Two Weeks in Review, 2 – 15 August 2021

EJIL News

The latest issue of the European Journal of International Law will be published next week and it includes a symposium on the Use of Force and Human Rights. Over the coming days, we will have a series of editorial posts by Joseph Weiler and Sarah Nouwen, Editors-in-Chief of EJIL, plus others. These posts will appear in the Editorial of the new issue. You can view the table of contents for the next issue online here. 

The first of those editorials is now published on this blog and it has already sparked much debate on social media. In his post, Joseph Weiler addresses whether we should be ‘cancelling Carl Schmitt‘ because of his Nazi past and ideology. 

Posts

Lachezar Yanev writes about a pressing issue for the work of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers: whether or not the Chambers can apply customary international law. Some accused have argued that it would be unconstitutional to directly apply customary international law in Kosovo’s legal order without a domestic statutory provision incorporating this source of law. Yanev assesses the Decision on Motions Challenging the Jurisdiction of the Specialist Chambers which found that the legislator was only transposing into domestic law crimes that were already part of the legal order and were binding on individuals at the time of the alleged commission.

Symposium: The ILC Articles at 20

In a well curated and popular symposium, Federica Paddeu and Christian Tams ‘celebrate’ the ILC Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts after 20 years. There are 11 insightful posts for you to catch up on. An excerpt from the symposium’s introductory post offers a good overview of these contributions:

We begin with two personal reflections by ILC members. The first, by Bruno Simma, recounts his experience of working on this project as a member of the ILC during the second reading of the Articles – ‘a generalist’s dream’ for the human rights-minded international lawyer. The second one, by Patrícia Galvao Teles, the current chair of the ILC’s drafting Committee, reflects on the impact that the ILC’s work on the Articles, and its approach to the final status of this project, has had on the ILC’s current projects and its current approach to the topics it selects for consideration.

The symposium then addresses two main aspects of the Articles. First, the key choices that informed the ILC’s work on the Articles. The ILC had to make some foundational choices in its work on the law of State responsibility. Many of these were explored in symposia published during the final stages, and at the time of completion, of the Articles by the ILC (in EJIL and AJIL). Our contributors will reflect on the choices made: are they still relevant or justifiable today, and will they serve us well for the next few decades? Posts by Fernando Bordin, Alex Mills, Santiago Villalpando, and Katja Creutz, explore issues involving the form of the Articles, the public/private divide, the success of the inclusion of multilateral obligations in the Articles, and the tension between the general and the special in light of Article 55 on lex specialis.

…Second, the symposium addresses the ‘life’ of the Articles in specific fields of international law. Posts by Helen Duffy, Kubo Macak, Gabriel Bottini, Jan Yves Remy, and Ginevra Le Moli will address how the Articles are used (or are not used) in, respectively, human rights law, humanitarian law, investment law, trade law, and environmental law.

A full list of all the contributions to this symposium:

• Introduction, by Federica Paddeu and Christian Tams
• The ILC’s work on State responsibility: personal reflections, by Bruno Simma
• The impact and influence of the Articles on State Responsibility on the work of the International Law Commission and beyond, by Patrícia Galvão Teles
• Still Going Strong: Twenty Years of the Articles on State Responsibility’s ‘Paradoxical’ Relationship between Form and Authority, by Fernando Lusa Bordin
• Protecting Community Interests: Solidarity Measures within the State Responsibility Regime?, by Santiago Villalpando
• State Responsibility and Privatisation: Accommodating Private Conduct in a Public Framework, by Alex Mills
• The Tenacity of the Articles on State Responsibility as a General and Residual Framework: An Appraisal, by Katja Creutz
• Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts and Human Rights Practice, by Helen Duffy
• Strengthening the rule of law in time of war: An IHL perspective on the present and future of the Articles on State Responsibility, by Kubo Mačák
• The Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts and the making of international investment law, by Gabriel Bottini
• The Application of the Articles on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts in the WTO Regime, by Jan Yves Remy
• State Responsibility and the Global Environmental Crisis, by Ginevra Le Moli
• Dithering, Trickling Down, and Encoding: Concluding Thoughts on the ‘ILC Articles at 20’ Symposium, by Federica Paddeu and Christian Tams

Announcements and Events

All recent Events and Announcements can be found here.

The European Journal of International Law has new advance articles and advance reviews available to read online.