The International Court of Justice's 2025 Advisory Opinion on Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change deploys the phrase 'trustees of humanity' in the context of intergenerational equity, offering a striking convergence with the theory of sovereignty advanced in my Sovereigns as Trustees of Humanity (2013). This essay examines the relationship between the two. It argues that the Opinion supports the earlier theory in several important respectsrejecting purely domestic conceptions of sovereign responsibility, affirming sovereignty's embedment in a broader normative order, and requiring other-regarding conduct-while also developing it in ways unforeseen by the earlier account. The essay also argues that the trusteeship framework resolves a question the Opinion leaves open: when do States' obligations with respect to greenhouse gas emissions arise? Finally, the essay reflects on the Opinion's possible significance for the evolving grammar of sovereignty in light of contemporary geopolitical challenges.

     

The extension of coastal state sovereign rights over the sea and seabed up to 200 nautical miles was a seismic change in global order. It nearly doubled the amount of the globe subject to state sovereignty, an equivalent change in geopolitics to that of European colonialism. This article searches for the origin of this fundamental change, going back to the first international lawyers to write about the continental shelf, and following where they found historical precedent. I find the origin of the continental shelf in a mid-19th century dispute between the British Crown and the Duchy of Cornwall, over tin mines in that county. In this dispute the legal arguments and conceptual innovations needed for the continental shelf are invented. These innovations allowed for the extension of territory and sovereignty out to sea for the first time in a way which is familiar today. The invention of the continental shelf required nothing less than to fundamentally change how territory and sovereignty are understood.

     

Latin America has arguably been the most affected region by the COVID-19 pandemic, yet there is no academic article or academic publication on institutional regional responses to the pandemic concerning the right to health. Hence, this article aims to fill that scholarship gap by answering the following question: how have regional bodies responded to COVID-19 concerning the right to health in Latin America? It is overall argued and found herein that: (1) there is a regional system on the right to health in pandemics such as COVID-19, about which a human rights-based approach provides a unifying standard; and (2) this system is embedded within the Organization of American States’ three-pillar framework, consisting of the Pan-American Health Organization, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. A human rights-based approach to health, which relies on international human rights law on the right to health, is considered a key component of the conceptual general framework herein. The Article analyzes the COVID-19 related practices of the three above-mentioned bodies. A central part of this Article’s methodology utilizes findings of convergences, synergies, and divergences between those bodies regarding the right to health during pandemics like COVID-19.

     

• Editorial Comments in Honor of the United Nations at 80 and the Bandung Conference at 70 (Part I)
• Zhenmin LIU, United Nations to Be Reformed, Not Replaced: Toward a Better Shared Future for Humanity
• Xinxiang Shi & Zhengqian Li, The Role of the United Nations in the Maintenance of International Peace and Security
• Yang Liu, United Nations and Human Rights: A Brief Reflection
• Wei Shen, United Nations and Development
• Jinyuan Su, United Nations and Global Commons Governance
• Articles
• Lingjie Kong & Yanling Liu, Australia’s Obligations for the Acquisition and Operation of Nuclear Submarines under AUKUS: What Can Article 14 of its Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement with the IAEA Tell us?
• Dennis J Baker, From Regulation to Crime Control: Preventive Justice in the Governance of Global Markets
• Letters to the Journal
• Marco Longobardo, The Extraterritorial Application of Human Rights in Armed Conflict in the DRC v. Rwanda Case in the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights
• Xiaolin LI & Guangjian TU, Agudas Chasidei Chabad of U.S. v. Russian Federation: Reaffirming the Narrow Reach of the FSIA Expropriation Exception against Foreign States

     

• Rémi Fuhrmann, Localising Civil Wars: International Law, the Spanish Civil War, and the Institutionalisation of ‘Non-Intervention’
• Eleni Ilia, On Creating a Space Power: The United States, International Law, and the Shaping of Outer Space in the 1950s and 1960s
• Julian Lubini, The Beginnings of International Nature Conservation Law with the Svalbard (Spitsbergen) Treaty of 1920: A Transnational Initiative of European Natural and Legal Scientists

     

• Land and Maritime Delimitation and Sovereignty Over Islands (Gabon/Eq. Guinea) (I.C.J.), with introductory note by Gleider Hernández
• The Agreement Between the Council of Eur. and Ukr. on the Establishment of the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression Against Ukr. and the Statute of the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression Against Ukr., with introductory note by David M. Crane
• Regulation 2024/1348/EU Establishing a Common Procedure for Int’l Protection in the Union and Repealing Directive 2013/32/EU (E.U.), with introductory note by Vasiliki Apatzidou

     

• Interventi
• Gianpaolo Maria Ruotolo, Su taluni profili del rapporto tra guerra e disinformazione nel diritto internazionale
• Articoli e Saggi
• Agostina Latino, Deadly Rhythms: The Sonic Dimension of Incitement to Genocide in International Law
• Rita Mazza, Sea-level rise e continuità dello Stato nel parere della Corte internazionale di giustizia sul cambiamento climatico: questioni aperte
• Alan Amadio, Il crimine “eccezionale”: recenti sviluppi in tema di criminalizzazione dell’aggressione
• Miriam Schettini, Is It Time to Reconsider the Creation of an African Criminal Court? Some Reflections Following Angola’s Recent Ratification of the Malabo Protocol
• Osservatorio Europeo
• Giuseppet Emanuele Corsaro, Un’iniziativa team Europe? Il Piano Mattei, la solidarietà internazionale e le sfide della nuova politica italiana di cooperazione allo sviluppo nel Mediterraneo
• Osservatorio Diritti Umani
• Francesco Viggiani, Guerra e soggetti “invisibili”: la condizione degli anziani nella Striscia di Gaza tra diritto internazionale e ordini di evacuazione
• Note e Commenti
• Claudio Di Turi, Il secondo Vertice mondiale per lo sviluppo sociale: esiti, criticità e prospettive future
• Andrea D'Orrio, La corsa all’Artico: la prospettiva geopolitica russa

     

• Hao-Zhe He, Gen-Fu Feng, & Chun-Ping Chang, The Impact of ESG Gaps on Green Exports in Bilateral Trade: A Linear and Nonlinear Analysis
• Romus Noufelie & Boris Landry Djamen, Global Value Chain Integration, Quality of Institutions and Multidimensional Energy Poverty in African Countries
• Axel Berger, Ali Dadkhah, Florian Gitt, Zoryana Olekseyuk, & Jakob Schwab, The Investment Facilitation Index (IFI): Quantifying Domestic Investment Facilitation Frameworks
• Leopoldo Biffi & Christian Winkler, Tightening or Loosening? The Effects of Uncertainty on the Design of Preferential Trade Agreements
• Niels Lachmann, Technical Dialogue or Political Statements? Members’ Concerns about Digital Trade at WTO Committees and Councils
• Sunayana Sasmal, Let’s Get Critical: Critical Minerals Mini Deals as Evolving Models of Trade Cooperation

     

• Paul Hunt, Empowering Human Rights for Revolutionary Change
• Jennifer Bates, Beyond Territorialization? State Constructions of the Indigenous Subject of Rights in Multicultural Colombia
• Omar G. Encarnación, Confronting Historical Injustices: The Politics of Gay Reparations
• Aleydis Nissen, The Right to Access Sport for All in Europe
• Jeremy Julian Sarkin & Benjamin Dugdale, How Selective Interventionism Trumps Human Rights Protection: A Configurational Analysis of the United Nations Security Council’s Disparate Response to Genocide
• Katarzyna Sękowska-Kozłowska & Katarzyna Ważyńska-Finck, Vulnerable and Empowered? Girls in the Practice of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women and the Committee on the Rights of the Child

     

The Criminal State offers a gripping account of how law has confronted the most radical forms of state violence. Beautifully written, broad in scope, and bracingly original, it weaves history with political thought to trace the shifting legal response to state aggression and atrocities, from Leopold’s rule over the Congo to Putin’s war in Ukraine.

At its heart is Lawrence Douglas’s fresh interpretation of the law’s reckoning with Nazi aggression and atrocity. He shows how the Nuremberg trials challenged centuries of thought—rooted in Hobbes and other canonical thinkers—that shielded sovereigns from legal scrutiny. Yet Nuremberg’s bid to frame aggression as the cornerstone of a new order of international criminal law largely failed, giving way to a system now centrally concerned with crimes against humanity and genocide—while leaving unresolved the legality and effectiveness of using force to stop the worst violations of human rights.

Providing rare historical perspective on the dilemmas facing international courts, The Criminal State is a sweeping, provocative history of the struggle to bring perpetrators of state violence to justice.

     

• Rangita de Silva de Alwis, "Because We Take Our Values to War": Analyzing the Views of UN Member States on AI-Driven Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems
• Shai Dothan, The Seeds of Peace and Justice
• Aaron X. Fellmeth, The Territorial Independence of Intellectual Property Rights
• Peter J. Spiro, Balancing Nationalities in International Investment Law