In The Boundaries of International Law: A Feminist Critique (Boundaries),1 amidst observations about masculine bias in treaty law, co-authors Christine Chinkin and Hilary Charlesworth queried the masculine configuration, i.e., the gender of jus cogens or peremptory norms. A peremptory norm is “accepted and recognized by the international community . . . as a norm from which no derogation is permitted and which can be modified only by a subsequent norm of international law having the same character.”2 Interrogating whether jus cogens privileged the experiences of males over that of females, they challenged jus cogens’ presumed universality and its intended utility. Accepted peremptory norms, they averred, exerted a silencing, deleterious impact on core feminine values such as sexual equality or freedom from gender discrimination.3 Decades after the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties’ (VCLT) codification of jus cogens, the International Law Commission (ILC) reified a non-exhaustive list of peremptory norms that explicitly excluded gender-based discrimination.4 This essay proposes a “jus cogens redux” to revive Chinkin and Charlesworth's question by peering at several threads in the thwarted conversations about whether freedom from gender discrimination rises to peremptory norm status. The conversational threads lay tattered by positive law's reliance on enumerated treaty provisions and accepted precepts of customary international law. They are frayed by normative law's philosophical, moralists’ approach. Neither the positivist law nor the normative law's concepts of how to determine jus cogens values grapples with gender or gender minorities. By default, each retains a masculine approach that configures the gender of jus cogens as “non-female.”

Scholarship in the discipline of international law may take different forms. It may deal systematically with general practice in a comprehensive way, resulting in a textbook or treatise that is a culmination of long years of teaching, research, and learning. It may examine specific topics of international law in an empirical, historical, and analytical exercise of intellect and reach considerable depth in understanding the topics, culminating in a monograph. Or it may focus on issues of narrow scope in an article, which, of limited size, is suitable for publication in a journal and yearbook. This review focuses on the public international law scholarship in all three forms published by Chinese scholars in the past few years, although the nature of a review necessarily limits the number of publications selected for review. The plan is to take stock of the mainstream thoughts and methods through reviewing the selected publications. The term “international law,” meaning public international law, is used throughout this review for sake of convenience.

Since entering office, President Trump has taken steps to restructure the U.S. military to raise the profile of both its cybersecurity and space capabilities. The administration has elevated U.S. Cyber Command to a Unified Combatant Command and has implemented policies signaling a shift toward a more offensive cybersecurity mindset. The administration has also begun the process of establishing a U.S. Space Command, as well as pursuing a plan to create a new branch of the military centered around space-related operations. Although this restructuring does not by itself implicate international law, it might do so if it results in operational changes.

As he searches for differences in how democratic and authoritarian governments use international law, Tom Ginsburg highlights—perhaps inadvertently—the fact that both kinds of regime use law as a tool to advance their goals. Governments’ goals may differ, both within and across regime types, but the instrumental use of law in the service of political ends does not. Ginsburg's article permits three distinct readings: it is an effort to show a correlation between regime-type and uses of international law; it is also an argument that the historical-normative core of international law included the promotion of “liberal” goals such as human rights and democracy; and third, it is a defense of the meta-claim that law follows the political purposes of society's powerful actors. This third contribution is the quietest in the article but is arguably the most important. Because the methodological difficulties in correlating regime type with attitude toward international law are insuperable, Ginsburg's contribution is that he directs attention to the substantive goals that governments pursue through law and to the tradeoffs that follow as one goal wins over others. The normative valence of international law depends on how one feels about these practical tradeoffs; those whose interests are harmed by international law have good reason to feel disadvantaged.

The familiar and confusing distinction between de facto and de jure recognition is made even more confusing in a recent British decision, The Arantzazu Mendi. The failure to understand the distinction between de facto recognition of a new state or government and de jure recognition, has been in part caused by a careless use of terms. “The subject has been unduly complicated,” writes Borchard, “by the chameleonic uses of the term de facto, which has been applied promiscuously to de facto authorities in the field, to governments not established by constitutional methods, and as an adjective to qualify recognition. …” Raestad notes that although “de jure recognition” is more or less equivalent to “recognition,” and a “dejure government” to “government,” the term de facto is used differently. What is the difference between (1) de facto recognition of a government, (2) recognition of a de facto government, and (3) recognition as a (or the) de facto government?

Dear Editors in Chief:

The recent uprising for racial justice marked a pivotal shift in national and global debates on race. One enduring legacy is that the language we use to speak, think, and label people is consequential. Most style guides that previously called for lowercasing Black altered their positions. This letter to the editors urges the American Journal of International Law (AJIL) to join those organizations that have also changed their policies to capitalize White.

It is a long-standing principle of international law that every breach of an international obligation that results in harm gives rise to a duty to make adequate reparation. Reparations can take different forms, from the ideal of full restitution to the provision of satisfaction, and the payment of compensation. Notwithstanding reparation's main aim––to ameliorate, if not eradicate, the detrimental consequences of an internationally wrongful act–– it also serves other purposes, such as reinforcing the authority of the norm breached, acknowledging the injury, and recognizing the bearer of harm (the victim). This essay adopts a queer approach to examine the role played by reparation–– in particular, compensation––in determining what (and whose) suffering matters to international law. With a focus on internationally wrongful acts that result in deprivation of life, this piece discusses who is seen as worthy of redress when a violation of the right to life has taken place, as this, in turn, speaks volumes about who is seen as legally entitled to suffer, to mourn and, ultimately, to love. This essay argues that reparation orders from international human rights courts offer a valuable opportunity for re-evaluating––and perhaps even overcoming––heteronormative understandings of kinship.

As the COVID-19 crisis developed, the International Labor Organization estimated that 4.7 percent of the global labor pool, comprising 164 million people, were migrant workers who were living and working outside their home country. While some were laid off and sent home for the lockdown, others continued working. These others were migrants performing crucial jobs in the front line of the crisis. They help to produce our food, pack our orders, and build or clean our houses, among other tasks. Many COVID-19 infections appear to be labor-related, with many of the crucial sectors exhibiting an extra-high risk of virus transmission. Migrant workers on the frontline can be low-waged, hold a temporary job, lack knowledge of their legal position and the local language, and have a limited social network and high dependency on others—such as recruiters or temporary employment agencies—for work and housing. This essay addresses these migrant vulnerabilities in the labor market and identifies measures that might simultaneously curb the vulnerabilities and account for industrial needs for labor in essential sectors. We argue that the vulnerability of migrant laborers is structural; the COVID-19 crisis has put a magnifying glass on a preexisting vulnerability and clarified the need for solutions.

Race is a Western political project. Religious freedom is a Christian political project. The linkages between the two enabled European nations and their settlers across the globe to condemn natives, slaves, and non-European immigrants to inferior status, and in turn legalize control of their lands and bodies.1 The consequent race-religion systems of power and privilege, which inform Rabiat Akande's thesis, offer valuable insights into the racialized boundaries of contemporary Palestine-Israel discourse in the United States.2 Specifically, the racialization of Muslims and Arabs as terrorism supporters and presumptively anti-Semitic subjects them to censorship, harassment, and discrimination when they advocate for the human rights of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. This essay argues that infringements on Muslims and Arabs’ dissenting speech and political activism is another way in which the racialization of religion produces a mutually constitutive form of discrimination.

On September 25, 2019, the Third Extraordinary Congress of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) adopted a proposal on terminal dues rates—a decision that led the United States to remain a member state. The United States had given its one-year notice of withdrawal from the UPU eleven months earlier, citing concerns that the existing system unfairly advantaged certain developing nations, including China. Following the UPU's decision, the United States rescinded its notice of withdrawal. Under the new system, the United States can begin self-posting terminal dues rates in July 2020.

An uneasy equilibrium exists with respect to how the United States exits international agreements. In general, exit is easy as a matter of legal doctrine but, for important agreements, difficult as a matter of political practice. While presidents can withdraw the United States from most major international agreements, they have done so only rarely—and never yet with deep costs to the stability of our world order.