Our Articles

Das Asylbewerberleistungsgesetz (AsylbLG) ist, nach den inhaltlich falschen – und zu Recht stark kritisierten – Äußerungen von Friedrich Merz zur medizinischen Versorgung von Asylbewerber:innen, pünktlich zu seinem Geburtstag ins Zentrum...

On 12 October, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) addressed the humanitarian and human rights crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh in response to the Azerbaijani military operation that commenced...

This episode of the Völkerrechtliche Tagesthemen focuses on the jurisdiction of the German Federal Court of Justice (FCJ). On 27 July 2023, the FCJ affirmed its jurisdiction to rule on...

According to international humanitarian law, the answer to the question of who is considered a legitimate actor of force is primarily the following: sovereign states. This state-centred answer is often...

The first day of this semester happens to be October 8th – a difficult day to start a course on international law, I think to myself, fearing Israel’s response as...

We would like to thank the editors of the Völkerrechtsblog for organising this symposium on The Theory, Practice, and Interpretation of Customary International Law, and the commentators for thoughtfully and...

As ChatGPT-4 and other artificial intelligence machines are all but extinguishing the essay-writing practice, it is high time that we receive the right answer to the ever-green topic of international...

It is not often that one reads about Schrödinger's cat, the particle and wave qualities of light, and Latour’s idea that modern discourses are always driven by their foundational contradictions...

Science often begins with a coincidence. Or more precisely: a moment of serendipity, that happy opportunity that enables and produces knowledge in the seemingly unintentional coincidence of constellation and event....

The featured monograph in this symposium – The Theory, Practice, and Interpretation of Customary International Law – offers welcome engagement with the question of whether there can be such a...

Legal Appropriation or, what is the same, Rechtsnahme means in this contribution the space of human interaction that is appropriated by international judges, lawyers and other legal actors when they...

This summer, Judge Hilary Charlesworth made international lawyers very happy (some of them at least) when her dissenting opinion appended to the judgment of the International Court of Justice in...

Die UN-Behindertenrechtskonvention gehört zu den jüngsten Instrumenten im Werkzeugkasten des Internationalen Menschenrechtsschutzes. Besonders ist sie nicht zuletzt deshalb, weil sie allgemein so verstanden wird, dass sie (primär) keine neuen Rechte...

On the 24th of October, the Information Department of the International Court of Justice (‘ICJ’ or ‘the Court’) published a press release, announcing that the Court had amended its Rules,...

"For me now, what I’m realizing is I’m done trying to treat people as if they’re finished beings. Because we’re all unfinished basically, we’re all unravelling. So it's very unfair...

In October 2022, Russian military vehicles pulled up in Kherson, then occupied by the Russian armed forces to surround and secure two buildings. This raid was not a counter-resistance operation...

Duarte Agostinho, the ‘biggest-yet climate case’ before the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has, among other things, framed climate change as an issue of inequality....

Appreciating the (sometimes) necessary moment of pausing, hesitating, and dwelling in reflection, staying open to revisiting an argument and allowing oneself to look at a problem from different angles has...

On 7 October 2023, Hamas militants staged an unprecedented attack on Israel, indiscriminately launching thousands of rockets from Gaza into Israel, rampaging through villages and a music festival site, and...

This piece explores the utility of the precautionary principle as a tool available to investment tribunals tasked with assessing measures adopted by States to address climate-related risks. To date, little...

Earlier this year, the United Nations General Assembly filed a request for an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice following the adoption resolution on 29 March. The request...

Climate change poses many challenges for International Law. One issue that has become the subject of much discussion in both academic discourse and in political practice is the unique situation...

The horrific attacks against Israel by Hamas on 7.10.2023, killing 1,300 Israelis and kidnapping 199 Israeli and foreign hostages into Gaza, raises the question: how did we get here? This...