Through symptomatic reading, we analyze the visible and the invisible – the explicit and the implicit – in the works of Filipino international legal scholar Merlin Magallona (1934–2022). We argue that Magallona's international legal thought was rooted in Marxist theory and practice and honed through the mode of production debates in the Philippine communist movement during the 1960s. Specifically, he developed a critique of the neocolonial division of labour and produced a materialist reading of international legal doctrines through “Postcolonial Self-Determination” – a synthesis of the antinomy of positivism and self-determination. In practice, his Third World Marxism led him to support the NIEO and resist UNCLOS through constitutional litigation based on the imperialist Treaty of Paris of 1898. Magallona's critique and praxis suggest new forms of resistance to the new imperialisms and underscore the imperative of a practice turn in Marxist international legal theory.

Much scholarship on customary international law has examined the merits of induction, deduction, and assertion as approaches to custom identification. Save for where international tribunals identify custom by assertion, writers have viewed custom identification that does not rely on evidence of State practice and opinio juris as an example of deductive reasoning. However, writers have stated that, at best, deduction is reasoning from the general to the particular. This article draws on legal philosophy to define the contours of deductive reasoning and argues that pure deduction, namely deduction not combined with other forms of reasoning, is an unsound approach to custom identification. This argument is tested by reference to cases of custom identification by the International Court of Justice, categorised according to three types of deduction: normative, functional, and analogical. This article also explores the authority and utility of custom identification by pure deduction and its impact on content determination.

Since 2012, Japan, China, South Korea, and Chinese Taipei have consecutively held informal consultation meetings to discuss the conservation of Japanese eel stock. As a conservation and management measure, these participants adopted the Joint Statement in 2014 to regulate the initial input of Japanese eel seeds into aquaculture ponds. Despite the fact that the input limits were de facto constraints, these measures were implemented as domestic legal regulations in each participant's jurisdiction. This study examines the nature of the de facto constraints imposed by the Joint Statement for conserving and managing Japanese eel stock as a case study of stock regulations. This study further explores the possibilities of strengthening the de facto constraints through interactions with the normative environment; that is, the principle of sustainable development, domestic laws, and the relevant provisions in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

This article explores the terms “BRI dispute” and “BRI jurisprudence”. It undertakes a practical and theoretical analysis that considers whether “BRI disputes” have distinct and visible characteristics and are capable of being identified in a legal sense. This is important since practitioners – arbitration centres and law firms – use the term broadly and without specific criteria. By exploring the customary usage and the approach of legal scholars to the term, presenting examples of “BRI disputes” and examining their unique features, and constructing a theoretical approach (utilizing the concepts of ratione materiae, ratione loci, ratione temporis, and ratione personae; and considering the jurisprudence of the ICSID), this article moves from a broad to a narrow analysis to develop both a definition and a system of registration of “BRI disputes” for use by academics, practitioners, and policymakers.

This paper presents a genealogy of the passport in international law. For the most part, the origins of our contemporary mobility order are narrated from the vantage point of the grand principles of sovereignty, hospitality, and liberty. The nuts and bolts through which people access mobility – passports and visas – are generally understood to be the natural, inevitable, and fair by-products of these principles. This paper contributes to existing debates on the coloniality of international migration law by examining the universalization of the passport under the League of Nations. I argue that the universalization of the passport meant abandoning the old idea that the rights of free movement belonged to everyone and, instead, instituted a system that ranks human mobility based on national origins. Theoretically, it is proposed that attention to these “lowly” practices of mobility governance allows us to track the afterlives of race in the international order.

The global impacts of COVID-19 have been calamitous, unleashing widespread human suffering and exacerbating health crises, all while worsening pre-existing inequalities and transgressing fundamental human rights. Despite earnest pleas from the United Nations and developing nations for an equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, these appeals were largely unheeded. Instead, major pharmaceutical manufacturers and high-income countries (HICs) had maintained a stranglehold on vaccine technology through the safeguarding of intellectual property rights (IPRs), leading to exorbitant pricing and preferential distribution to affluent regions. This vaccine hoarding has left low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) with delayed and insufficient supplies, endangering the lives of the most vulnerable. The stringent enforcement of IPRs mechanisms, rather than aligning with international human rights obligations, has further marginalised the right to life, health, and access to vaccines and medicines, particularly in LMICs. This study ardently advocates for a policy shift that promotes the decolonisation of human rights in the context of IPRs and global health law.

The relationship between international and domestic law in Indonesia is the subject of prolonged debate caused by the silence of the Indonesian Constitution on the choice between monism and dualism, which affects constitutional adjudication. This article discusses how the Constitutional Court engages with international law in its decisions and how the debate between monism and dualism is affected by it. It argues that the practice of the Court falls neither within the traditional scope of monism nor dualism but tends to be eclectic, which can be termed pragmatic monism. Here, the Court considers an international treaty part of domestic law upon ratification. However, its contents are only applicable if they are consistent with the Constitution, the highest law in the country. Nevertheless, such pragmatism is not without consequences where the consistency of the constitutional system as a whole is compromised for the instrumentality of its individual decisions on societal well-being.