Articles for category: English Articles

Compound Interest

Last week, President Trump purported to fire a member of the Federal Reserve Board, Dr. Lisa Cook. And although he appointed Jerome Powell Chairman of the Federal Reserve during his first term, Trump has since directed constant scorn at Powell and repeatedly threatened to remove him as well. This controversy forms part of Trump’s broader effort to assert sweeping control over the executive branch. It also reveals his particular interest in loosening U.S. monetary policy. Yet his actions carry significant legal and economic risks of their own.

4. September 2025

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The Evasion of Historical Responsibility?

The International Court Advisory’s advisory opinion on Obligations of States in Respect of Climate Change has been celebrated as marking the start of a “new era of climate reparations.” In my contribution, I want to draw attention to how, even as the ICJ opened the door to climate reparations, it was evasive on the key temporal questions that are central to any future claims about reparations owed by individual countries for their historical greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, the advisory opinion avoided addressing how colonial histories continue to shape present day climate injustices and the need to decolonize international law. 

4. September 2025

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The School Bell That Rings for War

On 1 September, known in Russia as Knowledge Day, thousands of schoolchildren were once again welcomed back with the ringing of the symbolic first bell, marking the beginning of new school year. However, this school bell does not toll for knowledge or peace. Instead, it symbolizes how Russia has transformed schools into factories for transmitting state-sponsored propaganda to younger generations. In this blog, I explain how Russia is strategically weaponizing the educational system to raise a militarized generation of subjects that accepts and embraces the normalcy of war. It seeks to achieve this goal, inter alia, through military training and involvement of children in the production of combat equipment; obligating teachers to teach state-mandated falsification of history; and forcing cultural assimilation of Ukrainians living in occupied territories.  

3. September 2025

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“Doing the Utmost”

The ICJ found that some norms, previously thought not binding and falling under the unfettered discretion of States (e.g. the content of NDCs) are in fact binding obligations of conduct based on a due diligence standard, and their breach gives rise to state responsibility. In this blog post, I address some pertinent issues regarding due diligence as addressed by the ICJ, as well as ITLOS and the IACtHR. In particular, I focus on the relationship between obligations of result and obligations of conduct, the nature of due diligence, factors to determine its content, and the legal consequences of not acting with the required diligence.

3. September 2025

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From One ICJ to Another

In early August, Judge Julia Sebutinde of the International Court of Justice was reported as saying that “The Lord is counting on me to stand on the side of Israel”, and that the “whole world was against Israel, including my country.” These statements appear to contradict the requirement that Judges remain impartial. Following these remarks, a non-governmental organization called the International Commission of Jurists sent a communication to the President of the Court to urge him to investigate Judge Sebutinde’s remarks. While this move was met with general acclaim on social media, it could likewise be perceived as attempting to put external pressure on the Court to reach a certain decision.

1. September 2025

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Hanan Ashrawi

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Few advocates of Palestinian liberation have become as familiar a name as Dr. Hanan Ashrawi. A principled activist and gifted speaker with a formidable academic background, she rose to international prominence during the First Intifada in 1988. Later, with the start of the Madrid Conference in 1991, she caught the world’s attention as the official representative of the Palestinian delegation.

1. September 2025

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Overcoming Objections to Overcome the Hungarian Veto

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This June, we proposed ways to overcome a Hungarian veto on EU sanctions against Russia. Our proposal prompted Mark Dawson and Martijn van den Brink to write a sharp response, arguing that we had ventured beyond the confines of serious legal scholarship into the realm of the fantastical. Our critics and we seem to live in different realities. When reading Dawson’s and van den Brink’s piece, it feels like the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine does not exist. Yet, there lies an uncomfortable truth at the heart of our proposal, one that our critics fail to recognize: the Russian war might grow into an existential threat to the European Union.

31. August 2025

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Marx, Enemy of the Constitution?

Is it constitutionally permissible to hold a Marx reading group in the German Republic? According to a recent judgment of Hamburg’s Administrative Court: unclear. A reading group can apparently only take place as long as it does not “actively and combatively” promote Marx’s ideas, since “the social theory formulated by Marx” is in essential points “incompatible with the principles of the liberal democratic basic order” of the Federal Republic. The judgement is worth examining in detail.

29. August 2025

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Lithium, Law, and the Limits of EU Sustainability

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In July 2024, the European Commission entered into a strategic partnership on critical raw materials with Serbia by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on sustainable raw materials and battery value chains. Three days before signing the MoU, the Serbian government had decided to renew the spatial plan for the realization of the “Jadar” project, which includes the exploitation of the mineral Jadarite in western Serbia. These two events have signaled the readiness of the Serbian regime to allow lithium mining in western Serbia and the EU’s commitment to exploit a source of critical raw material (CRM) in its neighborhood, particularly in the Western Balkans.

28. August 2025

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Can Africa Still Drill?

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While the ICJ found that any State suffering from climate change can bring charges against others for their contribution to climate change, the opinion does not distinguish between the obligations of developed and developing States (except where treaty law already imposes different obligations).  African States and the African Union have continued to support fossil fuel development on the continent. In light of this advisory opinion, what obligations are imposed on developing States, like African States, to protect the climate, particularly regarding the further development of fossil fuel industries? 

28. August 2025

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