There is nowadays no dispute in human rights doctrine over whether rights entail positive duties on the part of the state at the level of principle. But there has been surprisingly little academic commentary devoted to the question of whether there are, or should be, limits placed on how far those obligations extend. Similarly, there has been little scholarly attention paid to the question of how causation can be reasonably attributed in the context of violations of positive obligations. And there are very few sociological explanations provided as to why positive human rights obligations appear to be expanding without principled limits in the first place.

This volume assembles the work of a range of leading scholars in international human rights law to fill these gaps in the literature. Each of its 11 substantive chapters addresses an aspect of positive obligations with a particular focus on issues concerning limits. Taken together, they provide the first serious attempt to grapple critically with the subject of the limits, causality and scope of positive obligations theoretically and doctrinally. This makes the book essential reading for scholars of human rights law.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access.

     

As states and private actors expand their activities in outer space, the international legal framework governing this domain risks extending longstanding structures of global inequality beyond Earth. This article examines how international space law, shaped by a broader disciplinary pattern of reactive legal development, is poised to reproduce terrestrial disparities in the extraterrestrial realm. Drawing on parallels across international legal regimes, it demonstrates how reactive governance often disadvantages less powerful actors through various interlocking mechanisms: transforming early movers' advantages into legal prescriptions; enabling unilateral norm-setting amid international legal voids; shifting environmental burdens onto latecomers; sidelining equity concerns during crisis-driven lawmaking; and discounting foreseeable-yet-distant risks disproportionately borne by vulnerable populations. By tracing these distributive dynamics, the article underscores the need and possibility for more proactive alternatives in space governance. Though the window for action is narrowing, space law still retains enough plasticity to be reoriented before current inequalities become legally entrenched.

     

The ICC’s arrest warrants against Netanyahu/Gallant reignited debates over the nature of the Court’s jurisdiction with the focal point called the ‘Oslo Argument’, which contended that the Hague lacked jurisdiction over Israelis because Palestine lacked it under the Oslo Accords. The resulting submissions by amici curiae and parties before the Court, unprecedented in number, constitute a microcosm of contemporary international legal discourse over the ICC’s jurisdiction and therefore warrant close discourse analysis. The analysis offers an internal understanding of the argumentative structure therein and illuminates two systematized discursive regularities. One is the ‘delegation-based approach’, marked by assemblage of reifying and state-centric jurisdictional thinking with atomistic conceptions of the Court and the international order. Another is the ‘non-delegation-based approach’, grounded in a relational and autonomous conception of international jurisdiction with cosmopolitanism. Building on these findings, the concluding section explores possible strategies for lawyers, ranging from either/or choice to interstitial modes of argumentation.

     

• Beiträge
• Sia Spiliopoulou Åkermark, Human Rights Challenged and Defended – A Survey of Recent Legal Developments around Europe. Too Much or Too Little Human Rights Protection?
• Giuseppe Cataldi, The Common European Asylum System (CEAS) and the externalisation of migration control and management – a challenge to basic international refugee protection standards
• Harald Christian Scheu, 30 Years of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities – Reconsidering the Advisory Committee’s Monitoring Practice
• János Fiala-Butora, Potential and limitations of the Advisory Committee’s monitoring process
• Stefan Oeter, Implementing the FCNM and the Charter for Regional or Minority Languages – A Comparison
• Gudmundur Alfredsson, Greenland’s Choices: Independence, Free Association or Integration

     

What do international courts have to offer when faced with raw power? In a state of international disorder, respect for international law erodes and so does the respect for international courts and tribunals (ICs) and their decisions. An IC decision constitutes an international legal obligation. It binds the disputing party states as any other rule of international law does. Regardless, whether international affairs are in a relative state of order or disorder, international actors, above all States, must observe international law. Yet, what if a State does not play along – and is powerful enough to also withstand any international legal or political measures seeking to enforce the IC decision in question? Russia, for example, flatly ignored that the International Court of Justice (ICJ), on 16 March 2022, ordered it to halt its invasion of Ukraine and, as of May 2026, continues its aggression on Ukrainian territory. This piece investigates the effects of IC decisions when pushed to the margins by powerful States that can do so – and can, at least in first instance, get away with it. Such disregard for international judicial decisions occurring in higher frequencies indicates, at least from the prespective of international law, a state of international disorder. However, even in these situations, when pushed to the side, IC decisions are not pointless. They may have at least four effects that are interconnected and potentially reinforce each other, thereby providing a minimal contribution to the integrity of the international legal system.

     

The idea of building new cities from scratch is gaining new popularity. A particular form of these endeavors relates to the construction of so-called "charter cities" which would be built on the territory of a given state, but would find themselves in more or less complete independence from the legal framework of the host state. Going back to ideas propagated by former World Bank Chief Economist and Nobel laureate Paul Romer, the idea behind charter cities is a decoupling of cities from the state.

Ideally, these cities would be carved out of state jurisdiction almost entirely. This article discusses this phenomenon both in the light of a now apparently failed attempt at implementing this plan in the case of Prospéra in Honduras, but also in the light of its broader historical, conceptual and political implications. As the article demonstrates, charter cities demonstrate a considerable overlap with concepts like special economic zones. Also other attempts at decoupling territories from states like seasteading projects are based on similar ideological underpinnings.These shared conceptual undercurrents relate to techno-libertarian concepts and their growing international influence finds resonance in recent attempts of post-conflict peace-building propagated by the US administration. The article critically assesses these developments and points to the dangers that such new urban futures present.

     

• Special Issue: One Health and Global Health Law
• Carmen Bullón Caro, One Health as an emerging legal principle: foundations, normative content, and regulatory implications
• Adam Strobeyko & Daniela Morich, One Health, many laws: the promise and limits of mutually supportive lawmaking in a fragmented legal landscape
• Alexandra Finch & Benjamin Mason Meier, One Health as a foundation for addressing AMR under global health law
• Gabriel Armas-Cardona & Antje Risius, Understanding barriers to One Health implementation: systematic review of One Health governance beyond the Quadripartite coalition
• Katherine Ginsbach, Stefania Negri, Kashish Aneja, Emanuele Cesta, Sandro Bonfigli, & Sam Halabi, Legal preparedness for One Health: evolving legal and institutional frameworks for improved global health security
• Voices from the field: interview with Carlos Gonçalo das Neves

     

• Special Issue: Second World Approaches to International Law
• Marek J. Wasiński & Patryk I. Labuda, Special Issue Editorial: Second World Approaches to International Law
• Eric Loefflad, Steppe and Forest between World Orders: Locating the Political Geography of Eastern Europe in the Deep Time of International Law
• Daniel R. Quiroga-Villamarín, Cuba Libre? Pan-Americanism, the 1962 Missiles Crisis, and the Geopolitical Boundaries of the “Second World”
• Tomasz Lachowski, Imperialism, Genocide and International Law in the Bloodlands in the Past and Present
• Tamás Hoffmann, A Region without Agency? Finding the Absent Eastern European Voice in the History of International Law
• Polina Kulish & Ciarán Burke, Reviving the ‘Second World’? Rethinking the Eurasian Economic Union through the SWAIL Lens
• Gor Samvel, The Soviets, Colonialism, and Legal Consciousness: Rethinking Armenia’s Relationship with International Law

     

Because maritime questions are often admixed with territorial sovereignty questions, parties sometimes seek to settle them together. Jurisdiction under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea-UNCLOS-according to the received view does not encompass disputes concerning territorial sovereignty. In this book, international law scholar and practitioner Thomas D. Grant argues that the received view overstates the exclusion of sovereignty disputes. In Coastal State Rights, UNCLOS Annex VII arbitrators overstated the scope of the term 'sovereignty dispute' as well, an error of definition compounded when they ignored evidence probative as to whether a sovereignty dispute exists. Examining UNCLOS, its drafting history, and decades of decided cases, Sovereignty Disputes and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea relates an important problem of international dispute settlement to the public order of which UNCLOS forms part.

     

This open access book asks whether international economic crime can qualify as an international crime and be prosecuted as such.

Taking a four-part approach to the question, it traces the origins of the concept of international economic crime, and draws the line between ordinary economic crimes and economic offences of international significance. To this end, it examines six cases involving the commissions of serious economic crimes in different regions of the world, including Europe, the Americas and Africa: the crime of grand corruption in the Petrobras case; the theft of natural resources in the Niger Delta region and Liberia; the international money-laundering scheme in the Bolichicos case; the crime of financing terrorism in the Chiquita case; the Volkswagen conspiracy case in the US and the Haarde case related to gross-negligence in preventing serious economic damage. It then goes on to discuss a potential sui generis category of international economic crimes, before considering the advantages and the challenges of the multilevel enforcement system of international criminal justice in prosecuting such crimes.

     

• Articles
• Constantinos Yiallourides, Lennart Westmark & Alexander Proelss, Cross-Border CO2 Transport and Storage Networks in Europe through “Arrangements” under the London Protocol
• Yoshifumi Tanaka, Three Functions of Due Diligence Obligations in the Prevention of Vessel-Source Marine Pollution from Arctic Shipping
• Krittika Singh, Environmental Impact Assessment for Deep-Sea Mining: From Exploration to Exploitation and Relevance of the BBNJ Agreement
• Special Section: Protection of Fishers in Southeast Asia under International Law
• Natalie Klein, Andrew Blackie & Dita Liliansa, Abuses in the Southeast Asian Fishing Industry as Violations of International Law
• Andrea Longo, Flag State Jurisdiction and the Protection of Human Rights in Southeast Asia
• Dita Liliansa, Home State Jurisdiction over Corporate Harms at Sea in Fisheries in Southeast Asia
• Natalie Klein, The Potential Role of Regional Fisheries Management Organizations in Addressing International Human Rights Violations in Fisheries in Southeast Asia
• Arron N. Honniball, Combating Forced Labour in Fisheries Through Trade Restrictions: First Steps and Their Consistency with International Law