Germany’s Moral Responsibility to Support a Treaty on Business and Human Rights
As a Jewish academic currently writing a book in Berlin, I am moved by the significant efforts in evidence across the city to remember the victims of the Holocaust. From the sobering stolpersteine to the powerful formal memorial sites, the terrible results of denying the worth and value of Jewish, Roma and gay individuals (amongst others) are clearly in evidence. Yet, memory of past violations cannot be enough: it must …
It could have been worse
A Historian’s Impression of the Conference “Contingency in International Law: How International law could have been”
Both historians and jurists are intrigued by the future: historians – despite their habitual claims to the contrary – wish to say something meaningful about the future by studying the past, whereas jurists make and render law in order to establish justice, lawfulness, and ultimately peace. Yet, while historians at times reject the “learning from the past” paradigm, fearing an oversimplification of history, the papers presented at the conference on …
Between (Re-)Empowerment and (Hyper-) Conditionality
The Rise of Accountability-Driven Governance in Development Cooperation
Ever since David Trubek and Mark Galanter’s seminal ‘Scholars in Self-Estrangement’, which Philip Dann, during the seminar that gave rise to this post, aptly termed the ‘law and development movement’s defining moment’, there has been intense self-reflection by scholars on the role of law in and for ‘development’ and about the analytical and normative currency of this approach. And in line with the broader ‘turn to history’ in law, this …
Beyond the ‘Moments’ of Law and Development
Law and Development Scholarship in a Globalized Economy
An integral aspect of law and development (L&D) studies have been its intimate relationship with the global economy and the regulatory framework which governs it. A rapidly emerging arena of scholarship on law and development in recent years has been on the intersections between international economic law (IEL) and development. The emergence of this body of scholarship under the broad umbrella of L&D studies has important consequences for law and …
Agenda 2030 -Time to Revisit Rule of Law programming
As the development community re-focuses on how the rule of law agenda enables sustainable development as expected in fulfilment of Agenda 2030, questions will continue to arise concerning the mixed results of rule of law assistance projects. D. Marshall in his treatise “The International Rule of Law Movement: A Crisis of Legitimacy and the Way Forward,” emphasizes that there is a profound knowledge deficit regarding the justice system, its actors, …
Beyond a fourth moment in law and development
A plea for heterodoxy
In the wake of the decolonization wave after World War II, a law and development (L&D) practice and academic strand emerged. So far, scholarship on law and development that self-identifies as L&D has been predominantly economic in orientation. It has never moved beyond a market-friendly or market-centered approach. This tradition has also adopted a fairly naïve instrumentalist approach to law. I submit that scholars who are more concerned with the …
Law and Development: Theory and Practice
The field of Law and Development studies positions itself at a highly interesting, yet academically challenging juncture: What is the relationship between law and social and economic development? For most scholars of Law and Development, this question itself tends to raise more questions than answers: What conceptions of law are we actually talking about? And should the notion of ‘development’ be critically re-appropriated beyond modernized ideals of economic growth? Or …
Supported by:
‘Vetoing’ the admission of a third state in international organizations
Lessons learned from the Greece-fYROM case
On the 17th June, ‘the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia’ (hereinafter: ‘fYROM’) and Greece signed an Agreement to resolve their 27-year-long dispute over the former’s name. Most importantly, fYROM committed to change its constitutional name from ‘Republic of Macedonia’ to ‘Republic of North Macedonia’ for both domestic and international purposes. The bizarre dispute (and the Agreement itself) has raised interesting legal questions, serving as the most prominent case of an inter-state battle over …
Neue Initiative der polnischen Regierung in Sachen deutscher Weltkriegsreparationen
Reparationsansprüche als Streitapfel auf dem Weg zur Aussöhnung
In seinem Beitrag unter dem Titel „Germany v. Italy 2.0?“ argumentiert Lukas Kleinert, dass der polnischen Regierung die Rechtsgrundlage für die Reparationsansprüche gegen die Bundesrepublik Deutschland fehle. Dieser Beitrag setzt sich mit Kleinerts Analyse auseinander und stellt eine alternative Perspektive vor. Sie unterscheidet sich von Kleinerts Analyse mit Blick auf die Auslegung zweier Aspekte der Erklärung der polnischen Regierung vom 23. August 1953: die Auslegung der in der Erklärung der polnischen …
Disentangling the cyber security debate
In his insightful LJIL article Kubo Mačák discusses the under-developed state of international cyber security law. He assesses that the absence of cyber security law-making has created a power vacuum that has been filled by non-state actor initiatives, such as the Tallinn Manual. He calls on states that now is the time to reclaim their central role in international lawmaking, in the short-term by articulating their opinio iuris more clearly, …
CfP: Cultural Heritage in a Post-colonial World – New Framings of a Global Legal Problem
The Voelkerrechtsblog is happy to announce an interdisciplinary online symposium on “Cultural Heritage in a Post-colonial World – New Framings of a Global Legal Problem”. Cultural and anthropological objects from colonized or de-facto colonized territories have arrived in Europe in great amounts since the 18th century. Many European metropoles established large collections of those artefacts and human remains to display this shared “heritage” to their people – all projects closely …
Leveraging technology to enhance access to justice for children in Africa
To keep a finger on the pulse of time, technology and innovation are central to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Context-informed and locally-adapted technology can be the catalyser to identify barriers in achieving the 2030 agenda and provide solutions for the sustainable development change so desperately needed. Ending all forms of violence against children is an integral part of the SDGs, namely through …
Endlich! – Erster Haftbefehl gegen einen ranghohen Vertreter des syrischen Assad-Regimes
Zur strafrechtlichen Verfolgung von im syrischen Bürgerkrieg verübten Verbrechen in Deutschland
Können mutmaßliche syrische Völkerrechtsverbrecher einfach unbehelligt nach Europa ein- und wieder ausreisen? Diesen Eindruck musste man bei der Lektüre eines Berichtes gewinnen, der vor einigen Wochen in der französischen Tageszeitung „Le Monde“ erschien. Bereits im Januar diesen Jahres sei Ali Mamluk, der als „Direktor des Nationalen Sicherheitsbüros“ der Ba’ath-Partei, seit Jahrzehnten eine feste Größe in dem syrischen Sicherheits- und Unterdrückungsapparat, auf Einladung des italienischen Geheimdienstes AISE nach Rom geflogen und …
Human rights and the international protection of biodiversity – A promising alliance (Part II)
The first part of this post established the intrinsic connection between human rights and the protection of biodiversity, looked at human rights and the environment in international public law in general and examined the conceptual relationship between biodiversity and the environment. The second part centers around the current approach of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment which promises nothing less than a change of paradigm on …
Human rights and the international protection of biodiversity – A promising alliance (Part I)
For a long time, the legal and political endeavours to protect humans from violations of their basic rights seemed in no way connected to the preservation of biodiversity. In the past, this paradigm has been reflected by indifferent international responses to biodiversity issues: Whereas the promotion and protection of human rights has in recent decades become a major concern of the international community and the relationship between human rights and …
Symposium on Business and Human Rights: Call for Contributions
On June 24, 2016 the United Nations’ Council on Human Rights established an intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations. The working group is tasked with the elaboration of an international legally binding instrument “to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises”. In 2017 the working group’s chairman published a non-binding paper outlining possible elements of a treaty on business and human rights; …
Recent Comments