng Zhang which analyses the Lisbon Treaty, now just over one year old, in order to assess its implications for the international investment treaty practice of the Union and its Member States.

You will find two review essays in this issue: in his essay, Thomas Kleinlein reviews two significant works on constitutionalism beyond the state: Petra Dobner and Martin Loughlin (eds), The Twilight of Constitutionalism? and Jan Klabbers, Anne Peters and Geir Ulfstein, The Constitutionalization of International Law. The second essay, by Kirsten Sellars, entitled ‘Imperfect Justice at Nuremberg and Tokyo’, reviews three books: Guénaël Mettraux (ed). Perspectives on the Nuremberg Trial; Neil Boister and Robert Cryer, The Tokyo International Military Tribunal – A Reappraisal and Yuma Totani, The Tokyo War Crimes Trial: The Pursuit of Justice in the Wake of World War II.

            On the Last Page we publish the poem October by Old Masters by Leslie Williams.