Teaching Internation Law is a topic of great interest in international law academia. This book brings together a large number of international lawyers from all over the world presenting the state of ...the art of this discipline.
The endorsement/affirmation of the Global Compact on Migration and the Global Compact for Refugees in December 2018 has been accompanied by an intense discussion about the need to introduce new norms ...in these fields and about the actual legal force of the respective provisions. There was and there persists an open contrast between the openly declared non-bindingness of these Compacts and the widespread fear that they would either severely constrain national sovereignty in highly delicate areas or dilute arduously achieved standards (especially with regard to refugee law). Eventually, this whole discussion leads to the question about the meaning and the status of soft law in international law. With regard to the European Union, the transformative impact of the Global Compacts will depend on whether the EU further proceeds on its path of "emancipation" from international law while internally finding no consensus on the values here at issue.
The judgment delivered by the Court of Justice on 21st December 2016 in Front Polisario (case C-104/16 P, Council of the European Union v. Front Polisario GC), has all the ingredients to become a ...leading case of EU jurisprudence. While formally overturning the judgment by the General Court in case T-512/12 (judgment of 10 December 2015) which annulled the liberalization agreement concluded by EU with Morocco in 2012 as it violated the rights of the people of Western Sahara (occupied by Morocco), in substance the Court's judgment even goes beyond the judgment of the General Court in defence of self-determination. The jus cogens and erga omnes character of self-determination is reiterated and emphasized by the Court of Justice. This is no small thing in a time when calls for self-determination seem to disrupt long-established states worldwide and also in Europe.
Solidarity has always been an important element of European integration law and with the Treaty of Lisbon this principle has received even more prominence. But what does this concept mean and how ...should it be implemented? Within several areas of European integration law, for example regional policy, asylum, development cooperation, and economic and monetary Union, the principle of solidarity is regularly invoked when the existing law has to be interpreted or further developed. In this context it is striking to see how talk about solidarity is suited to stir up emotions, often associated with the fact that each party understands something different by this expression. In this contribution an effort will be made to unearth the very foundations of solidarity as it applies in the law of the European Union. It will be shown that solidarity within EU law has a strong reciprocal (or mutualistic) nature. This means that contributions are given with the hope to receive some day counter-contributions or with the intent to pursue a common goal. Understood in this sense, solidarity can be a useful instrument to further strengthen the European order. On the contrary, if this reciprocal context is left and solidarity is interpreted as an obligation for altruistic redistribution of resources on a regional or a global level (for example by creating a transfer union healing all budgetary sins by single Member States on a central level) the functionability and the basic consensus of European integration could be undermined.
Abstract
Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has been accompanied by attempts to justify this blatant violation of international law with reference to the accepted exceptions to the prohibition of ...the use of force. These attempts had to fail from the outset as the necessary preconditions were not given. More pernicious is, however, the endeavor to find a justification in an “alternative” system of international law. The respective arguments echo considerations popular in the first half of the 20th century, such as Carl Schmitt’s “theory of the greater space” and the “theory of encirclement”. To accept a revival of such arguments, even only in part, risks undermining the very basics of modern international law. Ultimately, to allow this “obsession with territory” (Georges Scelle) to unfold would not even be in Russia’s interest as it would deflect from this country’s real economic and societal problems that need urgent action.
The Russian aggression against Ukraine has unleashed new fears of a nuclear war and also due to direct and indirect threats by the Russian side. As a consequence, it seems appropriate to re‐open the ...debate about the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons, a debate led to somewhat inconclusive results by the ICJ Opinion of 1996 on the ‘Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons’. If some elements of rationality are left in this war, nuclear weapons will not be employed in Ukraine. The major casualty of this rhetoric could, however, be the far‐reaching de‐legitimisation of nuclear warfare achieved in the past. Therefore, the time has come to re‐examine the ICJ assessments of 1996 and to take a clearer stance in this regard which should be more appropriate as to the exigencies of modern international society. It is argued here that now the ICJ would come to different conclusions if seized again with the same questions as in 1996.
Abstract
After intervention and occupation lasting for two decades, the US and their allies left Afghanistan hastily and precipitately. Afghanistan is again ruled by the Taliban who do not seem to be ...able to provide minimum guarantees of stability and basic human rights protection. These events put into question pivotal international law concepts, such as the Responsibility to Protect or the requirement to provide for transitional justice, brought forward as a justification for intervention and occupation in the first place. This article aims to evidence that these concepts, independently from the terminology chosen, are expression of overarching aims of the State community. Interventions directed at these goals are associated with broader responsibilities both by the interveners as by the State community as a whole. In view of limited intervention and administration capacity, it is crucial to return ownership to the affected populations as soon as possible. Protracted intervention and foreign rule undermines self-determination and the capacity to find a self-reliant way to justice.
More attention has also to be devoted to the long-term effects of measures of intervention and the reciprocal interaction between rebuilding activities in the larger sense. It is submitted that attempts to re-engineer a societal fabric as a fighting tool in an ideological struggle creates enhanced responsibility as it undermines self-determination and ownership. A glaring example is the purposeful radicalization of students in Afghan refugee camps.
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