Abstract Much of the discourse surrounding Palestinian rights under international law has focused on the theme of denial across various spheres. This includes collective rights, particularly the right to self-determination, as well as individual rights such as family reunification and freedom of movement. However, another less-discussed area of injustice is recognition. A critical examination of Israeli private international law reveals a clear positioning where the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are treated as seemingly independent entities with their own courts and laws for civil litigation among Palestinians. However, this review essay introduces what I call a Third World Approach to Private International Law (TWAPIL) and contends that what was technically framed as an act of recognition amounted to unjust relegation. Directing Palestinian plaintiffs to litigate their claims in the OPT courts – especially in the aftermath of the Six-Day War and until the establishment of the Palestinian Authority – meant subjecting them to a dysfunctional judicial system compromised by the very occupation that had granted it recognition. Meanwhile, Israeli actions entrenched settler-colonial policies, allowing Israeli settlers unrestricted access to Israeli courts. Analysing this development in private international law exposes the doctrines of this legal framework to critical scrutiny, enabling acts of recognition to be reinterpreted as acts of oppression.
Abstract Since the middle of the 19th century, international law in Europe has struggled to reconcile free movement for Europeans and their descendants in settler colonies with a right of states to control the migration of racialized foreign workers. Until World War I, race was seen as an appropriate criterion to distinguish those who have free movement from those who do not. When contestation by Japan and by anti-colonial activists made race problematic as legitimation, migration was construed as part of the reserved domain of states that was not subject to international law. After decolonization, the 1985 Abdulaziz judgment of the European Court of Human Rights marked the abandonment of the reserved domain doctrine, while at the same time introducing a uniquely limited application of human rights to migration. This article analyses how international law in Europe has not been characterized by increasing migration restrictionism, as is often assumed. Instead, it has focused on justifying free movement for some and restrictionism for others. This becomes apparent when the inter-connections between international law, racialization and the European labour market are taken into account.
Abstract Since its founding in 1919, the International Labour Organization (ILO) has progressively strengthened global standards for paid maternity leave. Successive ILO conventions – in 1919, 1952, 1965, 1981 and 2000 – have culminated in a minimum entitlement of 14 weeks of paid maternity leave, with a recommendation of 18 paid weeks. Yet international law remains silent on paid paternity leave, reinforcing outdated gender norms. This article critiques the normative role of international law in entrenching unequal caregiving responsibilities, particularly in different-sex, two-parent households in which mothers continue to shoulder the greatest responsibility for care work, despite the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women’s commitment to ‘shared responsibility’ between parents for the care and upbringing of children. The European Union’s (EU) 2019 Work-Life Balance Directive marked a modest shift by mandating 10 days of paid paternity leave and expanding non-transferable paid parental leave. However, this EU norm falls short of addressing persistent disparities between maternity and paternity entitlements, the gendered uptake of shareable leave and the inadequate protection of the rights of parents in non-traditional families. Bringing international labour law, international human rights law and European equality law into conversation, this article interrogates how international legal frameworks have amplified, rather than disrupted, gendered caregiving paradigms – patterns often reproduced in domestic law. It concludes by identifying unresolved dilemmas and mapping pathways towards a more equitable parental leave model.
The United Nations Security Council is often criticized for being unrepresentative, paralysed by the veto and impotent in the face of major conflicts. Yet, beneath these familiar complaints lies a more profound dilemma: whether international society still believes in the desirability, let al.ne the possibility, of a global legal order anchored in the Security Council. This review essay situates contemporary reform debates against that larger question. It explores how proposals for modest procedural and working-method reforms collide with the political reality of entrenched permanent members; how expansion schemes risk draining attention from more feasible fixes; and how normative disagreements expose the fissure between Kelsenian faith in rules and Schmittian insistence on power. Alongside geopolitical tension, the Security Council must now contend with new existential threats – from climate change to artificial intelligence – that will test its mandate and legitimacy. The deeper problem, however, may not be the Security Council’s structure or procedures but, rather, the mismatch between the expectations placed upon it and what member states are prepared to deliver.
This article reflects on the place of institutional neutrality in international legal scholarship at a time of heightened geopolitical conflict, the politicization of universities and increasing demands for institutional voice. Drawing from personal reflections to revisit the 1967 Kalven Report, the article considers neutrality not as dogma or indifference but, rather, as a form of principled restraint aimed at safeguarding academic freedom from the potentially chilling effects of collective institutional speech. While recognizing that absolute neutrality is neither possible nor desirable, it is contended that unrestrained institutional speech risks narrowing the space for scholarly disagreement and undermining pluralism and dissent. The article distinguishes academic freedom from general freedom of expression, framing the former as a collective responsibility to protect spaces for critical inquiry and dissent. While acknowledging the profound ethical tension where silence feels like complicity in moments of global tragedy, the author concludes that institutional reflexivity and restraint remain vital - if imperfect - tools for sustaining academic institutions as open, pluralistic sites for the contestation of ideas.
This article examines the contested appointment of Christian Schmidt as High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina and evaluates the legal claim - advanced most vocally by the Russian Federation - that the post is vacant due to procedural irregularities. Through a systematic examination of state and institutional practice from 1995 to 2021, the article traces the evolving but consistent procedure by which previous High Representatives were designated by the Peace Implementation Council and endorsed by the United Nations Security Council. It argues that this established practice was disrupted in Schmidt's case, undermining the legal validity of his appointment and casting doubt on the legitimacy of his subsequent actions. By engaging doctrinal questions of authorization, subsequent institutional practice, the formation of procedural customary norms and fiduciary authority, the article contributes to broader debates about the legal frameworks underpinning international interventions and co-governance of territory. With it, it supplies a micro-history of international institutionalism within the niche of state building in the aftermath of conflict. It concludes that the absence of a Council endorsement may leave the Office of the High Representative exposed to legal challenge and further weaken Bosnia and Herzegovina's constitutional stability amid renewed internal and geopolitical contestation. The crisis, which led Schmidt to announce his resignation in May 2026, represents not merely a procedural dispute but also a deeper reckoning with the limits of international co-administration after 30 years of incomplete state building.
Two multilateral processes marked the formation and consolidation of modern international investment law: the 1965 ICSID Convention and the 1967 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Draft Convention on the Protection of Foreign Property. While the former has attracted significant attention, the latter remains largely unexplored despite its influence over bilateral treaties and the literature. This article draws on several archives to unearth the confidential negotiations that led to the 1967 OECD draft. Unlike studies of bilateral investment treaties, the negotiations at the OECD were dominated by the tensions between capital-exporting and capital-importing countries and focused on important legal questions that continue to worry experts and negotiators today, such as the notion of investment, corporate nationality, customary international law, exceptions, the transfer of funds and investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). The OECD negotiations show the significant role of business groups, the sometimes conflicting interests of capital-exporting states and the main concerns of capital-importing states. The latter were less interested in standards of protection and ISDS, focusing instead on limiting protection to productive investments and demanding the inclusion of investor obligations and a stronger derogations/exceptions clause.
In her opening remarks held at the 20th European Society of International Law's Annual Conference, Heike Krieger creates a scenario of how international law and its scholarly community will have developed by the year 2035. She focuses on possible consequences resulting from the rise of right-wing populist movements and geopolitical shifts. Based on a longue dur & eacute;e perspective, her remarks argue in favour of a reconstruction of the existing international legal order.
Forced marriage is widespread, occurring in armed conflicts around the world, with armed groups increasingly relying on the practice. Women at risk of, or who have experienced, forced marriage into armed groups may cross international borders and seek asylum in host countries where international refugee law applies. This article provides a unique in-depth analysis of the practice of forced marriage into armed groups under international refugee law. The article demonstrates how inter-disciplinarity enables us to conceive of forced marriage into armed groups as a form of forced recruitment and thereby interpret it as arising for reasons of imputed political opinion in international refugee law. The conceptualization is important, as the main cause of forcible displacement today is violence in armed conflicts. Moreover, it redresses the traditional view of forced marriage as a private and cultural practice imposed by women's family members and their ethnic or religious communities by revealing its instrumental nature and its strategic and political practice in the context of armed conflicts. The article calls for revised guidance to address the current knowledge and policy gap in international refugee law.
The French wine laws of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many of which were internationalized during the interwar and post-World War II eras, have been a vivid manifestation of European 'state capitalism' as evolving from the 'immature' independence of the economic sphere from the political sphere and the persistence of ethno-national boundaries. French wine laws specifically reacted to the extension of colonial viticulture to Algeria in the post-1848 era, paralleling France's own state-led transition to agrarian capitalism, followed by the startling rise of Algerian wine that required the French legislature to insulate the metropole's winemakers from global competition. In parallel, the French government sought the international protection of its wine names, joining hands with other European countries in the post-1945 era to delink the continent's colonial and migratory past from its post-war trade landscape through international law. Undermining neoclassical economics, these laws revolved around the 'particularization of the land and the product', the state's 'very visible hand' in supply and demand and the making of ethno-national imaginaries for that purpose. As such, they present an alternative view of international economic law that does not merely encase 'global economic integration' but is also employed against it. This article takes a historical materialist and post-colonial approach to French 'viticulture protectionism', zooming in on Algerian wine and the legal transformation of land and labour in the colony, followed by the legislation of the Third and Fourth Republics that influenced European-style 'geographical indications' as well as the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. The article argues that the century-long political interventions in support of national viticulture in Europe should be understood in the context of the distinct configuration of sovereignty and property in state capitalism as it reacts to Anglo-Saxon liberal capitalism and its policy of 'fair field and no favour'.
This article sheds light on the role played by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in clarifying and expanding the scope of European Union (EU) asylum legislation to accommodate gender-related claims. Through an integrated analysis of the Court's landmark rulings in the cases of Afghan women (A.H. and F.N.), gender equality (K., L.) and women victims of domestic violence (W.S.), the article argues that the CJEU innovates the approach to refugee protection by taking three progressive stances: (i) integrating the concept of systematic discrimination into EU asylum law for the conceptualization of women as a particular social group; (ii) applying the axiological relevance of gender equality for the construction of such a distinct social group; and (iii) easing the procedural requirement for the individualized assessment of women's claims in refugee status determination procedures. Accordingly, the article pursues a twofold goal. First, it explains that a gender-based reading of refugee law is necessary to fulfil the concept of effective protection mandated by international and European refugee law and that the CJEU has followed this path to strengthen the protection of women in refugee law. Second, it shows that the three judgments make an invaluable contribution to further integrating gender equality and mainstreaming within refugee law.
How does a reparation claim intervene in a world order made and unmade by colonialism? This article answers this question by analysing the 2009 reparation case in the British courts that was brought by veterans of the Mau Mau anti-colonialism struggle in Kenya in the 1950s. Colonial rule had been catastrophic, its exploitations and brutalities exemplified by a property law regime that dispossessed the G & itilde;k & utilde;y & utilde; people and emergency laws that licensed torture. Invoking state succession and the statute of limitation, the United Kingdom (UK) sought to place colonialism beyond the temporal reach of reparations claims. However, the presiding judge recognized continuities between the UK and the colonial administration as well as layers of collusion and collaboration between London and Nairobi. The challenge of exercising ethical judgment in an office embedded in an unethical enterprise resonates with that of the Magistrate in J.M. Coetzee's novel Waiting for the Barbarians. He grapples with the temporalities of (in)justice in reaching for a reparative response to colonialism's catastrophic force. The turn to reparations interrupts law's space-time continuum by conjoining legal subjects of yesterday and today - here and there - by treating colonial atrocities not as past violations of the rule of law but as symptomatic of the present rules of the game.
