Combine and conquer. That was the strategy of those seeking to develop an international regime to address marine biological diversity found in areas beyond national jurisdiction—areas that constitute half of the world's surface and a much greater proportion of its habitable volume. States had quite different visions for the regime. On the one hand, the European Union and other developed countries such as Australia and New Zealand wanted a conservation-oriented regime providing for the establishment of marine protected areas and setting rules for environmental impact assessments; on the other hand, developing countries wanted a resource-oriented regime that would allow them to get what they consider their fair share of the benefits of marine genetic resources and would assist them with capacity building and technology transfer. Only by combining these disparate topics in a single package was agreement possible.

In The Case of the Monetary Gold Removed from Rome in 1943, the International Court of Justice concluded that it cannot decide a dispute in which a third party's legal interests “would form the very subject-matter of the decision.” This Article argues that what has become known as the Monetary Gold principle conflicts with the Court's obligation to decide cases submitted by consenting parties and should be abandoned.

Human shielding occurs through the use of the body—an individual or collective physical presence—which is not armed and does not rely on the use of force or fire. Understood as both a means (human shields) and a method (human shielding), shielding is the use of “civilians or other protected persons, whose presence or movement is aimed or used to render military targets immune from military operations.” Human shielding raises difficult doctrinal questions as to the interpretation and implementation of international humanitarian law that are not easily answered. This is in part because human shielding reanimates a series of queries that, as I argue elsewhere, are constitutive of international humanitarian law itself, namely: What and who is a combatant? What and who is a civilian? Who is to judge and according to which premises? Human shielding reanimates these questions because it is upon the definition of a civilian, in contradistinction to the combatant, that the power and efficacy of shielding depends. As I have shown, the distinction between civilian and combatant is partially constituted through discourses of gender which naturalize sex and sex difference. These discourses, as I sketch out below, are cited when theorizing the significance of human shields and reappear when evaluating the representation and meaning of the embodied movement of human shields.

On February 2, 2017, the International Court of Justice (ICJ or Court) delivered a judgment rejecting preliminary objections to its jurisdiction in Maritime Delimitation in the Indian Ocean. The underlying contentious case between Somalia and Kenya concerns the establishment of a single maritime boundary between the two states. The decision on preliminary objections provides important insights on the Court's interpretation of optional clause declarations that include a reservation for alternative methods of dispute settlement.

The International Law Association’s Statement of Principles Applicable to the Formation of General Customary International Law (2000) was a welcome addition to an admittedly voluminous literature. Stepping into the void of authoritative commentary, it balanced an estimable representation of contemporary thinking while it also tendered sometimes controversial views on unresolved matters. Though nominally on the same subject, the International Law Commission (ILC) project offers different strengths and faces different challenges. As the First Report by the Special Rapporteur, Sir Michael Wood, has noted, the ILC’s relationship with States, in particular, provides it with a special vantage and authority. This vantage may also make its pronouncements less tendentious, and more conservative, in character. I’d like to assess the (very early) returns on how this potential differentiation is faring. For sake of brevity, I will focus mostly on a likely harbinger, the treatment of State practice, as reflected in the Draft Conclusions already adopted by the Drafting Committee—including parts of the Second Report bearing upon them. Any stylistic or substantive criticism of the existing work recognizes, of course, that it is at an early stage, and that one of ILC’s many virtues is the deliberate and careful evolution of its projects.

Until the World War the rights of intellectual property were generallydivided into two classes: industrial and artistic or literary property, corresponding to two separate kinds of creations: those aiming at industrial results and those possessing an aesthetic or literary character. This classification, accepted as a matter of course, produced, as will be seen, some difficulties and led to unsatisfactory results in certain cases. Soon after the end of the war a new class of intellectual property began to be discussed: the scientific property. Its claim to existence and protection was not primarily due to theoretical speculation and developments of doctrine, but to practical causes.

On July 7, 2014, an ad hoc arbitral tribunal (Tribunal) rendered its award on the dispute between Bangladesh and India concerning the delimitation of their entire maritime boundary in the northern part of the Bay of Bengal. The award established the course of the boundary line in the territorial sea, the exclusive economic zone (EEZ), and the continental shelf within and beyond 200 nautical miles, ending a dispute that had persisted between the neighbors for more than three decades.

The purpose of this comment is not to pass legal or political judgment on the actions of the governments involved in the U-2 and the RB-47 incidents of 1960, but to note and analyze, now that the passions aroused by the incidents have subsided, some of the legal implications of the positions taken by these and other governments in connection with these incidents, particularly with respect to sovereignty and jurisdiction in space.

The recent Encyclical by Pope Francis, Laudato Si’, On Care for our Common Home, is a remarkable document, both original and continuous within the tradition of Catholic social doctrine. Emerging from and grounded in a very specific religious tradition and constrained by the peculiar encyclical literary form, the document nonetheless seeks to open a dialogue with “every person living on this planet,” about care for our common home. Using the urgency of addressing global climate change as its point of departure, the Encyclical does a superb job summarizing the scope of the present environmental crisis and the disproportionate harms suffered by vulnerable populations of the poor and excluded. It also provides a careful analysis of the root causes of environmental degradation, mapping out the complex linkages and tensions between globalization, economic growth, liberalized trade, unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, environmental degradation, involuntary migration, immiseration and growing inequality. In this respect, the Encyclical, may well come to serve as a useful position paper for the upcoming Paris climate change negotiations or as a background text for a course on climate change or sustainable development. Yet, properly understood, this is not its true purpose. Rather, in its deepest sense, the Encyclical is an appeal to all of humanity to listen to “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor,” to reject the “throwaway” culture of consumerism, and to embrace a culture of care and a commitment to pursue integral ecology. It is, in other words, a call to ecological conversion: a call addressed not only to individuals but also to individuals-in-community.

Among the most noteworthy phenomena of modern times are the extensive exploitation of new and thinly settled countries by citizens of countries older and more thoroughly developed, and the vast increase in international trade. These movements are, of course, due largely to the improved facilities for travel and communication, which have brought nations together and made their interests coincide in a way and to an extent unknown to former generations. One of the resulting problems is the question as to the attitude which a given country is to take towards its citizens who have settled permanently in foreign lands, without any definite intention of obtaining naturalization as citizens thereof, and particularly whether it is to undertake to extend its protection to them, and, if so, to what extent.

Since the collapse of the European system of the Middle Ages and the birth of modem international law most jurists have worked on the assumption that the principles underlying the international legal order are radically different from those that lie at the base of national law. With the disintegration of the authority of the Pope and the Emperor there had come into being a number of independent states that recognized no political superior and hence considered themselves as equals. In their relations with each other, at least, these states acted like the sovereign bodies which in fact they were. In so far as international relations were concerned the world had returned to a condition of complete anarchy. The states of the world lived in that condition of natural equality described by Hobbes where each was the potential enemy of every other. In the formulation of their policies and in their acts each state took into account its own interests only and when these interests came into conflict, as they inevitably did, the only arbiter was brute force.

The International Court of Justice on April 11, 1949, gave its unanimous opinion that, in the event of an agent of the United Nations in the performance of his duties suffering injury in circumstances involving the responsibility of a Member (or a non-member) State, the United Nations as an organization has the capacity to bring an international claim against the responsible de jure or de facto government with a view to obtaining the reparation due in respect of the damage caused the United Nations. By a majority of eleven, with four judges dissenting, the Court also gave its opinion that the United Nations has the capacity to claim reparation due in respect of the damage caused to the victim or to persons entitled through him. The Court by ten votes to five gave its further opinion that when the United Nations as an organization is bringing a claim for reparation of damage caused to its agent, it can only do so by basing its claim upon a breach of obligations due to itself; and that respect for this rule will usually prevent a conflict between the action of the United Nations and such rights as the agent’s national state may possess, and thus bring about a reconciliation between their claims.

The U-2, a high-flying United States reconnaissance plane under pilot Francis G. Powers, permanently based in Turkey, but taking off from Pakistan territory with intent to cross Soviet territory and land in Norway, came down near Sverdlovsk, well within Soviet territory, on May 1, 1960. Such flights had been carried on for four years under general orders of the President, following refusal of the Soviet Government to accept the “open skies” proposal made by the President at the Summit Conference of 1955, and after such flights had become operational in 1956. Apparently the Soviet Government had become aware of such flights through radar tracking.