New Issue: Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d'histoire du droit international

The latest issue of the Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d'histoire du droit international (Vol. 27, no. 2, 2025) is out. Contents include:

• Ignacio de la Rasilla, Towards Comparative International Legal History?
• Pádraig McAuliffe, Theories of State Development at the Dawn of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
• Niccolò Lanzoni, The Enduring Influence of the Late Medieval Conception of Universal Monarchy on the Theories of Governance in the International Community

O'Hara & Vázquez Guevara: ‘We, the Peoples of the Earth’: ALBA, Populism and the Making of an Alternative International Law

Claerwen O’Hara (Univ. of Melbourne - Law) & Valeria Vázquez Guevara (Univ. of Hong Kong - Law) have posted ‘We, the Peoples of the Earth’: ALBA, Populism and the Making of an Alternative International Law (London Review of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

This article explores the populist approach to international law of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America (ALBA). Over the past decade, there has been a proliferation of scholarship depicting populist politics as hostile to international law. Yet, across the global South, there are examples of leaders promoting regional unity, creating multilateral alliances, and engaging with international law, all while advancing a populist discourse based around an idea of ‘the people’. We argue that ALBA is one such example. Focusing on its activities as a fluid coalition in international institutions between 2009 and 2019, we demonstrate how ALBA developed a unique technique of international legal engagement and contestation, based around claims to represent ‘the people’ (or ‘peoples’) of the earth. In this way, ALBA shows how the adoption of a populist register can provide an alternative way of both belonging to, and resisting, the international legal order.

New Issue: London Review of International Law

The latest issue of the London Review of International Law (Vol. 13, no. 1, March 2025) is out. Contents include:

• Articles
• Tanja Aalberts, Rubber boats: transnational legal encounters in the Mediterranean
• Ingo Venzke, Carr and the climate: solidarity and sacrifice in international law
• Gavin Sullivan, Algorithmic governance of “terrorism” and “violent extremism” online
• Wouter G Werner, Security Council Resolutions as autobiographical texts
• Sasha Crawford-Holland, Patrick Brian Smith, & Andrew Williams, Law’s capture of human rights focused open-source investigation
• Section three
• The Medellín Group, Medellín manifesto on transnational value chains and international law

Milanovic: State Lies as Violations of Human Rights

Marko Milanovic (Univ. of Reading - Law) has posted State Lies as Violations of Human Rights (Human Rights Quarterly, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

This article examines how lying by state agents can violate human rights, including freedoms of opinion and expression, the right to health, and the right to participate in public affairs. The article argues that a lie – a statement, made by one person to another, that is untruthful and is made with the intention of deceiving the addressee – by a state agent can interfere with the interests of individuals protected by human rights law. Not all lies interfere with human rights, however. Whether they do so depends on the harms they cause. The article shows that lies that interfere with human rights can be justified only very exceptionally within the human rights framework, since they are most often motivated by an illegitimate purpose. The article also argues that human rights law will apply equally regardless of whether states lie to their own people or to peoples of other states.

One purpose of this article is to conduct a mapping exercise, demonstrating the integral role that lies by state agents play in all kinds of human rights violations. The article also demonstrates how, in some instances, lies are a necessary condition for human rights violations, which cannot be committed without them – a good example here is that of states fabricating election results. In other cases, lies by state agents are a sufficient condition for a human rights violation. That is, the lie alone violates individual rights – systematic lying by state agents that pollutes the information space and thereby inhibits their people’s right to seek and receive information of all kinds is an example of such practice, as is the dissemination of lies that harm public health.

International and regional human rights bodies, especially those acting in a judicial or quasi-judicial capacity, rarely accuse states of deliberately lying, or of otherwise acting in bad faith. This is understandable, for all sorts of practical and prudential reasons. The article is not arguing that human rights bodies or activists must change their approach radically. But neglecting the role that lying by states plays in human rights violations has consequences, as it impedes the ability of human rights bodies (or activists) to tell the truth about what the state concerned is really doing. Put differently, if human rights bodies avoid dealing with state lies and their consequences, they risk normalizing them. In a world in which an increasing number of states is led by rapacious liars, this is not a risk that we can afford to ignore.

Webinar: Business, Human Rights, and Climate Change Litigation

On June 26, 2025, the International Business and Human Rights Interest Group of the European Society of International Law will host a webinar on "Business, Human Rights, and Climate Change Litigation." Details are here.

Call for Papers: JIEL Junior Faculty Forum for International Economic Law

A call for papers has been issued for the Journal of International Economic Law's fifth annual Junior Faculty Forum for International Economic Law. The call is here. The deadline is June 30, 2025.

New Issue: Journal of International Dispute Settlement

The latest issue of the Journal of International Dispute Settlement (Vol. 16, no. 2, June 2025) is out. Contents include:

• Special Issue: Current Challenges in International Investment Law
• Elizabeth Sheargold, International investment law and public health: the need for forward-looking reforms
• Fabio C Morosini & Ely Caetano Xavier Junior, A new analytical matrix for understanding International Investment Law Agreements in the Global South
• Chen Yu, The uneasy delegation: conditional judicialization of international investment dispute settlement
• Thomas Schultz & Cédric Dupont, Dynamics of change in international investment law
• Lucas Clover Alcolea, The importance of property in international investment law
• Claiton Fyock, Getting ‘real’ about ISDS reform: a critical realist view of international investment law’s status quo
• Harshad Pathak, Reimagining investor–state dispute settlement—or how to map indeterminacy and reform identity
• Articles
• Xu Qian & Fang Gu, Reconceptualizing counterclaim assessment in investment treaty arbitration: a discourse on fairness through Rawlsian justice theory
• Raelee Toh, The meaning of ‘very subject-matter of the dispute’ in the Monetary Gold rule of the International Court of Justice’s jurisprudence
• Ignacio De la Rasilla, Latin America and the Caribbean in the International Court of Justice—an empirical quantitative analysis (2000–24)
• Sophia D Casetta, Ownership of the sea: evaluating how culture affects the success of dispute resolution techniques in resolving maritime boundary conflicts
• James Gerard Devaney & Hoon Cho, The proper role of the doctrine of incidental questions in international adjudication
• Asli Ozcelik, David L Gebre-Medhin, & Asaf Siniver, International arbitration of violent territorial disputes: what role for equity in achieving peaceful settlement?
• Current Developments
• Zhaoran Lin, A case note of the review of the objection by the Russian Federation to a decision of the Commission of the South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation (CMM 01-2023) (PCA Case No. 2023-33)
• Deyan Draguiev, Choice of court agreements in light of CJEU Decision in case C-566/22 Inkreal
• Patrick Dumberry, Deripaska v Montenegro: the alpha and omega of State succession to BITs