Her story is one of courage, sacrifice and solidarity with those pushed to society’s periphery: for decades, Mia Yamamoto hid her true self as a trans woman while fiercely advocating for the marginalized and uniting diverse groups to amplify unheard voices. Since birth, she has shared the fate of the incarcerated – a reality that continues to shape her to this day.
One year after New Caledonia was tormented by violent demonstrations, resulting in the deaths of 14 people and causing over 2 billion euros worth of damage, representatives of New Caledonia and the French State signed the Bougival Accord to bring an end to the situation and pave the way for peace. While Emmanuel Macron hails the Accord as “historic”, the overseas minister Manuel Valls celebrates it as “the best response to the fear”. However, a closer look at the agreement reveals that the Accord continues to entrench the French hold on the island and renders New Caledonian independence more elusive than ever.
Much of the commentary that has emerged so far, in this symposium and in seemingly every other corner of the internet, focuses on the legal content of the opinion: the articulation of States’ obligations under international law, the rejection of the lex specialis argument, and the recognition of the right to a healthy environment, inter many alia. Yet beyond the legal reasoning and doctrinal outcomes lies something else. The opinion is also an act of identity performance: a way for the ICJ to speak about itself.
On June 12th 2025, Advocate General (AG) Ćapeta delivered her Opinion in Case WS v Frontex (C-746/23 P), concerning Frontex’ responsibility for violations of fundamental rights in joint return operations (JROs). The AG first exposes serious logical and legal flaws in the General Court’s approach before explaining why Frontex can be held directly accountable for fundamental rights violations when acting in cooperation with Member States; a question that was central to the applicants’ case but one that the General Court failed to address entirely.
In our blog post “Access Denied”, we informed the research and Open Access (OA) community about Verfassungsblog’s removal from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). With the publication of our appeal – which was ultimately rejected by DOAJ – we also announced our intention to initiate a broader discussion with DOAJ and the OA community about the directory’s admission and removal processes. As DOAJ is a central and established instrument in the Open Access movement, we believe this discussion is vital. To enable an open and constructive conversation, I will revisit the arguments from our appeal and connect them to broader issues of Open Access publishing, funding, and DOAJ’s role in this process. Since Matt Hodgkinson, Head of Editorial at DOAJ, has recently published DOAJ’s response, I will engage with some of his key points.
The aim of this blog post is not to summarise the ICJ’s opinion or assess its overall relevance for international law. Instead, it draws attention to some of the issues that the ICJ did not address, or where it might have gone further, by providing more depth, precision, and guidance. By focusing on what the ICJ did not say, we can gain a better understanding of how it navigates its institutional constraints, political sensitivities, and the evolving terrain of international climate litigation.
For the second time in a month, one of the world’s highest judicial authorities has issued an advisory opinion on the climate crisis that highlights the importance of the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment. Echoing the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in its Advisory Opinion 32/25, on July 23, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) unanimously held that this right constitutes a binding norm of international law.
The Trump administration is reshaping the roles of the U.S. legal profession and the civil service to use them as a tool to support the President’s political interests. This impacts an understudied and politically significant group of bureaucrats: government lawyers. They play a critical gatekeeper role in establishing legal principles that can both enable and hinder the systematic weakening of democratic institutions. The case of Brazil has a lot of important lessons to offer.
The Grand Chamber ruled that Caster Semenya did not benefit from a fair hearing contrary to Article 6(1) European Convention on Human Rights. However, it did not extend Switzerland’s jurisdiction to her substantive complaints under Article 8 ECHR, taken alone or in conjunction with Article 14 ECHR, which go to the heart of her case. Although the GC was up against it in the current stormy political landscape of sex and gender, it could have gone further to protect fundamental rights.
In May 2025, Mongolia witnessed peaceful youth-led protests in Sukhbaatar Square reacting to the Government’s handling of corruption and a perceived lack of transparency. The demonstration led to the Government’s resignation after a failed vote of confidence. Such governmental crises are not unprecedented in Mongolia, but the reaction to it is: the current political episode stands for an emerging constitutional culture in which civil society is reclaiming constitutional mechanisms for a more participatory and responsive democratic system.
13. September 2025
Giovanni Capoccia
12. September 2025
Anne Peters
12. September 2025
Anne Peters