In much international legal scholarship, Iraq stands for what lies beyond the UN Charter – a world in which international institutions have proved unable to challenge the pragmatists of the new American empire, or one in which international institutions must be remade to suit the interests of the only state capable of acting as the sovereign enforcer of the law. Yet this sense of a crisis of legal authority is not novel for international law – rather, it pervades the discipline. Seen in this light, the inability of the United Nations either to prevent the use of force against Iraq, or to develop an effective multilateral response to terrorism, is simply another manifestation of that crisis, another moment in which international law is called upon to renew itself and reassert its relevance. International law is thus a useful site to explore modern responses to the pervasive uneasiness about legal authority and its legitimacy. Attention to anxious representations about what lies ‘beyond’ the law allows an exploration of the nature of the crises of legal authority that haunt modernity, and have returned again so traumatically in this time of terror. International law is also a continuing source of extremely productive responses to that crisis of authority. These responses include conventional attempts to find a new sovereign ground for the law, whether that be in the form of international organizations or of powerful national sovereigns who stand outside the law and guarantee its operation. But international law is also a source of much more surprising and radical responses to the sense of anxiety produced by that crisis. This article develops these arguments through engaging with readings by Jacques Derrida and Shoshana Felman of Sigmund Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Beyond was written at a time of some crisis for the new discipline of psychoanalysis and for Freud, its sovereign. At stake was the relevance of the discipline, its lack of mastery over its own knowledge, and questions of its proper heirs. All of these issues are at stake for the discipline of international law today.

The dominant international legal theories are based on an understanding of international law in terms of a solely state-based system. This article challenges those theories in the context of the practice of the participants in the international legal system. It proposes an inclusive conceptual approach which acknowledges that non-state actors have distinct and independent international rights, responsibilities, and abilities to bring claims, as well as clear roles in the creation, development, and enforcement of international law, which are separate to that of states. While states currently have a primary role in the international legal system, this role is not exclusive.

In The Prosecutor v. Nahimana et al., the trial chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda sought to define the offence of ‘direct and public incitement to commit genocide’. This case note discusses the elements required in the opinion before turning to the way in which the trial chamber applied its tests. Case law from the European Court of Human Rights and laws from a range of national jurisdictions are used to contrast the approach adopted by the trial chamber in the so-called ‘Media Trial’.

This note examines the ICTY's judgement of 5 December 2003 in the case Prosecutor v. Stanislav Galić. It provides a general overview of the facts of the case and then reviews the chamber's discussion of the two war crime charges – attack on civilians and terror against civilians – and of the individual criminal responsibility of the defendant.

2004 marks the tenth anniversary of both the start of the genocide in Rwanda and the establishment of the ICTR by the UN Security Council. In the past decade the ICTR has operated slowly but progressively, and it has delivered some insightful case law. Legal issues continue to arise, however, in the practice of the ICTR. This article considers some of these issues, namely the vagueness of the indictment, complicity in genocide, and the nexus requirement for war crimes. The overview shows that in various instances the ICTR has relied on pivotal case law of the ICTY. Moreover, it is demonstrated that, on occasion, the case law of the ICTR has been somewhat inconsistent. Nevertheless, the ICTR's case law is a next step in the building of a sound international criminal law system, and there will certainly be more opportunities for the ICTR to contribute. These contributions will only be worthwhile, however, if the ICTR's output continues to be of high quality.

This article seeks to demonstrate how the Agreement on the Privileges and Immunities of the International Criminal Court relates to other documents of international law and thereby contributes to the independent functioning of the Court. In particular, it argues that the Agreement provides some duplication, but more importantly, the necessary extension, elaboration, and interpretation of the Rome Statute with regard to privileges and immunities. In comparison with other conventions on privileges and immunities of international organizations, the article concludes that the Agreement provides some important unprecedented provisions, but that the overwhelming part of the Agreement on Privileges and Immunities constitutes standard provisions for such agreements.

The adoption of the 2004 budget of the International Criminal Court completed the first full budgetary process for the Court. The document sets out the framework and financial parameters that will determine how the Court will function and grow in future years and represents the first comprehensive vision of the fully operational Court. This article looks at the process of creating the document and, referring to the experiences of other international and internationalized courts, analyzes the substantive debates that occurred on ensuring the independence of the Prosecutor in the process and ensuring adequate resources for victims, outreach, and defence.

This study examines the major legal, institutional, operational, and administrative aspects of the international property-related interventions in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. The establishment of international mass claims proceedings to restore or compensate for property rights lost due to ethnic discrimination and cleansing is a milestone for the protection of the rights of refugees and internally displaced persons. The case studies demonstrate that far-reaching international intervention and law enforcement do indeed effectively function if the international community engages in a sustainable and co-ordinated manner and provides sufficient funding.

In March 2002 the US administration imposed protective duties to safeguard its steel manufacturing industry. The measure was subsequently found to be illegal and repealed. The widespread conception is that the measure was ill-conceived and that by declaring it illegal the WTO system of adjudication proved that it had come of age. However, closer examination of the case and the relevant law reveals that the measure was in fact not ill-advised but a clever legal and political ploy. Rather than proving that WTO adjudication was working, the opposite is shown to be the case. WTO adjudication is in need of some changes if it is to respond to political manoeuvres which abuse the dispute resolution system.

Books and Articles in the Field of the Prevention and Peaceful Settlement of International Disputes (Spring 2004) Compiled exclusively from materials available in the Peace Palace Library, The Hague, by Ingrid L. KostConservator, Peace Palace Library, The Hague.

An error was introduced into Susannah Linton's article, ‘Unravelling the First Three Trials at Indonesia's Ad Hoc Court for Human Rights Violations in East Timor’, in Volume 17, issue 2 of the Leiden Journal of International Law, on p. 360. The sentence, ‘It would have examined how it was that in September 1999, despite the presence of so many TNI and police, the population of East Timor was virtually decimated’, should read, ‘It would have examined how it was that in September 1999, despite the presence of so many TNI and police, East Timor was virtually destroyed.’