How are international courts dealing with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?

by Lawrence Hill-Cawthorne, University of Bristol Law School

UN Photo/CIJ-ICJ/Frank van Beek. Courtesy of the ICJ.

Since the commencement of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the end of February, different international courts and tribunals have been engaged as means to invoke international responsibility for the various violations of international law that have occurred. As is often the case in international law, however, the proceedings initiated before these tribunals reflect a very particular legal framing of the broader invasion and conduct of hostilities (I wrote on this theme a few years ago in relation to the post-2014 litigation between Ukraine and Russia). This is a consequence of the absence in international law of a single, integrated judicial system with compulsory jurisdiction. Instead, there are many different courts that, for the most part, have limited subject-matter jurisdiction. (more…)

Legal Authority Beyond the State – Towards New Insights into International Law

By Prof Patrick Capps, Professor of International Law (University of Bristol Law School) and Prof Henrik Palmer Olsen (University of Copenhagen Faculty of Law)

Two new edited volumes, which add new perspectives on international law, have recently been published by OUP and CUP. The first is International Court Authority (published by OUP during the summer of 2018 and edited by Karen Alter, Laurence Helfer and Mikael Rask Madsen), and the second is Legal Authority Beyond the State (published by CUP early in the spring of 2018 and is edited by Patrick Capps and Henrik Palmer Olsen (the writers of this blog)). The books are similar insofar as they present interdisciplinary scholarship on the authority of international law. Both are, at root, an exploration of how legal authority is established and evolves in international organizations, such as international courts. An important difference between the two books is how each sees the plausible limits of theoretical inquiry into the nature of authority. International Court Authority is more empirical, while Legal Authority Beyond the State is situated in the rationalist philosophical tradition. We argue that the empirical inquiry found in International Court Authority is limited to measure factual, observable behavior which appears to be engaging with international organizations and their laws, but it cannot account for authority per se, which is commonly accepted (in both books) to be the self-conscious orientation of actor’s behavior towards international law, so that it is consistent with the practical reasons offered by international organizations. (more…)