Verfassungsrechtliche Aspekte des Völkerrechts, einschließlich der Integration völkerrechtlicher Normen in nationale Verfassungsordnungen, Vertragsabschlussbefugnisse, völkerrechtliche Verpflichtungen und verfassungsrechtliche Grenzen internationaler Bindungen. Umfasst die Schnittstelle zwischen nationalem Verfassungsrecht und völkerrechtlichen Verpflichtungen.
Based in Casablanca, Hélène Cazes Benatar not only assisted a great number of refugees fleeing from Europe to North Africa, but also helped with the liberation of internees in Saharan forced labor and internment camps run by the Vichy regime. Her social, political and even clandestine activities were significant and extend far beyond the Jewish community until well after the Second World War.
A few months ago the UK’s Supreme Court held that the Secretary of State’s policy to remove protection seekers to Rwanda to have their claims determined there was unlawful. The British government responded to this decision with a Treaty and Bill that seek to legislate the fiction, or indeed, the falsehood, of Rwanda’s safety. This move demonstrates the fragility of the rule of law, both domestically and internationally. Addressing the latter, this essay shifts focus from domestic challenges to international ones, exploring whether STCs could be contested as ‘forbidden treaties’.
Bulk data retention is the evergreen of European security policy. On February 13, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) – once again – ruled in Podchasov on Russia’s collection of and access to citizens’ private communication. The Court made it clear that weakening the encryption of all citizens cannot be justified. This sends an important message not only to the Russian state, but also to other European governments that contemplate installing “backdoors” on encrypted messenger services like Telegram, Signal or WhatsApp.
Restricting the freedom of movement of unwanted asylum seekers is the conceptual core of the CEAS reform package politically agreed upon by the EU’s legislative institutions in December 2023. Large groups of the people seeking international protection in the EU will be subject to so-called border procedures. Their claims will be processed while being ‘kept at or in proximity to the external border or transit zones’ (Commission proposal) in order to prevent their onward movement and to facilitate ensuing deportations. Introducing such confinement measures will be mandatory for all Member States, provided that an asylum seeker meets certain criteria, in particular a low rate of success of earlier protection claims made by his or her fellow nationals, calculated on an EU-wide average. Why did we fail to make asylum-seekers’ right to free movement relevant in context of the CEAS reform?
The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, alongside with the EU’s confrontation with Russia’s ally Belarus, however, has deeply impacted the securitisation of migration within the EU. Highly politicised conflict-related securitisation narratives have rarely found their way so swiftly into Member States’ domestic migration and asylum laws, leading to open and far-reaching violations of EU and international human rights law. Hardly ever before have ill-defined concepts and indiscriminate assumptions been so broadly accepted and used to shift from an individual-focused approach to blanket measures stigmatising, dehumanising and excluding entire groups. And rarely before have radical changes of this kind received so little criticism - a deeply unsettling and dangerous trend.
Two years have passed since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine – an act of aggression which 141 states of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) condemned as such shortly after. This crime of aggression has brought unimaginable suffering to the people of Ukraine. As this blog will highlight in the following, a reform of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) concerning the crime of aggression is necessary and long overdue. The current jurisdictional regime leaves accountability gaps, which have become painfully visible in the past two years. Plausible suggestions for the reform are already out there – it ultimately “all depends on the political will” of the 124 ICC state parties.
A surprise attack launched by Hamas on October 7 ignited yet another period of violence in Israel and Gaza. In response, Israel launched an unprecedented invasion of the Gaza Strip, which resulted in the deaths of over 25,000 Gazans, most of them civilians. While the war does not seem to come close to an end, Israel has meanwhile encountered a different kind of problem; following the October 7 attack, Israel captured hundreds of Hamas fighters. Immediately following the start of the war, voices in Israel urged the government to launch criminal prosecutions of these attackers, with some arguing that Israel should impose the death penalty on the perpetrators.
On January 26, 2024, the International Court of Justice (‘ICJ’ or ‘the Court’) issued its provisional measures order on the Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel). This article provides an overview of the legal implications of the ICJ’s order for third-party states providing political, financial, or military support to Israel, including the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands. I argue that the plausibility of genocide establishes the necessary evidentiary threshold to trigger state responsibility for third-party states on the international level as well as to initiate domestic legal proceedings.
Putin's regime finally murdered Alexei Navalny, a Russian patriot and freedom fighter. Regardless of how the events on 16 February unfolded, his death is a direct result of the actions of Russian state agents who had long been working towards his death. Putin’s belief in his absolute impunity, reinforced by appeasement, was a decisive factor that facilitated Alexei Navalny's murder. However, what happened to Navalny must not happen to Vladimir Kara-Murza, Aleksei Gorinov, Ilya Yashin, and many others. Navalny’s death is a huge loss for all Russians who believe in a free and peaceful future for their country, but also for Europe and the world.
On 31 January 2024, the International Court of Justice rendered its judgment on the merits of a case initiated by Ukraine against the Russian Federation in 2017. Ukraine alleged numerous violations by Russia of two treaties: the 1999 International Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism and the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. This blog post provides a brief overview of the decision and argues that the Court sidestepped the task of reconstructing what has happened in reality via judicial fact-finding. This approach comes at the expense of several legal errors. The harsh realities of the conflict and, most importantly, the human suffering on the territories of Ukraine occupied by Russia seem far removed from the grandeur of the Peace Palace.
13. September 2025
Giovanni Capoccia
12. September 2025
Anne Peters
12. September 2025
Anne Peters