The relationship between human rights and humanitarian law is one of the most contentious topics in the history of international law. Most scholars studying their foundations argue that these two fields of law developed separately until the 1960s. This article, by contrast, reveals a much earlier cross-fertilization between these disciplines. It shows how “human rights thinking” played a critical generative role in transforming humanitarian law, thereby creating important legacies for today's understandings of international law in armed conflict.

This article evaluates acceptance of the Tallinn Rules by states on the basis of eleven case studies involving cyberoperations, all occurring after the first Tallinn Manual was published in 2013. Our principal findings are that (1) it is unclear whether states are ready to accept the Tallinn Rules; (2) states show uneven interest in promoting legal certainty in cyberspace; and (3) a growing need for coordinated response to cyberattacks may induce states to consider more favorably the Tallinn Rules.

Alongside now-controversial investment treaties, many states also maintain domestic investment statutes. Although these laws offer protections similar to investment treaties and are increasingly applied in investor-state arbitration, they have—unlike the treaties—attracted limited scholarly scrutiny. This article argues that investment statutes can plausibly be characterized either as unilateral acts in international law or as domestic law. The article examines the significant consequences that follow from these characterizations, providing the first comprehensive analysis of these hybrid statutes.

The decision of the Supreme Court of Kenya (Court) in Francis Karioko Muruatetu and Another v. Republic (Muruatetu), finding the mandatory nature of the death penalty unconstitutional, represents not only a victory for human rights in Africa but also the transformative capacity of contemporary constitutions in Africa and the growing assertiveness of African judiciaries. In the judgment, the Court held that the mandatory death penalty is “out of sync with the progressive Bill of Rights” in Kenya's 2010 Constitution (para. 64) and an affront to the rule of law. The Court also relied on global death penalty jurisprudence to find the mandatory death sentence “harsh, unjust and unfair” (para. 48). Consequently, the Court mandated that all trial courts conduct a pre-sentencing hearing to determine whether the death penalty is deserved. The Court's judgment could spell the end of the mandatory death penalty in Kenya after almost 120 years on the statute books.

In its landmark November 24, 2017 judgment in Ingabire Victoire Umuhoza v. The Republic of Rwanda, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACtHPR) or Court) held that certain aspects of the right to a fair trial (presumption of innocence and illegal searches) and the right to freedom of expression under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Banjul Charter) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) had been violated by the Republic of Rwanda (Respondent State). In its final orders, however, the Court rejected the applicant's prayer for immediate release and deferred its decision on other forms of reparation. The judgment has broad implications on how African states protect and respect the rights to a fair trial and freedom of expression. The case also offers some vital lessons on state backlash towards human rights litigation and African states’ compliance with decisions of international courts (ICs).

The exclusion of transnational human rights litigation from U.S. federal courts is, for most practical purposes, now complete. On April 24, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a 5–4 ruling in Jesner v. Arab Bank, deciding that foreign corporations cannot be sued under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS).

In Google v. Equustek, the Supreme Court of Canada ordered Google to delist all websites used by Datalink, a company that stole trade secrets from Equustek, a Canada-based information technology company. Google had agreed to do so in part, but with respect to searches that originated from google.ca only, the default browser for those in Canada. Equustek however, argued the takedowns needed to be global in order to be effective. It thus sought an injunction ordering Google to delist the allegedly infringing websites from all of Google's search engines—whether accessed from google.ca, google.com, or any other entry point. Google objected. The Canadian Supreme Court, along with the two lower Canadian courts that considered the issue, sided with Equustek (para. 54). The ruling sets up a potential showdown between Canadian and U.S. law and raises critically important questions about the appropriate geographic and substantive scope of takedown orders, the future of free speech online, and the role of intermediaries such as Google in preventing economic and other harms.

During the summer of 2018, U.S. diplomacy related to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Russia took sharp twists and turns. President Trump's statements at a pair of diplomatic events abroad in July sowed confusion regarding the continued U.S. commitment to NATO and the nature of the relationship between the White House and the Kremlin. Yet despite some wariness regarding NATO and a desire to have “a very good relationship with Russia,” Trump joined a robust NATO summit declaration that emphasized Russian malfeasance and reaffirmed the importance of the North Atlantic Alliance. Several weeks later, the U.S. State Department announced the imposition of new sanctions on Russia pursuant to the Chemical and Biological Weapons Control and Warfare Elimination Act of 1991.

On June 26, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld President Trump's most recent iteration of restrictions on entry to the United States by nationals from certain foreign countries. Following several rewrites of this travel ban, ensuing legal challenges, and lower court injunctions, the Court, in a five-to-four decision authored by Chief Justice Roberts, reversed the latest ruling of a lower court that had granted a partial preliminary injunction against the ban. Although acknowledging that there was considerable evidence tying the travel ban to bias against Muslims, the Supreme Court found that the plaintiffs were nonetheless unlikely to succeed either in their statutory claim that Trump lacked the authority to impose this ban or in their constitutional claim that the ban violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The Court accordingly reversed the lower court's injunction and remanded the case for further proceedings. The ruling, based on the Trump administration's asserted national security interest, leaves in place travel restrictions imposed on nationals of seven countries—Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen—only two of which are not Muslim-majority countries.

On June 19, 2018, the United States withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council. Announcing this decision, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley characterized the Council as “a protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias.” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo observed that while “the United States has no opposition in principle to multilateral bodies working to protect human rights,” nonetheless “when organizations undermine our national interests and our allies, we will not be complicit.” The withdrawal occurred one day after the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights criticized the United States in a speech at the Human Rights Council for its “unconscionable” practice of forcibly separating undocumented families entering the United States. In August, U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton stated that in addition to withdrawing from the Council, the United States would also reduce its assessed contribution to the United Nations by the amount that would ordinarily flow to the Human Rights Council and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Over the summer of 2018, trade relations between the United States and many of its trading partners continued to be marked by tensions. The United States and China ratcheted up their use of tariffs against each other. The United States both received and initiated requests for consultation with various countries at the World Trade Organization (WTO) related to its earlier steel and aluminum tariffs and to tariffs imposed in response by other countries. President Trump has continued to pursue the possibility of further tariffs, including with respect to automobile and uranium imports. The United States also escalated trade tensions with Turkey through various measures, explicitly linking some of these measures to Turkey's detainment of an American pastor. Despite the broader theme of tensions, negotiations have proved productive between the United States and two of its major trading partners—the European Union and Mexico—paving a way for future settlements. With the European Union, the Trump administration has reached a tentative understanding and agreed not to impose new tariffs while the parties negotiate toward finalizing this understanding. As to Mexico, in late August 2018 the Trump administration announced that the two countries had reached agreement with respect to many issues underlying their ongoing North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) negotiations.

On May 7, 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit blocked the transfer to an unidentified third country of a dual U.S.-Saudi national detained in Iraq as an alleged enemy combatant. The decision, Doe v. Mattis, also upheld a district court order requiring the government to provide seventy-two hours’ notice before transferring him to another country. In an opinion authored by Judge Srinivasan and joined by Judge Wilkins, the court emphasized that while it was “respectful of—and with appreciation for—the considerable deference owed to the Executive's judgments in the prosecution of a war,” “things are different” for alleged enemy combatants who are U.S. citizens. Further proceedings in the district court could potentially address whether the U.S. military campaign against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is lawful under U.S. domestic law.

North Korea's Chairman, Kim Jong Un, agreed to work toward the Korean peninsula's denuclearization at a Singapore summit meeting with President Trump on June 12, 2018. The encounter marked the first time in history that the president of the United States and the leader of North Korea have met in person. It came after an intense year and a half of interactions between the two countries, including the exchange of nuclear-laced military threats, the imposition of new sanctions by the United States and the UN Security Council, and, eventually, a touch of détente. Since the meeting occurred, North Korea has taken several steps consistent with commitments it made, including returning remains said to be those of American service members, refraining from missile launches, and beginning to dismantle its testing facilities. Also since the meeting occurred, the United States has suspended its usual joint military exercises with South Korea, consistent with a statement made by Trump at the summit, while leaving in place existing sanctions against North Korea.

On the surface, the two books under review seem to have little in common. The Bonnitcha/Poulsen/Waibel (BPW) book, written by two legal academics and a political scientist, provides a balanced, fact-grounded account of international investment agreements (IIAs) and investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). This is the “international treaty regime” in that book's title which the authors argue needs to be distinguished from the broader “international regime complex” that their book explicitly does not address, namely the number of other international instruments that at least incidentally also protect foreign investments (including, for example, political risk insurance, tax treaties, certain World Trade Organization agreements, and certain human rights treaties like the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)) (p. 7 and Figure 1.2). As one of the encomiums on its back cover page suggests, the BPW book seeks to answer the fraught competing contentions of defenders and critics of the regime that all too frequently generate “more heat than light.” Their book dispassionately synthesizes the available legal, economic, and political literature relevant to understanding the investment treaty regime's oft-proclaimed “legitimacy crisis.” It seeks to supply lawyers needing political context and political scientists needing legal knowledge with the unfiltered facts required to assess whether such a “crisis” exists and, if so, what the ways forward might be.