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Digital and non-digital modes of governing the international legal order co-exist. This imbrication brings with it a particular constellation of actors, new sites and processes of governance and new modalities of law-making. Claudia Aradau and Tobias Blanke, in Algorithmic Reason , guide us through the complex cartographies of global governance. They eloquently map the networks and infrastructures of algorithmic governance and show how they affect the relations between the governing and the governed. Thereby, they help us visualize the imbrication of the local and the global, of private and public infrastructural logics beyond the static binaries that shape our traditional understanding of the international legal order. Throughout multiple case studies, two major transversal claims emerge in the book that are relevant to international lawyers. The book, in my view, argues for (i) an anti-solutionist and (ii) an anti-formalist analysis of global algorithmic governance. As these two transversal claims are not always fully unpacked and explicitly embraced, this review essay aims to draw the contours of these claims, unpack them and show how valuable they can be to think about global algorithmic governance and the functions of international law in the equation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been a tremendous rise in the participation of non-state actors – notably business – in international rule-making. While such participation has many benefits, the risk that rule-making gets captured – that is, that rules are made in line with business' profit-driven interest rather than in the public interest – has increased too. This article, first, explores the growing problem of capture in international rule-making and identifies three modes of capture that have become particularly prevalent in international policy-making: information capture, representational capture and resource capture. The article then explores the World Health Organization's (WHO) 2016 Framework of Engagement with Non-State Actors (FENSA) and how effectively it manages these risks. FENSA is interesting because it is the first policy by an international organization seeking to comprehensively and systematically regulate non-state actor engagement and to prevent related risks. In assessing FENSA, the article focuses on the WHO's engagement of two main actors: the Big Food industry and voluntary donors. Finally, the article seeks to draw more general lessons as to the capacity of FENSA-like reforms to prevent capture in international rule-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contribution of the late French Professor Michel Virally to international law is vast and touches on most areas of this discipline. Yet, Virally devoted particular attention to two main areas of inquiry, namely the philosophy of law and international organization. I have analysed Virally’s contribution to the former elsewhere. This article focuses on his contribution to international organization widely understood as the study of international organizations and that of world organization. Virally considered international organization as a new political phenomenon, which would shape the dynamics of the two main driving forces of the second half of the 20th century, i.e., the East–West and the North–South divides. He developed a sophisticated theory of international organizations, with a strong functional focus. He used this theory to shed light on questions such as the management of international conflicts, the decolonization process, or the increasing influence of newly independent and developing states. His views on how these forces would shape the evolution of international law were far-sighted and allowed him to identify, with remarkable accuracy, the areas of international law where development considerations would require deep transformation, namely trade, investment, and the environment. In this regard, Michel Virally is also our contemporary and his contribution remains fully relevant for the analysis of international organization at large. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

International lawyers have in recent years expressed much unease about the perceived fragmentation of their legal system. In truth, however, international law has always been fragmented without losing its ability to operate. A threat, rather, arises from the ongoing proliferation of special regimes endowed with strong institutional frameworks and an ability to set new international norms. This expansion begs an uncomfortable question: What if such -- seemingly independent -- entities were to claim autonomy and challenge the validity of general international law? A salient feature, of this debate is the preoccupation with 'self-contained regimes' and their status under international law. In a recent report to the International Law Commission, for instance, Martti Koskenniemi concluded that no such regime can be created outside the scope of general international law. Drawing on a particularly controversial example, this article therefore reviews the law and practice of the World Trade Organization to determine how that body has positioned itself in the debate. While its judiciary has recognized that the rules on world trade do not exist in isolation of general international law, a closer look at actual case law unveils a far more ambivalent picture. The chimera of self-contained regimes, in other words, is not easily dispelled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to extract from the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice a basic theory of legal effects of unilateral instruments of international organizations in public international law. These effects can be divided into three categories. The first is substantive effects. These include binding, authorizing and (dis)empowering effects. The second category is causative effects, whereby determinations of fact or of law bring substantive effects into existence. The third category is modal effects -- how and when the substantive effects come into existence (e.g. immediate or deferred, retroactive or non-retroactive, reversible or irreversible effect). Each of these categories of legal effects behaves differently according to whether the effects are intrinsic or extrinsic. Intrinsic effects are based on the special treaty powers of the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly. In this hypothesis, all three categories of effects exist to the full extent that the explicit and implicit powers of the adopting body allow for them. Extrinsic effects are directly based on general international law, in particular on the rules of formation of customary international law. Here, there are no causative effects. Substantive effects do not strictly speaking exist: only pre-substantive ones do. And modal effects are always immediate, non-retroactive and reversible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International organizations have increasingly joined states as occupiers of territory. Yet international law doctrine and policymakers have regarded occupation by states and administration by international organizations as distinct legal and political phenomena. The stigma associated with state occupation has translated into an assumption that the two operations are governed by different norms and their tactics for asserting control subject to different standards of legitimacy. This article rejects that dichotomy and the doctrinal parsing that comes with it. It emphasizes the common traits and challenges of these occupations and argues for a joint legal and political appraisal. From the legal perspective, the two sorts of missions operate under common legal frameworks; those managing both need to find the proper balance among international humanitarian law, international human rights law, local law, and any mandate from an international organization. As a political matter, each encounters resistance from those in the territory opposed to its presence, leading to coercive responses whose legitimacy will be questioned from within and outside the territory. The article concludes with some modest thoughts on how each sort of occupier might learn something from the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution examines certain inherent shortcomings of an 'open-ended' institution-building operation for which the future status of the entity in statu nascendi remains undecided. It first addresses the policy of conditionality through which Kosovo's international administration attempts to measure the performance of local institutions against imported 'standards'. The external representation function of an international administration acting on behalf of a non-state territorial entity, as an agent of necessity, is then analysed, considering recent and little-known developments and suggesting that UNMIK's practice supports the argument that 'internationalized' territories possess limited legal personality. Turning 'inward' to a sphere of domestic governance, the contribution highlights some of the problems encountered with regard to the privatization of public assets in Kosovo. Here, it argues that UNMIK is awkwardly caught between the pursuit of both the interests of the territory under its administration and the collective interest of the organized international community -- two sets of interests which can collide head-on. The article concludes by suggesting that an international territorial agent should not, as a rule, attempt to mediate a solution, but endeavour to represent the territory in good faith. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pays a homage to author Philip Allott. Essence of Allott's vision for the reconstruction of world order. Information on his book "Eunomia"; Faith of Allott in the power of the human mind to reform the future; Role that international law should play in the questions of international order; Views of Allott on law as a social order.

Despites Franck's claim that public international law (PIL) has moved into its 'post-ontological state', where controversy no longer surrounds its status as law, controversies over the ontology of PIL, and especially of customary international law (CIL) remain endemic. These controversies fuel the attack by Critical Legal Studies (CLS), and New Approaches to International Law (NAIL), scholars against a liberal-legal order all too easily portrayed as fundamentally indeterminate, a cover for its subjects' political interests. These critiques cannot be simply ignored, but neither can they be met easily, nor without cost. While CLS, and other critical discourses, seek to 'uncover' and 'explode' the ideologies and biases of law to demonstrate its inability to fulfil its promises, the present paper is intended to initiate the task of demanding that law, and especially CIL, live up to these very promises. But first, the nature of these promises, and the structure and purpose of law must be examined, analysed, and where necessary contested and decided; or rather, defined. In this regard, the hidden assumptions of legal theory must be uncovered and problematized; the debates over law must be disaggregated, before law itself can be properly determined. Only after these tasks have been completed can the nihilist challenges of NAIL be met. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations Security Council is the most powerful institutional body ever established at the global level. Its existence and powers, as based on the United Nations Charter, firmly evidence the support of the entire international community. At the same time, the will of the international community as a whole can be expressed at different levels and in different ways. In today's international law, there can be little doubt that the international community as a whole attaches special importance and effects to peremptory norms of general international law (jus cogens) and endows them with high status. The interaction between those high-ranking norms and the powers of the Security Council is therefore among the most central issues of international law. In searching for a preferable approach, it is proposed to consider the treaty-based character of the Security Council's powers. The Council is not free of legal limitations, and this conclusion cannot be rebutted even by referring to the classical debate on the interaction between the concepts of peace and justice in international relations, because the General Assembly and Security Council have repeatedly affirmed the relevance of the observance of law in maintaining and restoring international peace and security, notably with regard to the conflicts of the Middle East and Former Yugoslavia. Bearing all this in mind, this article will examine the scope and legal effects of the legal limitations imposed on the Security Council by the operation of peremptory norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the general statements and repetition regarding the historical or sociological context of the international law. It examines the important role of repetition and generalities in which the general course act as ritual recreation of the international law as separate entity from politics, diplomacy and the rest of the legal world. It also mentions professor Georges Abi-Saab's 1987 general course on international law.

The article explores the contribution of the purity of Kelsen's theory of international law to the exclusion of ethics and political analysis from the workfield of the international lawyer. It is argued that Kelsen's own approach is an epistemologically grounded argument against involvement in the emotional dimension of political relations, which he dismisses as irrational. This is what justifies professional evasiveness in the face of the continuing self-assertiveness of the nation-state. Kelsen is now such a formidable obstacle to the development of the discipline because the profession lacks his general intellectual culture and so is unable to question the foundations of his system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kelsen's monistic theory of law, according to which international and municipal law have the same subject-matter, paved the way for the dominant contemporary doctrine: international law can encompass every aspect of human life which warrants international legal protection of human rights. Kelsen's doctrine of the identification of law and state held the legal order of the modern state to be the pattern of every legal system. Since, moreover, he considered physical coercion to be the very requisite of a legal normative order, Kelsen was bound to look for such a coercive element in the international order and found it in war. The experience of World War Two led Kelsen to develop the doctrine of the ‘just war’ (bellum iustum) as the appropriate sanction for violations of international norms, a theory which is hard to reconcile with his condemnation of every form of natural law. Kelsen's narrow definition of law prevented him from assessing the true nature of normative systems which do not fall within the state-based definition. Such systems may rely on non-physical forms of coercion, forms which are also available, as this article argues, to the international order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on Hans Kelsen's theory of international law and pacifism. Following an analytical reconstruction of Kelsen's these, the author makes a number of critical observations. In particular, the article examines Kelsen's ideas on the primacy of international law, the necessary demise of the concept of sovereignty and the assumption of the doctrine of iustum bellum as the basis for the juridical character of international law. Special attention is given to Kelsen's idea of a ‘Permanent League for the Maintenance of Peace’, inspired by a kind of ‘judicial cosmopolitanism’, and developed in his Peace through Law. It is the author's opinion that Kelsen's internationalism and pacifism brought about an important turning-point in the theory of International law and anticipated by 50 years many of the issues that the international community are today discussing: in particular, individuals as subjects of International law (and not only states) and the use of international criminal tribunals for the punishment of those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Finally, the author argues that there is some doubt whether Kelsen's theoretical and political goals, Inspired by the Kantian idea of the moral unity of humanity and by a normativist conception of law, may be fulfilled or even be desirable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kelsen holds a unique place in the theory of international law as the only great legal theorist to have placed international law and its relations with domestic law at the centre of his considerations. Kelsen consistently defended the idea that international law was law in its own right. This he did in a paradoxical way, viewing war and reprisals as sanctions that gave international law a positive character. But that was just a first step in his argument. It led on to the prohibition of the use of armed force in international conflicts and the necessary creation of international justice to settle international disputes as the only means of taking international law out of a state of anarchy. But the particularly fascinating point of Kelsen's thinking is not only the cogency and rigour of his reasoning but also the fact that his work, which was reputed to be theoretical, even dogmatic, and remote from the concerns of the real world, provides us with the sharpest conceptual tools with which to think through the contemporary developments of international law. Two examples are given in this paper: I) the theory of centralization of legal orders, which provides some understanding of the advances made by the European Community and situates those advances in the general theory of international law; II) Kelsen's analysis of the role of the individual in International law, which allows us to understand the innovations implied by the theory of state contracts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparison of the major trends of International law during the 1960s and the present time shows the consolidation in positive international law of the basic principles laid down in the UN Charter. There are nevertheless some very substantial differences between the time when the ‘international community’ placed greatest emphasis on the ‘common heritage of mankind’ and the time of globalization, the second posing new challenges to the sovereign state. It remains that the prohibition of force as set down in the Charter establishes the historical development of international law in the perspective of the specific categorical imperative defined by Kant's project of ‘perpetual peace’. In this respect, It has become possible since 1945 to look at the development of International law from the viewpoint of progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the inquiry that focuses on the professional ethics of international legal work. It discusses an approach to international law which is supportable in terms of epistemology, ethics, and ontology. It examines the concept of situationality as well as the identity of international law in relation to international politics. It offers a deliberation of the new international legal approaches.

The essays published in these pages form the final part of an ongoing symposium. The Institut des hautes études internationales and the European Journal of International Law convened a conference on ‘The Changing Structure of International Law Revisited’ in March 1997, bringing together a group of European and American scholars to discuss the current state of international law in the light of changes that have occurred, both on doctrinal and practical levels, in recent decades. The symposium identified four areas of investigation: The state between fragmentation and globalization; Is there a hierarchy of norms in International law?; Is international law moving towards criminalization?; and Where does the International community stand? Papers on the first three themes appeared in EJIL volume 8, numbers 3 and 4 and volume 9, number 1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]