Conference: SLADI/LASIL 7th Biennial Conference

The Sociedad Latinoamericana de Derecho Internacional/Latin American Society of International Law will hold its seventh biennial conference on July 31-August 2, 2025, at the Universidad de la República, in Montevideo. The theme is: “América Latina en un mundo en vertiginosa transformación/América Latina em um mundo em vertiginosa transformação/Latin America in a Rapidly Changing World.” The program is here.

New Additions to the UN Audiovisual Library of International Law

The Codification Division of the UN Office of Legal Affairs recently added the following materials to the UN Audiovisual Library of International Law: lectures in English and French on “The Role of the Office of Public Counsel for Victims in the Framework of the Rome Stature of the International Criminal Court” by Paolina Massidda; lectures in English and French on “The Prevention Principle in International Environmental Law” by Leslie-Anne Duvic-Paoli; and a lecture in English on “Joint Interpretative Agreements in International Law” by Fuad Zarbiyev.

The Audiovisual Library of International Law is also available as an audio podcast on Apple, SoundCloud, and other platforms.

Call for Papers: Invisible Actors in the Making of International Law (1750-2000) (Junior Researchers)

A call for papers for junior researchers has been issued for a conference on "Invisible Actors in the Making of International Law (1750-2000)," to be held Novemeber 27-28, 2025, in Paris. The call is here.

New Issue: Nordic Journal of International Law

The latest issue of the Nordic Journal of International Law (Vol. 94, no. 2, 2025) is out. Contents include:

• Patient Mpunga-Biayi, The Investigative Power of the United Nations Security Council
• James Gerard Devaney, Making Sense of Transcendental Nonsense: A Functional Reframing of the Law of State Succession
• Øyvind Ravna, Indigenous Cultural Rights, the Green Transition, and the Right to a Healthy Environment
• Johan Nikolaj Lausen & Johanna Sophie Buerkert, Fragmentation Revisited: A Critical Analysis of the Effects of Introducing the BBNJ Agreement into the Ocean Governance Landscape

New Issue: Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Institutions

The latest issue of Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Institutions (Vol. 31, no. 2, 2025) is out. Contents include:

• Nicholas G. Studzinski, Randolph Kent, & David Korowicz, Towards the Governance of Global Systemic Risk: Reforming the Summit of the Future
• Daniele Archibugi, Marco Cellini, & Azzurra Malgieri, The Reform of the UN Security Council: What Are the Issues?
• Tuğba Bayar & Murat Bayar, Unilateral Withdrawals from Multilateral International Treaties, 1945–2024
• Antoine de Bengy Puyvallée, Quasi-public Partnerships: Multistakeholder Governance in an International Organization
• Antonia Zervaki, The Cultural Dimension of Sustaining Peace: What Role for UN Peace Operations?

New Issue: Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy

The latest issue of the Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy (Vol. 28, no. 1, 2025) is out. Contents include:

• Suchita Awasthi, Aditi Patial & Ritesh Kumar, Wetland Jurisprudence in India—A Critical Appraisal
• Cuong Viet Do, Tan Ngoc Pham & Vuong Minh Vu, IMO Guidelines to Combat Wildlife Smuggling on Ships: An Analytical Perspective from Vietnam
• Noga Shanee, Amnon Keren, Evelyn D. Anca, Tamar Fredman, Omer Polansky & Yael Cohen Paran, The Dynamics of Online Wildlife Trade, Crime and Law Enforcement in Israel
• Latika Choudhary, Udit Raj Sharma & Hardik Daga, ‘Ruff’ Justice: Analysing the Right to Feed Stray Dogs in Lieu of Constitutional Provisions and Judicial Precedents in India

New Issue: Cambridge International Law Journal

The latest issue of the Cambridge International Law Journal (Vol. 14, no. 1, 2025) is out. Contents include:

• Sharifah Sekalala, Ending pandemics within the shadow of trade: reconciling equity in global health with coloniality *
• Marjun Parcasio, A normative account of safety in the human right to a healthy environment
• Anna Moskal & Marcella Brandao Flores da Cunha, Is the Digital Markets Act a global standard for ex ante digital regulation? Insights from Brazil, India and Japan
• Special Section: Private Rights and Public Autonomy in a Fragmented World
• Thomas Ackermann & Henning Grosse Ruse-Khan, Private rights and public autonomy in a fragmented world: an introduction
• Francisco Beneke & Shazana Eliza Rohr, Transnational competition law rules: a political economy perspective *
• Eva Fischer & Markus W Gehring, Private rights and public autonomy in sustainable competition law and EU Green Deal measures
• Emily Hancox & Sonja Heitzer, It’s a complex world: can courts help? Judicial review and complexity in Germany, the EU and the US
• Quentin B Schäfer & Klaus Wiedemann, Article 5(2) of the Digital Markets Act and the ‘pay-or-consent’ business model at the intersection of public and private autonomy*

New Issue: International Criminal Law Review

The latest issue of the International Criminal Law Review (Vol. 25, nos. 2-3, 2025) is out. Contents include:

• Special Issue: Corruption and International Criminal Law
• Anja Matwijkiw, Bronik Matwijkiw, Sunčana Roksandić, & Marc Engelhart, Crime and Corruption. Serious Economic Crimes and International Criminal Law—Shaping a New Era of International Law and Justice
• Ugljesa Ugi Zvekic, For an Effective Global Anti-Crime Governance: untoc and uncac Consolidated
• Héctor Olasolo, Pablo Galain Palermo, & R.J. Blaise Maclean, The Case for Considering Corruption as a Central Element of Governance: Institutional and Organizational Corruption and Complex Corruption Networks
• Sunčana Roksandić & Marc Engelhart, Environmental Corruption: Fighting Two Evils through International Criminal Law Alongside Introducing a Special Protocol to UNCAC and UNTOC
• Anja Matwijkiw, Corruption: From International Law and Ethics to Realpolitik and Amoralism: Part 1: Perspectives on the Corruption Discourse
• Bronik Matwijkiw, Corruption: From International Law and Ethics to Realpolitik and Amoralism: Part 2: The Macro Approach
• s Andy Aydın-Aitchison, Bringing Together the Criminologies of Atrocity and Serious Economic Crimes
• Yuliya Zabyelina, Considerations of (Non)-Application of Immunity of State Officials from Foreign Jurisdiction in Cases of International and Transnational Crimes
• Annika van Baar, Theorizing and Understanding Corporate Involvement in Atrocity Crimes
• Ivana Jelić & Julia Jungfleisch, Clearing Muddied Waters: The Relationship Between the Rule of Law and the Fight against Corruption in the Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights
• Yudi Kristiana & Benny Hutahayan, Judicial Corruption in the Post-Reform Era: Assessing the Effectiveness of Legal Reforms in Indonesia
• Anna Oriolo, The Contribution of the European Court of Human Rights to the Construction of a Corruption-Free Society
• Sope Williams, Extricating Sexual Corruption from the Shadow of Anti-Corruption Law: The Imperative for a New Approach
• Nandor Knust, ‘ECO-COM-B: Environmental Crimes’—Steps Towards a More Holistic System of Environmental Crime Control

Perez-Leon-Acevedo: Rethinking Attribution Standards for State Responsibility Concerning Mass Atrocities

Juan Pablo Perez-Leon-Acevedo (Univ. of Oxford) has published Rethinking Attribution Standards for State Responsibility Concerning Mass Atrocities (San Diego International Law Journal, Vol. 26, no. 2, 2025). Here's the abstract:

Attribution of mass atrocities to states remains a central and contested issue in international law, particularly when such acts are carried out by non-state actors or through proxy forces. This Article analyzes how states may incur responsibility for mass atrocities by examining the legal standards developed in the Articles on the Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts (ARSIWA) and the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice (I.C.J.). Special attention is given to developments following the adoption of ARSIWA, including the evolving relationship between Russia and the Wagner Group, to assess how legal principles apply in modern conflict settings. While the ARSIWA framework remains applicable, the nature of mass atrocities presents unique doctrinal and evidentiary challenges, particularly when foreign states exert control over militarized private actors.

Call for Session Ideas: 2026 ASIL Annual Meeting

The American Society of International Law has issued a call for session ideas for its 120th Annual Meeting, which will take place April 22-25, 2026, in Washington, DC. The conference theme is: "Advancing and Defending the Rule of Law." The deadline is July 28, 2025. The call is here.

Call for Papers: International Humanitarian Law in Times of Decline of the Rule of Law

A call for papers has been issued for the Twentieth Annual Minerva Conference on Internaitonal Humanitarian Law, to take place November 17-18, 2025, in Jerusalem. The topic is: "International Humanitarian Law in Times of Decline of the Rule of Law." The call is here. The deadline is June 22, 2025.

New Issue: Netherlands International Law Review

The latest issue of the Netherlands International Law Review (Vol. 72, no. 1, April 2025) is out. Contents include:

• Ignacio de la Rasilla, Building Up Inclusiveness for Women in the History of International Law?
• Sarah Thin, Playing Fast and Loose with Article 31(3)(c) VCLT: Lessons on Systemic Integration from the ITLOS Climate Change Opinion
• Nikolaos Gaitenidis, The Legal Landscape of Memory: Crafting Historical Narratives Through Law and Its Ramifications
• Jan Andrzej Karpiuk, Stretching the Limits of Inviolability: The Re-examination of the Inviolability of Diplomatic Premises in the Light of the Right to Life

Symposium: L’Autorité internationale des fonds marins : enjeux et persepctives

On June 19-20, 2025, the faculté de droit et de science politique de Rennes will host a symposium on "L’Autorité internationale des fonds marins : enjeux et persepctives," in Rennes. Details are here.

Marceau & Gött: International Organization Initiatives: How and Why Organizations Adapt and Change

Gabrielle Marceau (Univ. of Geneva - Law) & Henner Gött (German Federal Chancellery) have published International Organization Initiatives: How and Why Organizations Adapt and Change (Oxford Univ. Press 2025). The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:

How do adaptations and changes in international organizations (IOs) come about? How do IOs respond to crises and unforeseen needs of their members? What role do the secretariats and their heads play in doing so? This volume describes how IOs and their secretariats and executive heads launch and implement innovative activities—initiatives—and adapt to respond to crises, members’ demands, internal impulses, or interactions with the outside world. It brings together distinguished scholars and experienced practitioners of IOs to showcase and investigate IOs’ adaptive capacity, their achievements, and limitations. Through case studies and conceptual frameworks, the book explores a largely uncharted world of IO evolution in which international secretariats contribute importantly to adapting the role of IOs. The volume brings to light the mechanisms used by IOs to adapt to what were, on each occasion, new challenges to their efforts to assist and respond to unprecedented needs of members faced with contemporary realities.

Roundtable: International Law in the Quest for Truth on the Battlefield

On July 4, 2025, a roundtable on “International Law in the Quest for Truth on the Battlefield” will take place at the University of Milan. Participation is both in person and online. Details are here.

Shereshevsky: Complementarity (Un)Fairness: Powerful States and their Ability to Avoid ICC Proceedings by Conducting Domestic Investigations

Yahli Shereshevsky (Univ. of Haifa - Law) has posted Complementarity (Un)Fairness: Powerful States and their Ability to Avoid ICC Proceedings by Conducting Domestic Investigations (Journal of International Criminal Justice, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Power has long shaped discussions in international criminal law, with many contending that powerful states evade accountability while less powerful states face disproportionate scrutiny. Although the International Criminal Court (ICC) has recently expanded its reach — investigating powerful states such as the United States and issuing arrest warrants against high-ranking officials from Russia and Israel — it has yet to prosecute anyone from a powerful state. This article provides a nuanced analysis of power, distinguishing between superpowers and other powerful states. It examines how the principle of complementarity enables the latter group, exemplified by the Iraq/UK case, to avoid ICC proceedings through informational gaps and procedural deference, despite delivering little substantive accountability. This article evaluates two alternative solutions: the ICC’s approach in the recent arrest warrants against Israeli officials and a proposed shift in the burden of proof. It argues that the latter offers a more effective balance between accountability and incentives for domestic investigations.

Charlotin & Ridi: GenAI as an International Lawyer: A Case Study with the Jessup International Law Moot Court

Damien Charlotin (HEC) & Niccolò Ridi (King’s College London) have posted GenAI as an International Lawyer: A Case Study with the Jessup International Law Moot Court. Here's the abstract:

This paper investigates the capacity of Generative Artificial Intelligence, specifically Large Language Models, to craft compelling international legal arguments. We tested the performance of two popular models, Gemini 2.0 and GPT4o, in the Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition, generating ten complete written memorials with minimal human intervention. With the organisers' blessing, these AI-generated memorials were anonymously added to the pool of submissions and evaluated by judges, who remained unaware of their origins, providing a unique benchmark against humanproduced work. Our results demonstrate that LLM-generated memorials consistently achieve average to superior scores, with some submissions receiving exceptional praise and near-perfect ratings. However, a detailed analysis of judges' qualitative feedback reveals persistent shortcomings of LLMs, notably factual inaccuracies, hallucinated citations, and superficial legal analysis. This study systematically identifies the current strengths and limitations of GenAI in legal argumentation, and critically informs best practices in prompt engineering, human-AI collaboration strategies, and emerging regulatory policies for legal education and practice.

European Union Court of Justice Profiles

Katerina Linos (Univ. of California, Berkeley - Law) and Mark Pollack (Temple Univ. - Political Science and Law) have launched a unique CJEU Profiles interview series featuring judges and advocates general serving at the Court of Justice of the European Union, as a special feature on Linos’s Borderlines podcast series. As part of their ongoing project to profile the Court and its members, Linos and Pollack have interviewed 25 sitting judges and advocates general at the Court of Justice, as well as the Registrar and the President of the General Court, with each interview exploring a range of issues including each member’s background and judicial philosophy, experiences on the Court, and discussion of some of their most legally and politically significant opinions and judgments. At this writing, 10 interviews have dropped, with additional episodes scheduled in the coming weeks and months. For an introduction to the series and links to the interviews please visit here or follow the Borderlines podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

New Issue: The Law and Practice of International Courts and Tribunals

The latest issue of The Law and Practice of International Courts and Tribunals (Vol. 24, no. 1, 2025) is out. Contents include:

• Face à Face: Interview with Christine Van den Wyngaert
• International Judicial Function Symposium
• Laurence Boisson de Chazournes, Lorenzo Palestini, Guillaume Guez Maillard, & Aditya Laddha, Introduction: the International Judicial Function under Pressure
• Yusra Suedi, Advisory Jurisdiction and Consent: the Thin Line between Advisory and Contentious Proceedings
• Christian Vidal-León, The Justification for Reasoning from Precedent in International Adjudication
• Marco Dimetto, Judicial Propriety and Mandate: Straying into Non-Essentials and Resolving the Dispute
• Johannes Hendrik Fahner, Standards of Appellate Review in International Dispute Settlement: Current Use and Conceptual Challenges
• Juliana Valle Pereira Guerra, Who Holds the Final Word? Navigating the Hidden Power Struggle between Authentic Interpreters and Judicial Authorities in International Treaty Law

Modirzadeh: “Violent, Vicious, and Fast”: LSCO Lawyering and the Transformation of American IHL

Naz K. Modirzadeh (Harvard Univ. - Law) has posted “Violent, Vicious, and Fast”: LSCO Lawyering and the Transformation of American IHL (Harvard National Security Journal, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

This article examines a phenomenon unfolding within the United States’ military legal establishment: an effort by a segment of military lawyers to define how the law of armed conflict (LOAC) applies to the wars they anticipate fighting in the future. I refer to this effort as LSCO lawyering: the development, advancement, and institutionalization of a vision of LOAC tailored to large-scale combat operations (LSCOs), understood here as multi-domain warfare against a peer adversary such as China. Through extensive engagement with military writings and conversations with current and former armed-forces legal advisers from the United States and allied or partner forces, I trace how LSCO lawyering reflects a diagnosis of crisis — a perceived mismatch between prevailing legal expectations and the operational realities of high-intensity war — and a response that aims not to dismantle LOAC but to restore it on terms seen as credible under conditions of existential conflict.

At the heart of this project lies a reconfiguration of what I call American IHL: the United States’ distinctive assemblage of interpretations, practices, normative commitments, and exceptions that shape its approach to LOAC. While LSCO lawyering is often framed as a modest clarification of existing law, I suggest that it functions as something more ambitious — a legal and institutional move to strip away what are described as counterterrorism-era overlays and to reassert a baseline vision of LOAC that privileges military necessity, internal discretion, and speed over external constraint or civilian protection. The result is not lawlessness but an attempt to ensure that legal interpretation does not, in the view of its proponents, impose normatively undue or operationally unsustainable limits on commanders preparing to fight — violent, vicious, and fast — in a war that is framed to be potentially existential.

Although this legal reasoning emerges from within the U.S. national-security context, its implications extend beyond American military and LOAC doctrine. The interpretive logic underpinning LSCO lawyering may find resonance with all states that seek to frame their approach to the conduct of hostilities as lawful. In this sense, LSCO lawyering is not necessarily only an American legal development. It is also a project with the potential to reorder certain expectations — including about what law requires, who interprets it, and how it should structure violence in war — far beyond the Pentagon.

Cohen: Outbound Investment Restrictions and International Law's Challenge

Harlan Grant Cohen (Fordham Univ. - Law) has posted Outbound Investment Restrictions and International Law's Challenge (Seattle University Law Review, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

The Outbound Investment Rule, restricting U.S. investment in certain Chinese advanced technology sectors, has largely been portrayed as an incremental measure, a modest extension to fill loopholes in the existing investment screening regime. But while perhaps the logical next step in the securitization of the economy, the Outbound Investment Rule actually reflects a momentous shift in the relationship between governments and business, one playing out in the United States and around the world and worth attention. Unlike traditional investment screening, the Outbound Investment Rule operates like a sanctions regime, designed not to protect the U.S. economy, but to hamper the advancement of another. And in so doing, the Outbound Investment Rule reveals a broader global shift to geoeconomic competition that existing international economic law rules are ill-suited to manage. New rules are needed to minimize and manage the inevitable conflicts.

Marks: Trucanini's Stare: Reconsidering Dignity in Theory and Practice

Susan Marks (London School of Economics and Political Science - Law) has published Trucanini's Stare: Reconsidering Dignity in Theory and Practice (Cambridge Univ. Press 2025). Here's the abstract:

A central concept in international human rights law and many national constitutions is human dignity. Departing from established approaches to dignity in philosophy and legal theory, Susan Marks takes dignity in everyday life ('dignified care', 'dignity in the workplace', etc.) as a starting point for reconsidering the concept's history and significance. The result is a highly original work which gives particular attention to colonial and post-colonial engagements with dignity, and emphasises the character of human dignity as not just an idea or abstract value, but also a lived experience that cannot be understood without reference to social structures and the inequalities and hierarchies they reproduce. If dignity is an attribute which all human beings possess purely by virtue of being human, Marks shows that it is also an element within the systemic operations of privilege and power.

Chesterman: Silicon Sovereigns: Artificial Intelligence, International Law, and the Tech-Industrial Complex

Simon Chesterman (National Univ. of Singapore - Law) has posted Silicon Sovereigns: Artificial Intelligence, International Law, and the Tech-Industrial Complex (American Journal of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Artificial intelligence is reshaping science, society, and power. Yet many debates over its likely impact remain fixated on extremes: utopian visions of universal benefit and dystopian fears of existential doom, or an arms race between the U.S. and China, or the Global North and Global South. What’s missing is a serious conversation about distribution — who gains, who loses, and who decides. The global AI landscape is increasingly defined not just by geopolitical divides, but by the deepening imbalance between public governance and private control. As governments struggle to keep up, power is consolidating in the hands of a few tech firms whose influence now rivals that of states. If the twentieth century saw the rise of international institutions, the twenty-first may be witnessing their eclipse — replaced not by a new world order, but by a digital oligarchy. This essay explores what that shift means for international law, global equity, and the future of democratic oversight in an age of silicon sovereignty.

New Volume: Canadian Yearbook of International Law

The latest volume of the Canadian Yearbook of International Law (Vol. 61, 2023) is out. Contents include:

• Articles
• Camille Martini, From Fact to Applicable Law: What Role for the International Climate Change Regime in Investor-State Arbitration?
• Rémi Fuhrmann, Légitimités conflictuelles: le droit international humanitaire entre légitimité du statut et légitimité de la cause
• Anna Rahel Fischer & Bernard Duhaime, “The Purloined Letter”: Migrant Disappearances, Systematic Impunity, and States’ Risk Awareness
• Miriam Cohen & Renan Teles, L’appropriation de la transmission des traumatismes par le droit: le préjudice transgénérationnel dans la jurisprudence de la Cour pénale internationale
• Carol Dyck, Arctic Governance in the Face of Climate Change: A Case for “Inclusive Regionalism”
• Obiora Chinedu Okafor, Udoka Owie, Okechukwu Effoduh, & Rahina Zarma, Explaining the Comparatively Less Robust Human Rights Impact of the ECOWAS Court on Legislative and Judicial Decision-making, Process, and Action in Nigeria
• Godwin E.K. Dzah, The Interaction between International and Domestic Law, Aqua Nullius, and Water-mediated Claims in Canada
• Akinwumi Ogunranti, The Relationality of Community Development Agreements towards a Human Rights Due Diligence Good Faith Requirement
• Symposium on the African Financial Architecture and the African Multilateral Financial Institutions in Context
• Olabisi D. Akinkugbe, Preface
• Olabisi D. Akinkugbe, African Financial Architecture: Voice, Representation, Preferred Creditor Status, and the Alliance of African Multilateral Financial Institutions
• Gertrude Amorkor Amarh, A New Dawn in Credit Rating for Africa? A Review of the Africa Credit Rating Agency
• Ohiocheoya (Ohio) Omiunu & Ayodele Olabiyi, Knowledge Production and the Global Energy Transition: A Critical Appraisal of the Influence of International Financial Institutions on African Multilateral Financial Institutions
• Otieno Mbori, The African Development Bank’s Role in Financing the Green Energy Transition Harrison
• Florence Shako, Towards Dismantling Colonial Continuities: The Role of the African Export-Import Bank in Climate Financing in Africa

New Issue: Questions of International Law

The latest issue of Questions of International Law / Questioni di Diritto Internazionale (no. 110, 2025) is out. Contents include:

• Regulating activities in the cyberspace: Open issues of International and European law
• Introduced by Gian Maria Farnelli
• Alessandra Sardu, Non-intervention and cyberspace
• Isabella Brunner, Attributing cyber operations under International law: Political and legal aspects
• Marco Argentini, Navigating Private Obligations in Cybersecurity: Perspectives from Private International Law
• Susanna Villani, Defending the security of the eu constitutional order against malicious cyber activity: reflections on the cyber targeted sanctions regime
• Victor Stoica, AI for good: the maintenance of international peace and security