Can a few primarily Western States expand the right to self-defence against non-State actors, incorporating the unwilling or unable standard? Even on a traditional reading of customary law formation, the answer is no because proponents have failed to attract consistent and widespread support. What is more, using our interactional international law approach, we show that efforts to date have not been successful because they have failed to address fundamental rule of law concerns. The current state of world politics has perhaps caught proponents of the unwilling or unable standard in a difficult bind. We suggest how proponents might carefully develop the law on self-defence against non-State actors.

This article examines whether general international law supports the claim that direct military assistance by one State to another State upon the latter's request is prohibited where the inviting State is implicated in (gross) violations of international humanitarian and/or human rights law. It approaches the question from the perspective of State responsibility, analysing the threshold requirements of Article 16 of the Articles on State Responsibility (ASR),1 which represents the customary international law standard for responsibility for aiding or assisting wrongful conduct by another State. In so doing, the article illuminates how factual uncertainties complicate the triggering of the responsibility of the intervening (assisting) State for any violations of international humanitarian and/or human rights law by the territorial (recipient) State. Thereafter, the article questions whether, in the event that the responsibility of the intervening State is triggered, it would in consequence have to withdraw its troops and/or military air power from the territorial State.

This article compares the law and practice of the European Union and Australia in respect to the search and rescue (SAR) of boat migrants, concluding that the response to individuals in peril at sea in both jurisdictions is becoming increasingly securitized. This has led to the humanitarian purpose of SAR being compromised in the name of border security. Part I contrasts the unique challenge posed by SAR operations involving migrants and asylum seekers, as opposed to other people in distress at sea. Part II analyses the relevant international legal regime governing SAR activities and its operation among European States and in offshore Australia. Part III introduces the securitization framework as the explanatory paradigm for shifting State practice and its impact in Europe and Australia. It then examines the consequences of increasing securitization of SAR in both jurisdictions and identifies common trends, including an increase in militarization and criminalization, a lack of transparency and accountability, developments relating to disembarkation and non-refoulement, and challenges relating to cooperation and commodification.

This article undertakes a comparative legal analysis of the scope of an emerging legal duty to find the truth about historical human rights abuses after periods of political transition. There is substantial inconsistency between human rights regimes on how they establish temporal jurisdiction in their transitional jurisprudence, which has not yet been systematically investigated. This contribution fills the gap in the literature by identifying and critiquing the way in which the right to truth in times of transition is both expressly and implicitly vindicated in the decisions of the Human Rights Committee, and the regional jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and European Court of Human Rights (the conclusion also addresses the less voluminous African regional jurisprudence). It is argued that the ‘underlying values’ of human rights treaties can provide a foundation for a powerful but finite right to truth.

This article proposes a model of treaty-based veil piercing for civil liability claims by victims of human rights harm inflicted by businesses. The primary inspiration for this model comes from investment treaty provisions dealing with corporate investors. Our examination of investment law for this purpose exposes the double standard in the treatment of the corporate veil between these two remedy regimes, and offers a way to address this. The test we propose for lifting the veil in order to allow victims to claim against the parent company in a corporate group is one of ‘legal control’. It aims to capture cases where the parent did not necessarily take an active role in the subsidiary's business, but it is still treated as being in control of the subsidiary by virtue of its direct or indirect ownership or ability to appoint management.

Article 76 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) sets out the legal regime governing the novel ‘continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles’ or ‘the outer continental shelf’. As Article 76 contains a complex interface between law and science, its interpretation and application raises intricate issues, with which no international court or tribunal had dealt with substantively before 2012. The UNCLOS dispute settlement bodies were the first international tribunals to provide answers to long-standing questions surrounding the meaning and application of several important, but ambiguous or controversial, legal terms employed under Article 76. As such, the decisions rendered by the UNCLOS tribunals have been seen as playing an important role in elucidating the legal regime of the outer continental shelf. This article queries this assessment by critically examining whether and to what extent the relevant pronouncements made by UNCLOS tribunals have contributed to clarifying and developing the law governing the outer continental shelf regime under UNCLOS.

Article 16 of the International Law Commission's Articles on State Responsibility provides that a State that aids or assists another State in the commission of an internationally wrongful act by the recipient State is internationally responsible, where certain conditions are fulfilled. This article clarifies one of those conditions, namely the difficult and contested issue of what degree of knowledge or intent engages the responsibility of an assisting State under Article 16. The article focuses particularly on assistance in armed conflict and counterterrorism situations, which increasingly feature some form of operational or intelligence cooperation between States.