Situating itself in current debates over the international legal archive, this article delves into the material and conceptual implications of architecture for international law. To do so I trace the architectural developments of international law’s organizational and administrative spaces during the early to mid twentieth century. These architectural endeavours unfolded in three main stages: the years 1922–1926, during which the International Labour Organization (ILO) building, the first building exclusively designed for an international organization was constructed; the years 1927–1937 which saw the great polemic between modernist and classical architects over the building of the Palace of Nations; and the years 1947–1952, with the triumph of modernism, represented by the UN Headquarters in New York. These events provide an illuminating allegorical insight into the physical manifestation, modes of self-expression, and transformation of international law during this era, particularly the relationship between international law and the function and role of international organizations.

Illusions of common interest and joint purpose falter when states choose to break up, as with the recent changes to the European Union, or according to more dangerous precipitants such as those which shaped the Franco-German Armistice 1940, 80 years ago as a detail of war. The latter bares the sudden end of the Franco-British alliance and holds an invitation from history to re-examine the troubling political, social and legal layers of the concept of the vital interests of states. That category opened to radically different interpretations for political and legal thinkers who witnessed the fall of France yet did not respond directly or immediately. Hannah Arendt’s theory of politics, conceived in the aftermath of war as a corrective to the internal fragmentation of the European nation-state, elucidates the instability of the concept of vital interests which underpinned international legal and political thought in the 1930s and 1940s and frustrates the co-operative relations between states. The problem pairs back, she says, to whether interests signify an associative technique or sword. Her invitation for legal thought is to challenge the expectation of rupture implicit in the juridical category by outlining an alternative that recovers the pacifistic function of law and implicates the international lawyer.

This article explores the scope and nature of diplomatic immunity ratione materiae under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (VCDR) by comparing this immunity with state immunity and immunity ratione materiae of ordinary state officials in general international law. It is argued that diplomatic immunity ratione materiae is distinct from immunity ratione materiae of ordinary state officials because ‘functions’ of a mission member should not be treated as ‘state functions’ in general but should be understood within the framework of Article 3(1) of the VCDR, which sets out the functions of a diplomatic mission as a whole. This means that the immunity cannot be upheld for serious violation of international law. On the other hand, diplomatic immunity ratione materiae is also different from state immunity both in scope and in nature. Therefore, the immunity must be understood as a unique concept which includes both the substantive issue of non-personal-liability and the procedural issue of immunity from jurisdiction. This hybrid nature of diplomatic immunity ratione materiae is the corollary of the functional emphasis of the Vienna Convention.

Since Oscar Schachter’s articulation of the concept, scholars have attempted to better understand the ‘invisible college of international lawyers’ making up our profession. They have done this through piecemeal surveys of public professional rosters (arbitrators, International Court of Justice counsel), piecing together anecdotes of connections between members, or constructing stories about individuals’ role in discrete legal developments. Departing from these approaches, we use the obituaries published in the British Yearbook of International Law (1920–2017) to draw an interactive map of the ‘invisible college’. Obituaries are a unique window into international law’s otherwise private inner life, unveiling professional and personal connections between international lawyers and their shared career paths beyond single institutions or individual stories. Employing network analysis, a method commonly used in social sciences to describe complex social phenomena such as this, we are able to demonstrate the ubiquity of informal networks whereby ideas move, and provide evidence of the community’s homogeneity. Exploring connections between international lawyers and their shared characteristics in this novel way, we shed light on the features of this group and the potential impact individual personalities have on the law. These characteristics of the profession and its members are evident to insiders but externally invisible. Graphic representation is a powerful tool in bolstering critiques for diversity and contestation of mainstream law-making narratives. Rather than exhaustively mapping, however, we propose to take the ‘dead white men’ trope to an extreme, provoking the reader to question the self-image of the profession as an impersonal expert science.

International investment tribunals often use the language of ‘rights’ to characterize foreign investors’ claims against host states, evoking the language of human rights and, in some cases, appearing to conflate the two concepts. We investigate the cognitive framing of the relationship between investor rights and human rights in investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), as characterized by investment tribunals. We first establish that arbitrators (and scholars and counsel) tend to characterize investor claims as rights claims in general and property rights claims in particular, even if this normative basis is far from precise. Second, building on behavioural economics and cognitive psychology, we argue that this characterization places human rights considerations at a structural disadvantage in ISDS. Investor rights are perceived by arbitrators as endowments that are possessed and that risk being lost, while the human rights of host state populations are viewed as aspirational demands that might only be fully realized in the future. Thus, governmental actions interfering with investments are perceived by arbitrators as actual losses, while competing human rights claims are perceived as potential gains or demands. Following prospect theory, the former (certain losses) will usually be weighed more heavily in a decision-making calculus than the latter (possible gains). This loss–gain frame provides a cognitive explanation for the prevalence of arbitral decisions that prefer investor claims over human rights, a phenomenon that is highly problematic in times in which the legitimacy of the ISDS system rests on its ability to consider the rights of non-investors.

In parallel to the negotiation of international investment agreements to protect foreign investment, intergovernmental organizations have deployed considerable efforts to adopt and implement standards of conduct for business enterprises operating abroad. Despite their informal character under international law, these instruments are increasingly mentioned in international investment agreements and investment arbitration. How can references to informal instruments elaborated by intergovernmental organizations contribute to the imposition of human rights obligations on foreign investors in international investment law? Drawing upon the interactional theory developed by Jutta Brunnée and Stephen J. Toope, this article considers these references as a practice that has the potential to strengthen the normative pull towards compliance with human rights norms. In addition to emphasizing the role of international investment law as a relevant forum to develop a practice surrounding these informal instruments, it assesses whether the use of these instruments by members of a community of practice is intended to establish a genuine sense of obligation and to impose human rights obligations on foreign investors. Even if some instances evidence a practice that strengthens such a sense of obligation, most of the references included in international investment agreements and investment arbitration do not render a practice of legality.

The recent moderate trend to increasingly apply human rights law in investment awards is accompanied by certain new investment treaties which include expressed human rights provisions. An analysis of recent investment awards indicates that though there are some ‘winds of change’ in this field, it is equally noticeable that human rights law is far from being mainstreamed in international investment law. Investment arbitration procedural law is also undergoing a process of change, and the new procedural rules tend to enhance public elements in the investment arbitral system. This study is aimed at explaining these recent legal changes, highlighting the role of social movements in reframing investment relations as well as increasing public pressure to apply human rights law. These framing changes concern broadening the frame of investment arbitration (beyond the foreign investor–host state dyad), reversing the perceived balance of power between investors and host states, and zooming-in on local individuals and communities residing in host states. The discussion on factors impeding legal change in this field emphasizes the role of the private legal culture prevalent in the investment arbitration system, which is reflected and reinforced by certain resilient socio-legal frames. Informed by this analysis, the study suggests some legal mechanisms which can mitigate the inter-partes frame, and increase the application of human rights law in investment arbitration; inter alia, rigorous transparency rules that are likely to facilitate increased public pressure on tribunals and increase the participation of social movements representing local actors in arbitral processes.

The article offers a new perspective on the interaction of international investment law with other fields of international law based on an empirical study of the use of conflict clauses in over 1,000 investment treaties, providing a first systematic account of this type of provision. The use and content of conflict clauses serve as an indicator of state priorities regarding the coordination of investment standards of protection with other disciplines in the international law matrix. Both numerically and from qualitative perspectives, the clauses’ survey reveals important asymmetries in the engagement on the part of investment treaty makers with international economic disciplines, as compared to non-economic disciplines and human rights more specifically. Indeed, conflict clauses on international economic law are much more common, more detailed and establish clearer priority rules than similar provisions on any other field of international law; and the disparity is only likely to deepen over time. This analysis suggests that negotiators already have the toolkit to create effective links between international norms and institutions, and it is only its use that is uneven. As a result, the article suggests a shift in policy perspective to reflect that reality. Such a shift seems all the more relevant considering the growing body of literature showing that investment arbitrators (and international adjudicators more generally) pay only limited attention to norms from fields beyond their own, thus casting doubt on their capacity to develop a principled approach on the issue without treaty guidance.

There is a long-standing claim and ambition in international investment law that treaties and customary law contribute to economic development in countries hosting investment. However, this claim remains controversial and has been hotly debated among academics. The article explores how international investment law, understood as international investment agreements (IIAs) and their associated dispute settlement mechanisms, can support the right to development. It does so by analysing how rules regarding protection and flow of foreign direct investment have and can contribute to realizing the right to development and help achieve sustainable development goals. It finds that IIAs have had limited effects for promotion of investment into or restricting the policy space for least developed and low-income countries. It argues that potential effects of IIAs cannot be properly understood without taking into account other means of protecting and promoting foreign direct investment, i.e., national investment legislation and contracts. So far, national investment legislation is likely to have had more significant impact on flows of foreign direct investment and policy space of host countries than IIAs. Reforms of IIAs to increase synergies with the right to development will, therefore, have to be based on knowledge about and assessments of the dynamics between IIAs, domestic investment legislation, and investment contracts.

Recognizing the needs of victims in international criminal justice, the International Criminal Court (ICC or the Court) has introduced an innovative reparation scheme including the establishment of the Trust Fund for Victims. Besides the Fund’s role to implement reparation orders, a second mandate has been developed to provide immediate help to victims independent from a criminal conviction: the general assistance mandate. Surprisingly, this mandate has to date attracted little attention from scholars and remains vastly under-researched. By exploring in detail the work of the general assistance mandate, this article exposes its structural weaknesses as well as the negative impact it has on the procedures of the Court as a whole. It will demonstrate how the general assistance mandate weakens the legitimacy of the ICC as it undermines the presumption of innocence, risks compromising international and national Court proceedings, and masks the weaknesses of the Court. While there is no doubt that humanitarian assistance is urgently needed in situations that are investigated by the ICC, the mechanism chosen, namely the Trust Fund’s general assistance mandate is not an adequate solution. This article argues that general assistance has no place in an international criminal court and should, therefore, be completely separated from the ICC.

The potential of international criminal trials to express the wrongfulness of mass atrocities and instil norms of appropriate behaviour within communities has been subject to a lively theoretical debate. This article makes an important empirical contribution by examining the limitations to the expressivist aspiration of international criminal justice in the context of the message communicated by the International Criminal Court’s Office of the Prosecutor (ICC-OTP) in the Ongwen case. A detailed analysis of the selection of charges, modes of liability, and the overall presentation of the Prosecutor’s arguments at trial suggests that the ICC-OTP’s limited capabilities to apprehend suspects and its dependency on state co-operation risk the excessive stigmatization of the few defendants available for trial for the purpose of demonstrating the Court’s capability of prosecuting notorious criminals. As the only apprehended commander from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), Dominic Ongwen has been presented by the ICC-OTP as the ‘cause’ of crimes committed in Northern Uganda without due regard for the degree of his alleged involvement in those crimes compared to other LRA commanders, the role of other actors in the conflict, or the significance of his own victimization as a child. Ongwen’s excessive stigmatization expressed the importance of the Ugandan investigation after a decade of showing no results. Yet, it also produced a simplistic narrative which failed to express the complexity of violence in Northern Uganda.

To date, analyses of gender justice at the International Criminal Court (ICC) have focused primarily on critiques of, and shifts within, the Office of the Prosecutor. This article takes a different approach by focusing on the ICC’s judiciary. We being by arguing that state parties can and should do more than electing a balance of male and female judges – they can also ensure gender-sensitivity on the Bench by supporting candidates with expertise in gender analysis, and by backing judges who bring a feminist approach to their work once elected. Next, we explain the concept of the ‘feminist judgment-writing’ and suggest that this method offers a useful framework for embedding gender-sensitive judging at the ICC. To illustrate this argument, we highlight opportunities for ICC judges to engage in gender-sensitive judging in relation to interpreting the law, making findings of fact, and deciding procedural questions. The final section of the article discusses how best to institutionalize the practice of gender-sensitive judging at the ICC.