Call for Papers: The Legacy of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

A call for papers has been issued for a conference on "The Legacy of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda," to be held October 31-November 1, 2013. Note the deadline is May 24, 2013. Here's the call:

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

THE LEGACY OF THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR RWANDA

31 October – 1 November 2013

CALL FOR PAPERS

On 22 December 2010, the UN Security Council, established by resolution 1966 the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals. In that resolution, the Council acknowledged the “considerable contribution the Tribunals have made to international criminal justice and accountability for serious international crimes and the re-establishment of the rule of law in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda”.

Over the years the Rwanda tribunal has achieved a number of milestones in the development of international criminal law jurisprudence, which include:

* decisions in relation to genocide and the criminal responsibility of former heads of government;

* decisions on rape and sexual assault as elements of the crime of genocide;

* decisions examining the link between the media, hate speech and mass slaughter.

The significance of the Rwanda Tribunal has also surfaced in debates about the Tribunal’s role in contributing to the process of national reconciliation and the restoration and maintenance of peace, an objective clearly envisaged in Security Council resolution 955 (1994) which brought the Tribunal into existence. Moreover, in 1995, only a year after 800,000 people were massacred in Rwanda, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, chairman of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), told the new Rwandan government that ‘unless you move beyond justice in the form of a tribunal, there is no hope for Rwanda’. South Africa’s TRC, the ICTR and the Rwandan gacaca courts each represent different approaches to transitional justice. The co-existence of diverse mechanisms in Rwanda raises important questions about whether they are indeed complementary or incompatible.

With these developments in mind and with the Tribunal’s mandate nearing its end, the time is opportune to interrogate critically the role of the Tribunal - both internationally and in Rwanda - and to analyse its successes, failures and challenges. The Conference therefore aims at providing a forum for evaluating the legacy of the Tribunal. The conference organisers welcome papers on this important theme and any of the following sub-themes:

* The ICTR’s Contribution to International Humanitarian Law/International Criminal Law

* The Relationship between the Rwanda Tribunal and Domestic Courts

* Transitional Justice and Reconciliation

* The South African TRC, and the Rwandan Gacaca Courts

* The Challenges of International Criminal Prosecutions in Africa

* The Rwanda Tribunal and the Future of International Criminal Justice in Africa

The Conference organisers are inviting abstracts for papers to be sent to Mia Swart (mswart@uj.ac.za) not later than 24 May 2013. Abstracts should not be longer that 500 words. Candidates will be contacted within three weeks of submission if they are successful. It is envisaged that a selection of conference papers will be published.

The Conference is co-organised by:

The University of Johannesburg

The International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda (Mr Roland Kouassi Amoussouga)

The Department of Public Law, Faculty of Law (Prof Mia Swart, Dr Mispa Roux)

The South African Institute for Advanced Constitutional, Public, Human Rights and International Law (Prof David Bilchitz, Mr Redson Kapindu and Mr Michael Dafel)

The National Research Foundation Research Chair in International Law (Prof Hennie Strydom)

The Conference is funded by:

The University of Johannesburg

The Konrad Adenauer Foundation

New Volume: Austrian Review of International and European Law

The latest volume of the Austrian Review of International and European Law (Vol. 14, 2009) is out. Contents include:

• Symposium: International Law, Values and the Use of Force
• Lilly Sucharipa, Six Decades in an Eminent International Lawyer’s Life - Laudatio in Honour of Professor Karl Zemanek
• Hisashi Owada, Conflict of Values in International Law: Universality of International Law in a Globalizing World
• Christian Tomuschat, Human Rights: Tensions Between Negative and Positive Duties of States
• Gerhard Hafner, Some Thoughts on the State-Oriented and Individual-Oriented Approaches in International Law
• August Reinisch, Value Conflicts Within the United Nations Security Council
• Hanspeter Neuhold, Anticipatory Self-Defence: Legal Analysis versus Strategic Realities
• Stephan Wittich, The Use of Force, Self-defence and the Unrealism in International Law
• Articles
Akbar Rasulov, The Life and Times of the Modern Law of Reservations: The Doctrinal Genealogy of General Comment No. 24
• August Reinisch, The Rediscovery of Holocaust-Related Property Issues after 1989 – An Inside View of the Arbitration Panel for In Rem Restitution of Publicly-Owned Property
• Emmanuel Voyiakis, Do General Principles Fill ‘Gaps’ in International Law?
• Current Developments
• Peter Hilpold, The International Court of Justice’s Advisory Opinion on Kosovo: Perspectives of a Delicate Question

New Issue: Journal of World Trade

The latest issue of the Journal of World Trade (Vol. 47, no. 3, June 2013) is out. Contents include:

• Vinod Rege, Marwa Kisiri, Elijah Manyara, Nyame Baafi, & Edward Bizimuremyi, Could Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Other Developing Countries Which Have Not Been Able to Establish Legal Framework for the Application of Trade Remedy Measures Make a Beginning by Establishing Mechanism for the Application of Safeguard Measures Only?
• Gabrielle Marceau, Arnau Izaguerri, & Vladyslav Lanovoy, The WTO’s Influence on Other Dispute Settlement Mechanisms: A Lighthouse in the Storm of Fragmentation
• Johannes Norpoth, Mysteries of the TBT Agreement Resolved? Lessons to Learn for Climate Policies and Developing Country Exporters from Recent TBT Disputes
• Robert M. MacLean, Duty as a Cost in EU Anti-Dumping Refunds: The Triple Jump and Other Obstacles to Success
• Ruwantissa Abeyratne, Trade in Air Transport: Have We Lost Our Way?
• Toan Le, Vietnam’s Experience in Developing International Trade Lawyers Following Five Years of World Trade Organization Accession
• Joseph Michael Finger, First, Do the Patient No Harm
• Bernard Hoekman, The World Bank Group Trade Strategy: Fit for Purpose?

New Issue: Global Trade and Customs Journal

The latest issue of Global Trade and Customs Journal (Vol. 8, no. 5, 2013) is out. Contents include:

• Gustav Brink, ‘Appropriate’ Price Comparisons in Anti-dumping Investigations: Apples-to-Apples or Starking-to-Starking?
• Fernando Coppe Alcaraz, Addressing Increased Imports: Policy Options in Brazil
• Stephen Creskoff & Petrit Gashi, Tariffs as an Instrument of Trade Policy: The Unique Case of Kosovo

Alston on Martinez's "The Slave Trade and the Origins of International Human Rights Law"

Philip Alston (New York Univ. - Law) has published Does the Past Matter? On the Origins of Human Rights (Harvard Law Review, Vol. 126, no. 7, p. 2043, May 2013). Jenny S. Martinez's response to Alston's review, posted in the Law Review's online Forum, is here. Samuel Moyn previously reviewed Martinez's book here. Here's the abstract:

How far back can we trace the genealogy of today’s international human rights system? And does it matter where we come out on such an arcane academic question? Historians, international lawyers, and human rights activists have recently suggested that there is, in fact, much at stake here. But there the consensus ends, and the accounts reflected in the vibrant literature of recent years diverge radically in the answers they propose. They also disagree in fundamental respects as to why the lineage of human rights really matters in the twenty-first century.

Until fairly recently, little attention was paid to the historiography of human rights, and the main-stream histories mostly reflected an uncritical narrative of relatively steady progress in the evolution of ideas, perhaps dating even from biblical times, and the gradual uptake of these ideas in the form of legal norms. But these somewhat amorphous and largely undifferentiated genealogies have come under strong challenge from a variety of critics, almost all of whom have sought to identify more precise and recent points of origin for today’s human rights family tree. The present analysis takes as its point of departure the claim by Professor Jenny Martinez in The Slave Trade and the Origins of International Human Rights Law that contemporary international human rights law has its origins in the early nineteenth-century movement in Great Britain to abolish the transatlantic slave trade (pp. 149–50). In the final years of the eighteenth century, the British abolitionist movement began to make significant inroads, and by 1807 the reformers had succeeded, apparently against all the odds, in passing the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Parliament prohibited British subjects from participating in the trade, and slaves were no longer allowed to be imported into Britain’s extensive colonial empire. The British navy began to apply the law, and offenders were initially tried in British courts. Starting in 1817, Britain also entered into a series of bilateral treaties that led to the creation of so-called “courts of mixed commission” sitting in Freetown (Sierra Leone), Havana (Cuba), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), and Paramaribo (Suriname) with the power to determine whether seized ships had been engaged in slaving and, if so, to order their forfeiture (pp. 78–79). In the course of the next five decades, the mixed commissions heard over six hundred cases and freed some eighty thousand slaves (p. 99).

Martinez portrays the mixed commissions as “the first international human rights courts” (p. 6) and sees them as an integral part of “the most successful episode ever in the history of international human rights law” (p. 13). Not content with staking out a large historical claim, she also implies that genealogy matters by claiming that the nineteenth-century history that she recounts has major implications for many of the key contemporary debates over human rights, so much so that this history should change the way we think about the entire field, including its “origins, limits, and potential” (p. 15).

It is, in many respects, an appealing thesis, but it has to contend with the fact that it flies directly in the face of a highly influential new school of revisionist history. This new understanding largely dismisses the very quest for genealogy, separates the antislavery movement out from what should properly be thought of as matters of human rights, systematically downplays the international significance of all but the most recent discourse around human rights, accords minimal importance to treaties in this area and even less significance to courts, and locates the origins of the international human rights movement firmly in the year 1977.

In this Review, I first consider the extent to which Martinez’s claims about the roles played by rights, treaties, and courts in the first half of the nineteenth century are supported by the evidence. I then situate her account along the spectrum of recent historiographical studies in the field. In particular, I contrast her approach with that of Professor Samuel Moyn, who is the most influential of the revisionists. I argue that much of the heated controversy that has been generated in the recent literature over whether and how the origins of human rights may be discerned is due primarily to a failure to acknowledge the polycentric nature of the human rights enterprise. Attempts to capture the alleged essence of that enterprise by viewing it through a single lens are intrinsically flawed and potentially deeply misleading. I nevertheless conclude by arguing that genealogy matters a great deal in these debates, although not in the ways that Martinez suggests.

New Issue: International Human Rights Law Review

The latest issue of the International Human Rights Law Review (Vol. 2, no. 1, 2013) is out. Contents include:

• Ilias Bantekas, Christos Kypraios, & Kebreab Isaac, Outsourcing Law Reform in Developing Countries to Private Contractors: A Human Rights Perspective
• Manisuli Ssenyonjo, Direct Access to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights by Individuals and Non Governmental Organisations: An Overview of the Emerging Jurisprudence of the African Court 2008-2012
• Alexander Murray, Enforced Disappearance and Relatives’ Rights before the Inter-American and European Human Rights Courts
• Parisa Zangeneh, ‘The Gloves Came Off’: Torture and the United States after September 11, 2001
• Hussein Ahmed Tura, Indigent’s Right to State Funded Legal Aid in Ethiopia

Webb: International Judicial Integration and Fragmentation

Philippa Webb (King's College London - Law) has published International Judicial Integration and Fragmentation (Oxford Univ. Press 2013). Here's the abstract:

Fragmentation is one of the major debates within international law, but no detailed case studies have been made to show the problems that it creates, and how they can be addressed. This book asks whether the growing number of international judicial bodies render decisions that are largely consistent with one another, which factors influence this (in)consistency, and what this tells us about the development of international law by international courts and tribunals. It answers these questions by focusing on three areas of law, genocide, immunities, and the use of force, as in each of these areas different international judicial entities have dealt with cases stemming from the same situation and set of facts.

The work focuses on four main courts: the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which often interpret, apply, and develop the same legal principles, despite their different mandates and functions. It argues that judicial fragmentation is damaging to the international legal system, as coherent and compatible pronouncements on the law by international courts are vital to retaining the confidence of the international community. Ultimately, the book makes a plea for the importance of judicial integration for the stability and reliability of the international legal system.

Hale, Held, & Young: Gridlock: Why Global Cooperation is Failing when We Need It Most

Thomas Hale (Univ. of Oxford - Blavatnik School of Government), David Held (Durham Univ. - Politics and International Relations), & Kevin Young (Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst - Political Science) have published Gridlock: Why Global Cooperation is Failing when We Need It Most (Polity 2013). Here's the abstract:

The issues that increasingly dominate the 21st century cannot be solved by any single country acting alone, no matter how powerful. To manage the global economy, prevent runaway environmental destruction, reign in nuclear proliferation, or confront other global challenges, we must cooperate. But at the same time, our tools for global policymaking - chiefly state-to-state negotiations over treaties and international institutions - have broken down. The result is gridlock, which manifests across areas via a number of common mechanisms. The rise of new powers representing a more diverse array of interests makes agreement more difficult. The problems themselves have also grown harder as global policy issues penetrate ever more deeply into core domestic concerns. Existing institutions, created for a different world, also lock-in pathological decision-making procedures and render the field ever more complex. All of these processes - in part a function of previous, successful efforts at cooperation - have led global cooperation to fail us even as we need it most.

Amann: A Janus Look at International Criminal Justice

Diane Marie Amann (Univ. of Georgia - Law) has posted A Janus Look at International Criminal Justice (Northwestern Journal of International Human Rights, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Invoking the name of Janus, the Roman god who looked simultaneously at the past and the future, this article examines international criminal justice at a watershed moment, when a number of 20-year-old ad hoc tribunals were winding down even as the International Criminal Court was entering its teen years. First explored are challenges posed by politics – that is, the need to secure cooperation from states and from the U.N. Security Council – and economics – that is, the need to work within budgetary constraints. The article then surveys significant developments in each of a half-dozen international criminal courts and tribunals.

Natarajan: Forced Displacements from Syria or How to Institutionalize Regimes of Suffering

Usha Natarajan (American Univ. in Cairo - Law) has posted an ESIL Reflection on Forced Displacements from Syria or How to Institutionalize Regimes of Suffering.

New Issue: International Affairs

The latest issue of International Affairs (Vol. 89, no. 3, May 2013) is out. Contents include:

• Special Issue: Negotiating the rise of new powers
• Amrita Narlikar, Negotiating the rise of new powers
• Sean W. Burges, Brazil as a bridge between old and new powers?
• Amrita Narlikar, India rising: responsible to whom?
• Shaun Breslin, China and the global order: signalling threat or friendship?
• Sevasti-Eleni Vezirgiannidou, The United States and rising powers in a post-hegemonic global order
• Michael Smith, Beyond the comfort zone: internal crisis and external challenge in the European Union's response to rising powers
• Brendan Vickers, Africa and the rising powers: bargaining for the ‘marginalized many’
• Steven McGuire, Multinationals and NGOs amid a changing balance of power
• Miles Kahler, Rising powers and global governance: negotiating change in a resilient status quo

New Issue: Review of International Political Economy

The latest issue of the Review of International Political Economy (Vol. 20, no. 2, 2013) is out. Contents include:

• Special Issue: Dreaming with the BRICS? The Washington Consensus and the New Political Economy of Development
• Cornel Ban & Mark Blyth, The BRICs and the Washington Consensus: An introduction
• Marion Fourcade, The material and symbolic construction of the BRICs: Reflections inspired by the RIPE Special Issue
• Sarah Babb, The Washington Consensus as transnational policy paradigm: Its origins, trajectory and likely successor
• Cornel Ban, Brazil's liberal neo-developmentalism: New paradigm or edited orthodoxy?
• Peter Rutland, Neoliberalism and the Russian transition
• Rahul Mukherji, Ideas, interests, and the tipping point: Economic change in India
• Matt Ferchen, Whose China Model is it anyway? The contentious search for consensus

New Issue: Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Institutions

The latest issue of Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Institutions (Vol. 19, no. 2, April-June 2013) is out. Contents include:

• Global Insights
• Cedric de Coning, John Karlsrud, & Ingrid Marie Breidlid, Turning to the South: Civilian Capacity in the Aftermath of Conflict
• Articles
• Justin Gest, Carolyn Armstrong, Elizabeth Carolan, Elliott Fox, Vanessa Holzer, Tim McLellan, Audrey Cherryl Mogan, & Meher Talib, Tracking the Process of International Norm Emergence: A Comparatiave Analysis of Six Agendas and Emerging Migrants’ Rights
• Heidi Nichols Haddad, After the Norm Cascade: NGO Mission Expansion and the Coalition for the International Criminal Court
• Michael Schroeder, The Politics of Change: The Evolution of UN Electoral Services, 1989-2006
• Erin McCandless, Wicked Problems in Peacebuilding and Statebuilding: Making Progress in Measuring Progress Through the New Deal
• Devin Joshi & Roni Kay O’Dell, Global Governance and Development Ideology: The United Nations and the World Bank on the Left-Right Spectrum
• Special Focus
• Tom Farer, Governing the Great Transnational River Systems: An Introductory Word
• Aysegul Kibaroglu & Waltina Scheumann, Evolution of Transboundary Politics in the Euphrates-Tigris River System: New Perspectives and Political Challenges
• Farhad Mukhtarov & Andrea K. Gerlak, River Basin Organizations in the Global Water Discourse: An Exploration of Agency and Strategy
• Book Review
• Catia C. Confortini, Violence Against Women, Masculinities, and the Global Economy

Call for Submissions: Tory Fellowships for Legal Writing

The University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review has issued a call for submissions for its Tory Fellowships for Legal Writing. Here's the call:

Call for Submissions

Tory Fellowships for Legal Writing

To encourage law students and recent law graduates to publish their legal writing, the University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review awards Tory Fellowships each summer. Tory Fellowships are awarded to law students and recent graduates who have written promising legal papers.

Recipients of a Tory Fellowship receive a monetary award as well as detailed commentary on their paper from the Law Review Senior Board. The goal of the Senior Board is to suggest revisions that Fellows can make to their papers that will increase their chance for publication in the Law Review.

The Law Review will award up to four Tory Fellowships of $500 each this summer. A portion of the award is distributed upon award acceptance, and the remainder is distributed when the author resubmits his or her paper to the Law Review after making revisions proposed by the Senior Board.

All submitted papers will be reviewed anonymously by a group of Articles Editors and Senior Editors at the Law Review. Stand out papers will be submitted to the Senior Board for review and final selection.

To apply for a Tory Fellowship, please submit your paper and a brief cover letter to www.utflr.org. In your cover letter, please suggest revisions that you can make to your paper to bring it to a publishable level. Fellows will be selected based on the strength of their submitted paper as well as their proposed revisions. Submissions must be in Word (.doc or .docx) format. Please submit your cover letter and paper in a single word document.

If you experience problems submitting through the website, please submit your paper to law.review@utoronto.ca with “Tory Fellowship” in the subject line. Papers selected for the Fellowships are not assured of publication in the Law Review.

The deadline for submissions is midnight (EST) on Friday, May 31, 2013.

Eligibility requirements:

You and your co-authors must be law students, graduate students in law, clerks, articling students or first year associates.

Join us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/utflr or follow us on Twitter @UTLawReview

Calamita, Earnest, & Burgstaller: The Future of ICSID and the Place of Investment Treaties in International Law

N. Jansen Calamita (British Institute of International and Comparative Law; Univ. of Birmingham - Law), David Earnest (Hogan Lovells International LLP), & Markus Burgstaller (Hogan Lovells International LLP) have published The Future of ICSID and the Place of Investment Treaties in International Law (British Institute of International and Comparative Law 2013). Here's the abstract:

The ICSID system and the international investment treaties that have come to rely upon it face a host of challenges, some new and some persistent. Increasingly arbitral tribunals charged with the interpretation and application of international investment treaties are being asked to address the critical relationship between those treaties and other regimes of international law, such as the international law of human rights, trade law and the law of the European Union. These questions raise fundamental issues about the scope of investment treaty obligations and the resolution of investment treaty disputes through arbitration.

At the same time as arbitral tribunals are being presented with these fundamental issues regarding the interpretation and application of investment treaties, the ICSID system upon which thousands of international investment treaties rely faces its own ongoing challenge of meeting the goals set for it by its States Parties. Whether the task is addressing the efficient resolution of disputes through the use of ICSID's new summary procedures mechanism or establishing a consistent jurisprudence on annulment, a wide array of new and perennial questions require answers.

UC Irvine International Justice Clinic: The Council and the Court: Improving Security Council Support of the International Criminal Court

The UC Irvine School of Law International Justice Clinic has published The Council and the Court: Improving Security Council Support of the International Criminal Court (2013). The executive summary is here. Here's the abstract:

The UC Irvine School of Law International Justice Clinic is pleased to release The Council and the Court, a report designed to answer critical questions about how the UN Security Council may improve its support of the International Criminal Court (ICC): What steps may be taken to convert the rhetorical and political support of the Council to concrete measures supporting Court activities? How may supporters build lasting support for the Court on the Council? How can strong support be developed without compromising the ICC’s independence? What kind of efforts might be helpful to build lasting support in perceived-to-be reluctant capitals, especially Beijing and Moscow?

The result of a project supported by Humanity United, and involving a collaboration with the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations, The Council and the Court explores the relationship between the two institutions and offers proposals to build a sustainable relationship between them, one that is sensitive to the Court’s mandates of accountability and independence and the Council’s mandate of maintaining international peace and security. It addresses factors that animate the Council’s relationship with the Court, highlighting legal, political, and diplomatic dynamics that shape support for the Court on the Security Council. It offers principles that should govern the Council-Court relationship, steps the Council and others may adopt to improve the Council’s support of the Court, and recommendations to engage China and Russia in developing a sustainable relationship between the institutions of security and justice.

Dozens of off-the-record interviews conducted in 2012 in New York, Beijing, Moscow, The Hague, and elsewhere underlie this report. Many of its ideas developed during a two-day workshop held in Laguna Beach, California, in November 2012, which brought together diplomats, ICC officials, NGO leaders, and scholars to identify the needs of the Court, the opportunities for cooperation, and the steps that members of the Council could take in support of the ICC. Details of the Laguna Workshop may be found elsewhere on this website.

The Security Council’s attention has helped catapult the ICC into the international limelight. The Council called upon the Court to investigate alleged crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide in Darfur in 2005 and Libya in 2011. One journalist counted nine references to the ICC in Security Council resolutions in 2012 alone. The Council held an unprecedented public session on the ICC during the fall of 2012, with all participating governments expressing a positive view of the Court. A Court whose charter, the Rome Statute, was only adopted in 1998 and entered into force in 2002, now seems anchored to the Security Council in rhetoric and reality. Moving forward, the task is to render that reality effective for the victims of international crimes everywhere.

Call for Papers: Creation of International Law: Exploring the International Law Components of Peace

A call for papers has been issued for a conference on "Creation of International Law: Exploring the International Law Components of Peace," to be held April 4-5, 2014, at the University of Wisconsin Law School, in Madison. Here's the call:

Call for Papers

Creation of International Law: Exploring the International Law Components of Peace

Wisconsin International Law Journal Annual Symposium, April 4-5, 2014, University of Wisconsin Law School, USA

We invite internationally acclaimed women scholars and advanced PhD candidates to the second conference on the Creation of International Law, to be hosted by the University of Wisconsin on April 4-5, 2014 as part of its Wisconsin International Law Journal annual symposium. The intention is to continue and expand the network of women scholars and practitioners that was launched in 2009 in Norway to support their engagement in public international law. The theme of the second conference is: Exploring the International Law Components of Peace. The pursuit of peace remains a global challenge and there is a need for reflection as to how the current international public law institutional and normative structure functions and what are the gaps?

Scholars from across the globe are invited to present papers addressing challenges in relation to the creation of international law from theoretical, normative, or empirical perspectives. We seek to bring together academic women to promote new research collaboration and strengthen their ability to influence the creation and elaboration of international law. The conference seeks to profile women as subjects of international public law development, both for students and researchers seeking recruitment to the law schools. Papers selected for presentation at the symposium will be published in the Wisconsin International Law Journal.

The following are some suggested areas for papers, addressing issues relating to peace at the international level (state-state/international community) and at the domestic level (state-society/individual). Papers can address the tension between the notion of negative peace (prohibition of violence and aggression) and positive peace (elimination of structural violence, respect for human rights, and social justice ). However, the list is not exhaustive and we welcome other areas of international law related to international peace.

• Public International Law: We welcome papers discussing the current divide on R2P, juxtaposing the principles of territorial integrity and state sovereignty against initiatives advocating intervention in response to massive violations of human rights, and the right to democracy. We also welcome papers on reform of international and national institutions in order to improve the implementation and enforcement of peace.

• International Human Rights: Peace: Is it a Human Right? Is it an individual or collective right? Who are the beneficiaries of this right and who are the duty-bearers? How should we move forward in terms of defining the scope of the right to peace and ensuring compliance? Freedom of Expression- what is the scope of this right and its relation to peace? The Rights to Non-Discrimination, Equality, Freedom of Expression, Food, Water, Housing, and Education- how do we measure progress?

• International Humanitarian Law: We welcome papers on prohibition of nuclear weapons and weapons composed with nuclear byproducts, incendiary weapons, and autonomous weapons systems. We also welcome papers addressing initiatives to regulate disarmament or regulate the arms trade.

• International Environmental Law: We welcome papers on peace, sustainable development, and the interface between climate change and human rights/migration law

• International Trade Law/Economic Law: We welcome papers addressing institutional and normative roots of structural violence, poverty, and global inequality/inequity. We also seek papers addressing the marginalization of women and efforts to empower them.

• Dispute Resolution: We welcome papers on mediation, conciliation, arbitration, commissions of inquiry, peace commissions, tribunals, and other non-violent mechanisms. We also welcome papers addressing the participation of women in these forums.

• Education: We welcome papers discussing the teachingof International Law- is there a bias towards topics addressing violence and use of force? How can we improve the teaching of peace within the law school?

The deadline for submission of abstracts is October 1, 2013. Scholars whose abstracts are selected for the symposium will be notified by November 1, 2013. Complete papers from those selected are due on March 1, 2014. Please email your abstracts of not more than 500 words including your institutional affiliation and contact details to Cecilia Marcela Bailliet (c.m.bailliet@jus.uio.no) and Sumudu Atapattu (saatapattu@wisc.edu) by the deadline. Late submissions will not be accepted.

Pollack: Political Science and International Courts

Mark A. Pollack (Temple Univ. - Political Science) has posted Political Science and International Courts (in The Oxford Handbook of International Adjudication, Cesare Romano, Karen Alter & Yuval Shany eds., forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

The aim of this paper is to examine the essential features of political science theories and methods as applied to international courts and tribunals, and to identify the value-added insights as well as the weaknesses of this research. The paper proceeds in five parts. Following a brief introduction, the second part of the paper considers a fundamental, epistemological distinction between law and political science as disciplines, with the former taking a largely – but not exclusively – doctrinal and “internalist” approach to international law, while the latter generally adopts a positivist and “externalist” approach. Next, in the third section, I briefly explore the range of political science theories about international politics, and the ways in which these theories have been adapted to the study of international law and courts. Building on this epistemological and theoretical basis, part four identifies five substantive, value-added contributions of political science to the study of international adjudication, which I organize under the rubrics of institutional design, judicial behavior, the behavior of litigants, judgment compliance, and the dynamic evolution of international adjudication systems over time. The fifth and final section identifies weaknesses, lacunae and blind spots of the extant political science literature, which I argue has drawn too heavily on off-the-shelf IR approaches and not enough on the insights of international legal scholarship, and concludes with a call for a more truly interdisciplinary law-and-politics approach to the study of international courts.

Wei: Rethinking the New York Convention: A Law and Economics Approach

Shen Wei has published Rethinking the New York Convention: A Law and Economics Approach (Intersentia 2013). Here's the abstract:

The New York Convention is regarded as one of the most successful treaties in the past fifty-five years. Its simplicity and brevity in wording but complexity and diversity in application have triggered endless discussions, debates and writings. Rethinking the New York Convention – A Law and Economics Approach for the first time offers a unique jurisprudence-oriented analysis by applying two major analytic approaches, namely Darwinian legal theory and game theory.

Four key topics are analysed in this book: the evolution of the treaty, the competition among various jurisdictions, lex mercatoria and governing law in arbitration, and the doctrine of public policy. This choice of key topics offers the opportunity to look into these so-called core dilemmas surrounding the New York Convention from different angles, inspiring the reader to think outside the box. In addition, against the background of the current financial crisis, this book focuses on the use of the New York Convention in the context of global governance and discusses the need for a reform of the existing regime of cross-border transactions and activities.

Conference: Culture and International Economic Law

On June 20-21, 2013, the Maastricht University Faculty of Law will host a conference on "Culture and International Economic Law." The program is here. Here's the idea:

Can states promote economic development without infringing their cultural wealth? Culture represents inherited values, ideas, beliefs, and traditions, which characterize social groups and their behaviour. Culture is not a static concept but rather a dynamic force, which evolves through time and shapes countries and civilizations. As such, culture has always benefitted from economic exchange. Nowadays globalization and international economic governance have spurred a more intense dialogue and interaction among nations: thus, they offer unprecedented opportunities for cultural exchange. In parallel, foreign direct investments can promote cultural diversity and provide the funds needed to locate, recover and preserve cultural heritage.

Nonetheless, globalization and international economic governance can also jeopardize cultural diversity and determine the erosion of the cultural wealth of nations. While trade in cultural products can lead to cultural homogenization and even cultural hegemony, foreign direct investments have an unmatched penetrating force with the ultimate capacity of changing landscapes and erasing memory. At the same time, the increase in global trade and foreign direct investment (FDI), has determined the creation of legally binding and highly effective regimes that demand states to promote and facilitate trade and FDI. Has an international economic culture emerged that emphasizes productivity and economic development at the expense of the common wealth?

This conference, funded by the European Union and Maastricht University, aims to explore the ‘clash of cultures’ between international economic law and international cultural law. It is articulated into four parts: the first part introduces the main themes and challenges. Parts II, III and IV explore the interplay between culture and economic interests in international economic law, international intellectual property law and European law respectively.

New Issue: Journal of World Investment & Trade

The latest issue of the Journal of World Investment & Trade (Vol. 14, no. 2, 2013) is out. Contents include:

• Kálmán Kalotay, Inward FDI in the Western Balkans in the wake of Croatia’s EU accession
• Xiuli Han, Zhiyi Liu, & Lingzi Liu, Revisiting the Case of China-Measures Involving the Exportation of Various Raw Materials from the perspective of Effectiveness of the Necessity Defence
• Michail Dekastros, Portfolio Investment: Reconceptualising the Notion of Investment under the ICSID Convention
• An Chen & E-Nuo Gu, Should “the Perspective of South-North Contradictions” Be “Abandoned”? – Focusing on “2012 Sino-Canada BIT”
• Jacopo Tavassi, The regime of international investments within the EC-Chile Association Agreement: towards a possible renegotiation?
• Akansha Dubey & Puloma Mukherjee, Double Remedies: A Feasible Option?
• Jacques Werner, Arbitral Chronicle VIII A Swiss Arbitrator’s View of the CIETAC Arbitration System

Fineman & Zinsstag: Feminist Perspectives on Transitional Justice: From International and Criminal to Alternative Forms of Justice

Martha Albertson Fineman (Emory Univ. - Law) & Estelle Zinsstag (KU Leuven - Leuvens Instituut voor Criminologie) have published Feminist Perspectives on Transitional Justice: From International and Criminal to Alternative Forms of Justice (Intersentia 2013). The table of contents is here. Here's the abstract:

Truth-seeking mechanisms, international criminal law developments, and other forms of transitional justice have become ubiquitous in societies emerging from long years of conflict, instability and oppression and moving into a post-conflict, more peaceful era.

In practice, both top-down and bottom-up approaches to transitional justice are being formally and informally developed in places such as South Africa, Liberia, Peru, Chile, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and Northern Ireland. Many studies, conferences and debates have taken place addressing these developments and providing elaboration of theories relating to transition justice generally.

However, rarely have these processes been examined and critiqued through a feminist lens. The position of women, particularly their specific victimisation, typically has not been taken into account in any systematic manner. Seldom do commentators specifically consider whether the recently developed mechanisms for promoting peace and reconciliation will actually help the position of women in a society moving out of repression or conflict. This is unfortunate, since women’s issues are often overlooked and post-conflict societies, because they must rebuild, are ideally poised to introduce standards that would enable and ensure the active participation of the entire population, including women, in rebuilding a more stable, fair and democratic polity.

This book offers some insights into women’s perspectives and feminist views on the topic of transitional justice or ‘justice in transition’. Bringing feminism into the conversation allows us to expand the possibilities for a transformative justice approach after a period of conflict or insecurity, not by replacing it with feminist theory, but by broadening the scope and vision of the potential responses.

New Issue: Human Rights Review

The latest issue of the Human Rights Review (Vol. 14, no. 2, June 2013) is out. Contents include:

• Lindsey N. Kingston, “A Forgotten Human Rights Crisis”: Statelessness and Issue (Non)Emergence
• Kamal Halili Hassan & Mostafa Seraji, Addressing Workers’ Freedom of Association and its Dispute Resolution in the Context of the Shari’ah
• Laura K. Landolt, Externalizing Human Rights: From Commission to Council, the Universal Periodic Review and Egypt
• Federico Merke & Gino Pauselli, Foreign Policy and Human Rights Advocacy: An Exercise in Measurement and Explanation

New Issue: Transnational Dispute Management

The latest issue of Transnational Dispute Management (2013, no. 3) is out. This is a special issue on "Corruption and Arbitration." The table of contents is here.

New Issue: International Criminal Law Review

The latest issue of the International Criminal Law Review (Vol. 13, no. 2, 2013) is out. Contents include:

• Anjali Pathmanathan, 'Round Peg, Square Hole?' The Viability of Plea Bargaining in Domestic Criminal Justice Systems Prosecuting International Crimes
• Manisuli Ssenyonjo, The Rise of the African Union Opposition to the International Criminal Court’s Investigations and Prosecutions of African Leaders
• Avitus Agbor Agbor, The Problematic Jurisprudence on Instigation under the Statute of the ICTR: The Consistencies, Inconsistencies and Misgivings of the Trial and Appeal Chambers of the ICTR
• Henri Decœur, Avoiding Strict Liability in Mixed Conflicts: A Subjectivist Approach to the Contextual Element of War Crimes