REVUE : European Journal of International Law (vol. 23, n°4, November 2012)

Catherine MAIA

The latest issue of the European Journal of International Law (vol. 23, n°4, November 2012) is out.

It was a feature of the Cold War that the Security Council was essentially immobilized in its principal functions under Chapter VII and at times Chapter VI. Since most conflicts were refracted through the dichotomous politics of the Super Powers and at times protagonists were little more than clients of the antagonists of the Cold War, both holding the veto, the Security Council was at best a place to hear canned ideological speeches before washing such down in one of NYC’s more salubrious eateries surrounding the Shoebox.

The year 1989 ushered in a different politics and a different paradigm. Suddenly, though far from perfect, the Security Council was no longer that dead letter of the past, with important initiatives carried out under its auspices and with its authority. The difference between Iraq I and Iraq II was telling: Iraq II was not a regress to the Cold War, a sign of failure and irrelevance. Iraq II was a functioning Security Council exercising its authority to say – at best or worst – a muted No.

The wars and bloodshed that trouble us most now are no longer the surrogate conflicts of the Cold War, internal or international. One is most concerned with dreadful and savage internal conflict, which can no longer with any credibility come under the gruesome legitimacy of ‘self-determination’, with its ‘hands off’ legal implication. Darfur in the past, and Syria – 25,000 senseless dead, 250,000 homeless and displaced and even larger numbers of external refugees – right now bracket a whole range of humanitarian catastrophes, mostly man made.

Responsibility to Protect (R2P) has featured in these pages with some fanfare, but somehow has not translated into an operational duty of action on the body at the centre of such potentialities, the Security Council.

JHHW, « Slouching towards the Cool War; Catalonian Independence and the European Union; Roll of Honour; In this Issue; A Personal Statement » (extract of the Editorial)

 
Contents include:

• Editorial
  
  • JHHW, Slouching towards the Cool War; Catalonian Independence and the European Union; Roll of Honour; In this Issue; A Personal Statement

• Articles

• Jens David Ohlin, Nash Equilibrium and International Law

• Mark Neocleous, International Law as Primitive Accumulation; Or, the Secret of Systematic Colonization

• Critical Review of International Governance

• Laurence Boisson de Chazournes & Edouard Fromageau, Balancing the Scales: The World Bank Sanctions Process and Access to Remedies

• Arman Sarvarian, Common Ethical Standards for Counsel before the European Court of Justice and European Court of Human Rights

• Critical Review of International Jurisprudence

• Julianne Kokott & Christoph Sobotta, The Kadi Case: Constitutional Core Values and International Law – Finding the Balance?

• Roaming Charges: Places of Kitsch: Orlando California

• Realizing Utopia: Reflections on Antonio Cassese’s Vision of International Law

• JHHW, Antonio Cassese: Head in the Clouds, Feet on the Ground

• Marko Milanovic, On Realistic Utopias and Other Oxymorons: An Essay on Antonio Cassese’s Last Book

• Hélène Ruiz Fabri, Enhancing the Rhetoric of Jus Cogens

• Pierre-Marie Dupuy, Back to the Future of a Multilateral Dimension of the Law of State Responsibility for Breaches of ‘Obligations Owed to the International Community as a Whole’

• Iain Scobbie, ‘All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up’: Some Critical Reflections on Professor Cassese’s ‘The International Court of Justice: It is High Time to Restyle the Respected Old Lady’

• Philip Alston & Colin Gillespie, Global Human Rights Monitoring, New Technologies, and the Politics of Information

• Francesco Francioni, From Utopia to Disenchantment: The Ill Fate of ‘Moderate Monism’ in the ICJ Judgment on The Jurisdictional Immunities of the State

• Orna Ben-Naftali, Sentiment, Sense and Sensibility in the Genesis of Utopian Traditions

• Isabel Feichtner, Realizing Utopia through the Practice of International Law

• Impressions

• B. S. Chimni, The Self, Modern Civilization, and International Law: Learning from Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule