The standards of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on amnesties and pardons in mass atrocity cases have been influential in Latin America and beyond. In turn, discussions about possible transitional justice mechanisms related to the Russo-Ukrainian war have involved issues of amnesty and pardon. However, the dicta of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights do not formally bind Ukraine and Russia. By connecting the two (semi-)peripheries of international law – namely, Latin America and Eastern Europe – the present article examines whether and to what extent the jurisprudence in question can shed light on legal and policy solutions for addressing the amnesty and pardon challenges posed by the Minsk agreements, domestic developments in Ukraine and Russia, and a potential future peace accord.

This article studies how ‘cybercrime’ is framed under the pre-existing regional prohibition regimes and how it would be reshaped under the auspices of the UN. This article adopts a sociolegal approach by integrating transnational criminal law (TCL) and the conceptual framework of recursivity. Observations and analyses show that (i) only the Budapest Convention has institutional capacity to shape ‘cybercrime’, while state behaviour of framing ‘cybercrime’ is actually subject to human rights instruments; (ii) states reach an exceptional compromise in transforming ‘cybercrime’ at the global level during the negotiations under the UN; and (iii) protection from cybercrime is emerging as a common interest. This author proposes that the normative changes of framing ‘cybercrime’ reflect the competition of states for normative power on the international plane; therefore, a pursuit of a universalist formula for countering cybercrime would not succeed owing to a lack of a global commitment to what basic norms and rules govern state behaviour in cyberspace. Lastly, this author proposes that transnational criminalization of cybercrime should seek a minimum public order at the first place because it is premature to provide any real global regulation at this moment.

This article introduces a new analytical category to provide a more accurate, comprehensive, and nuanced account of universal jurisdiction defendants: defendants living in fear. In contrast to defendants living with impunity, defendants living in fear are defendants whose home state is very much willing and able to prosecute and punish them. Using an original database, this article shows that there is a substantial number of universal jurisdiction defendants who live in fear, and that their percentage has increased since the early 2000s. The article also shows that defendants living in fear are more than ten times more likely to be arrested and more than 30 times more likely to be tried than defendants living with impunity.

In addition, this article argues that the function and justification of universal jurisdiction for defendants living in fear is not (only) the traditional justification of avoiding impunity, but (also) providing a fair trial that prevents wrongful convictions, and then assigning proportionate punishment if the defendant is found guilty.

Finally, this article discusses what democracies should do with living-in-fear cases to avoid being instruments of autocratic regimes that often prompt or encourage universal jurisdiction cases in other states against their military and political opponents.

States’ current emission policies are far from being aligned with what is needed to meet the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal. Against this backdrop, an increasing number of lawsuits have been filed around the world. As of March 2024, most courts have exercised restraint in imposing substantive limits on the legislator’s discretion in determining emission levels. Judicial restraint commonly rests on two premises: Climate models yield wide uncertainty ranges and choosing emission reduction levels is a normative decision belonging to the political domain. By engaging best available science on climate tipping points, this article examines the reasoning in favour of political discretion through a due diligence and equity lens. The analysis concludes that all factual requirements are met for states to be under an obligation to align their mitigation policies with a global carbon budget which is expected to limit global warming to 1.5°C at a likelihood as high as state capacities allow for.

This article examines the case of Gaza Marine, a small offshore natural gas reservoir in Gaza that has remained undeveloped since its discovery in 2000. Due to the complicated political status of the Gaza Strip over the past two decades, neither the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, nor Israel could claim full rights to Gaza’s maritime zones or develop the Gaza Marine field. However, the devastating 2023 Israel-Hamas war created four possible scenarios of administration over Gaza, each with its own legal implications for the development rights of the field. These scenarios include Palestinian independence, continued Israeli occupation, international transitional administration (ITA) over Gaza, or partial Israeli annexation of Gaza. This article argues that the development of Gaza Marine is a vital part of Gaza’s postwar reconstruction and is possible under these scenarios, the most understudied of which is the ITA model. This article can thus serve as a roadmap for other postwar coastal territories with contested rights over offshore energy deposits.

A dispute’s existence can be a requirement for establishing the jurisdiction of numerous international courts and tribunals. It requires that a state opposes the claim of another state. Yet, when a state is silent in response to a claim directed at it, there is ambiguity about the silent state’s view. This article argues that opposition and a dispute can be inferred from state silence under specific cumulative conditions: when a claim has been made in circumstances that call for the silent state’s reaction; when the silent state is aware of the claim; and when reasonable time of silence passed. Because it prevents tactical silences from undermining international justice, the inference must be encouraged. The conditions, under which the inference can be made, should also be retained in international adjudication, because they perform primarily an evidentiary function, as well as a cautionary and a channelling function.

This article challenges the prevailing view that after the Second World War, the war crime trials of Nationalist China were guided by the principle of ‘leniency and promptness’. This study reveals that the Ministry of National Defense (MND), the entity responsible for formulating war crime laws, had a desire for vengeance and sought to appropriate international law to bolster China’s hegemonic position. In contrast, the Chinese Supreme Court judges, influenced by their commitment to fostering a civilized state, interpreted the law in alignment with international norms, thereby curbing the MND’s vindictive intentions. As a result, the MND and the judiciary emerged as competing interpreters of international law.

The study compares China’s War Criminal Trial Act of 1946 (WCTA) with the Nuremberg Charter, the Hague Conventions, and the legislation of other Allied states. When compared to similar legislative texts, the WCTA has the following distinctions: 1) it has an expansive scope, 2) it adopts a stricter liability, 3) it asserts extraterritorial rights for overseas Chinese, and 4) it promotes Chinese nationalism by encompassing racially Chinese as eligible victims of crimes against humanity.

In contrast, the Judicial Yuan, which was responsible for unifying legal interpretation, limited the scope of the WCTA, hindered its promotion of Chinese nationalism, and restrained the political revenge on Taiwanese people by interpreting the WCTA per international law. This article traces the background of the Supreme Court judges making these decisions and demonstrates how their vision of ‘pursuing a civilized state’ triumphed over the MND’s impetus for vengeance.

This article compares China’s stance during the UNCLOS negotiations – the starting point of contemporary law of the sea, with its engagement in the latest development of negotiations on the United Nations agreement on biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction (BBNJ). It answers the question, how does China participate in these two important rules-making processes of the international law of the sea? By identifying salient positions China took in each set of lengthy negotiations and explaining the reasons behind, the article also aims to reflect what a rising China may bring to the international legal maritime order in the foreseeable future. The first part of this article, on the nature of China’s engagement in the UNCLOS negotiations, draws on archival study of official records of the UNCLOS III (1973–1982), as has been digitalized by the UN Office of Legal Affairs. The second part examines the period between the adoption of the UNCLOS (1982) and the start of the BBNJ process (2004), paying attention to China’s shifting practice towards the exploration and exploitation of the deep seabed mineral resources, and its concerns over the ratification of the UNCLOS and the 1995 FSA. Then the article focuses on China in the BBNJ negotiations – Working Groups, Preparatory Committee Meetings and Intergovernmental Conferences. Drawing upon the evolution of China’s positions over the past five decades, the article concludes with some insights on the likely future directions and implications of China’s engagement with the international law of the sea.

In 2021, the Ntaganda case introduced a new approach to evaluating the monetary liability for reparations in the International Criminal Court (ICC) by explicitly recognizing joint and several liability and centring the determination of the quantum of reparations on the harm suffered by the victims and the costs to repair it. As suggested by the Ntaganda Trial Chamber, these two innovations promote a stronger separation between the reparation process and the criminal trial, in order to consolidate a compensatory and victim-centred approach to reparations awarded by the ICC. This article critically appraises the innovations in Ntaganda through the lens of Article 21 of the Rome Statute, focussing on three elements: (i) the evolving jurisprudence on monetary liability in the ICC prior to the Ntaganda case; (ii) the case law on reparations of hybrid criminal courts; and (iii) the notion of general principles of law derived from the national legal systems of the world, in the sense of Article 21(1)(c) of the Statute. The article argues that, despite its victim friendly veneer, the approach introduced in Ntaganda should not be taken for granted. Besides the fact that multiple important aspects and ramifications of this approach remain unaddressed, those two innovations may have serious implications for the victims, the convicted persons, and the ICC’s reparations process as a whole.

The armed conflict in Gaza raises a series of questions under international law. The most significant questions concern the Israel’s use of force under jus ad bellum, the military operations conducted by the belligerents in relation to the law of armed conflict, and the proceedings brought before certain international courts, such as the International Criminal Court. This article examines each of these three issues in two stages. Firstly, it shows that the answers to these questions give rise to uncertain solutions insofar as they depend on the point of view adopted in relation to fundamental controversies concerning Palestine, such as the latter’s statehood. Secondly, it sets out the solutions that emerge independently of these controversies, whether these solutions express certainties or likelihoods.

This article focuses on the nature-culture dimension in the Amazonian territory as an ontological question. It is argued that international law, as a product of modern Western societies, reflects and reproduces particular ideas about what the environment is. These ideas in turn reflect specific nature-culture relations that are not necessarily present in other societies. This is especially evident in contexts such as the Amazon, where the basic assumptions that modern Western society takes for granted cannot be extrapolated. The argument is illustrated through the Amazonian Kukama-Kukamiria people’s conception of the river, which was put on the ropes by the implementation of a development project. It is proposed that rethinking international law along with the Amazon means situating oneself in not only a geographically but also ontologically different place.

This article highlights the cross-disciplinary methodological potential of Third World approaches to international law (TWAIL) and microhistory by studying the active and complex exercise of agency by victims in an understudied historical instance of post-war justice, namely, the Singapore ‘Sook Ching’ trial or Nishimura trial. This trial dealt with the arbitrary massacre of Chinese residents by the Japanese military during the Second World War. Using TWAIL and microhistory methods, this article analyses trial transcripts and archival material on the Nishimura trial, with a focus on the trial experiences of witnesses, survivors, and community representatives. By studying the Nishimura trial as mobilization and meaning-making opportunity, this microhistory draws attention to the exercise of social and political agency by the Chinese community under difficult post-war conditions and British colonial rule. Chinese community leaders represented the community as collectively victimized and united in the pursuit of post-war justice. However, a close analysis of trial transcripts reveals tensions within the community and the need for a more complex understanding of victimhood.

Considered a landmark in feminist international politics, the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda of the UN Security Council has been the object of many feminist explorations. Feminist legal scholars, however, have grappled with the ‘shadowy’ legality of the agenda, mostly analysing it as an ‘unsuccessful’ legal project: a partial or in progress legal norm, a defective legal form that attests (and furthers) the exile of inclusion of feminists in international law, or yet a formalistic discussion with lesser impact for feminist activists on the ground. Drawing from Avery Gordon’s considerations on taking shadows seriously in our production of knowledge, I propose, however, that reckoning with the shadows of the WPS’s legality enables a more comprehensive analysis of how the agenda has been a successful legal project in its own way. Offering a ‘shadow hauntology’ for the legal status of the WPS, I zoom in on the competing legality perceptions shared by relevant actors, the (gendered and colonially-continuous) shadows that have haunted those perceptions into formation, and how these competing visions have shaped the legality of the WPS as a shadow of its own. This study then offers an alternative way of studying legality both to feminist legal scholarship and studies on international legal sources more broadly. More concretely, it embraces the irresolvability of the legal status of a norm to take stock of the different legal projects and legality perceptions advanced by feminist actors and gender experts, in an effort to understand, in their own terms, the successes achieved.

Legal scholars continue to revisit historical treaties between Western and non-Western nations to challenge long-standing accounts of non-Western peoples’ engagement with international law. Following this trend, new scholarship has stressed African agency in Euro-African treaty-making. However, legal scholars have generally overlooked African perspectives, pointing to a lack of sources. Focusing on nineteenth-century treaty-making between France and the polities of the Western Sudan in West Africa, this article excavates African perspectives through a novel reading of Euro-African treaties in an African context. This reading analyses treaties within the Western Sudan’s broader diplomatic corpus in both French and Arabic. By focusing on markers of translation, transcription, and negotiation left on different copies of treaties, this method brings to light arguments and practices that have been obscured in published European-language versions. Reading Franco-Sudanian treaties in a Sudanian context reveals that different norms governed the ratification of treaties in the Western Sudan and Europe. Treaties that scholars have long considered unratified were in fact ratified according to Western Sudanian norms, which designated the governor of French Senegal rather than the French president as the official competent to ratify treaties for France. However, when French officials sought to use treaties to claim sovereign rights in West Africa against Great Britain, they pressed the president to ratify them again. Presidential ratification thus served to transpose Franco-Sudanian treaties from an African to a Western normative order. Uncovering the African origins of Euro-African treaties thus reveals their differential operation across autonomous inter-polity orders.

This article advocates a turn to the visual in legal scholarship. The phenomenon used to elucidate this methodological proposition is the figure of the ‘human shields’ under international humanitarian law, viewed from within the lived history of the peoples of the Global South. Today, the ‘human shields’ notion profoundly shapes how international law operates in scenes of intense organized violence. Once deployed, the human shields claim triggers a radical shift in the applicable international legal framework. After this point, harm to the civilian population and space can be legally authorized and justified. This article challenges the ways in which the ‘human shields’ notion continues to be debated in mainstream legal scholarship and discourse in terms of doctrinal interpretation, examination of evidence, or analyses of ‘asymmetricity’ and ‘urbanization’ as ‘challenges’ in ‘contemporary’ war. Before any such inquiries, I argue, it is crucial to pay attention to the visual and the lived history of the peoples of the Global South. Images that exist in the cultural realm – of and about war and crime, the human shielding spectacle and its actors, and Global South societies – structure and delimit the legal conversation and predetermine its possible outcomes. I propose, in sum, an attention to the visual as a site of the legal inquiry that can inform our understanding and critique of the law and politics of human shields. Images enable, rationalize and provoke the emotions necessary for an ‘exceptional’ operation of international law that authorizes massive violence against Global South spaces and peoples.

The principle of proportionality under international humanitarian law prohibits an attack if the expected harm to civilian persons and objects is excessive in relation to the anticipated concrete and direct military advantage. In this article we argue that, when applying the principle of proportionality, the incidental harm to a child must be given a higher value as compared to incidental harm to an adult. This reflects the broader framework of international humanitarian law, which creates stratifications amongst different groups of civilians and provides special protection for children in times of war. This aligns with the practice of many militaries, which tends to implicitly assign a heightened worth to the lives of children due to moral and political considerations. Such reasons stem from the perceived vulnerability of children as well as their moral innocence reflecting harmlessness and blamelessness. Indeed, harm to children’s lives tends to generate a greater backlash among the community to which they belong and, as a result, a military disadvantage. We argue that the greater weight assigned to the lives of children in proportionality assessments is not simply a matter of morality or strategic calculations, but in fact a requirement from a more wholistic interpretation of international humanitarian law.