Articles for category: AAA General

“Do(n’t) Cry for Me Argentina”

Through abusive feminism, political leaders use elements of feminism as a shell devoid of content. Two central elements are needed: (a) “a pool of suitably qualified women who oppose feminist goals or substantive commitments to gender equality,” and (b) “a public that assumes that in general ‘women help women’”. Argentina offers a timely example of this trend: its current vice-president, Victoria Villarruel, has shown a political position that reveals the legitimization of an illiberal project committed to dismantling gender equality protections and attacking human rights commitments.

12. August 2025

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Reproductive Violence in Tigray

A new July 2025 investigative report highlights the devastating weaponized sexual and reproductive violence unleashed during the 2020-2022 Tigray conflict in Ethiopia. Based on hundreds of medical records and health worker testimonies, the report documents mass rape, sexual slavery, forced pregnancy, and sexual torture of Tigrayan women and children by Ethiopian and Eritrean soldiers. The deliberate reproductive dimension of violence in Tigray constitutes clear violations of both the Maputo Protocol and international law, amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

12. August 2025

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A Fallen Curtain and Open Questions

On 25 June 2025, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights delivered its Decision on Kovačević v. BiH. This ruling could completely change the legal assessment of strict ethnic quota systems in political institutions for worse. While the case originates from Bosnia and Herzegovina, it will likely have far-reaching political consequences for other power-sharing systems in and beyond Europe, as well. Crucially, it is prone to “overrule” all previous judgments of the ECtHR against BiH. This means that it will render all future efforts to support constitutional reform in the country futile, because it seems to legitimize the de facto strict ethno-national cartel of power materialized in its constitution.

11. August 2025

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Weaponising Gender in South Africa’s Chief Justice Appointment

Ros Dixon argues that “[p]lacing women in high office reflects commitments to fairness, diversity and equality of opportunity. But it also creates opportunities for anti-feminist, would-be authoritarians to use women’s descriptive representation to advance and legitimate their own sexist, authoritarian projects”. The South African Judicial Services Commission’s interviews for the country’s Chief Justice in 2022 provide a fascinating example of this phenomenon in the context of political struggles around corruption and accountability in South Africa.

11. August 2025

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Harmonizing Sources, Hardening Duties

The ICJ’s advisory opinion on climate change may come to be remembered as the moment international law explicitly rose to the climate challenge. Yet, what the opinion offers is not a new edifice but a sturdier legal architecture. By advancing an “all of the above” approach to international law’s sources; by treating these sources as interlocking parts of a living legal system; and by recognizing erga omnes and erga omnes partes duties with concrete consequences for responsibility, the Court has given States, courts and litigants a legally rigorous, source‑sensitive map.

11. August 2025

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The Texas Gambit

American politics at present is defined by the daily discarding of long-standing norms. The latest ignominy involves the brazen attempt, by the Republican leadership of the State of Texas, to gerrymander the state’s congressional districts to give the GOP control over an additional five seats; a move that, if successful, would raise the number of U.S. House seats held by Texas Republicans. What is unprecedented in the Texas situation is both the origin and timing of the attempted gerrymander, and the gaudy theatricality that has followed.

10. August 2025

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Anti-Feminism versus Abusive Feminism

Some of the world’s most powerful leaders have openly embraced an agenda that is overtly hostile to diversity, equity and inclusion, and often overtly anti-feminist. These discursive and behavioral attacks have been accompanied by a range of anti-feminist policy changes. As liberalism and democracy often erode together, it is no surprise that the growth of anti-feminism is associated with democratic backsliding. What is more surprising is that many of these anti-feminist, would-be autocrats have engaged in a parallel set of tactics that appear to endorse, rather than challenge, certain feminist ideas.

8. August 2025

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Of Warming and Warzones

Despite mounting attention to the impacts of military activities and conflicts on climate mitigation and adaptation in recent years, the issue remains largely absent from international legal scrutiny. Therefore, the very fact that several States and organizations raised it during the advisory proceedings held last December left the few scholars and practitioners working on this issue hopeful. This post reviews how the issue of armed conflicts and military emissions was addressed during the ICJ advisory proceedings. Despite the ICJ’s silence, the post highlights a few interpretative openings that may have legal implications for the regulation of wartime climate harms and explores what the ICJ’s ruling means for the legal visibility and accountability of military emissions.

8. August 2025

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Colombia’s Ketchup-Bottle-Case

It may well be Colombian literary culture shining through when the presiding judge of the case against former President Álvaro Uribe cited the French aristocrat: “As Montesquieu rightly said, the law must be like death, which spares no one”. The verdict of 12 years in prison has been 14 years in the making. The most important implication of this case is neither the verdict itself, nor the length of the sentence – it is its nature as a “Ketchup-Bottle-Case”: the opening for more than 100 cases in the system that include crimes against humanity carrying life-in-prison sentences.

8. August 2025

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Litigation v. Politics

The Trump Administration appears committed to crush any and all opposition by the aggressive use of national power. Given the constitutional status of federalism within the United States, these attempts at control from Washington are provoking a wave of litigation. However, it is also important to pay attention to the political means by which states can engage in resistance. A major issue of the moment is whether the Texas Legislature will adhere to the strong demand by Donald Trump that it redraw the legislative districts; and whether Democrats within the state will succeed in their defiance.

8. August 2025

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