Understanding the Complexity of Environmental Law
Environmental goals are pursued in increasingly complex legal ways that defy our usual approaches to teaching and researching environmental law in siloes.…
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2019
GLJ Editorial Message for Issue 20.8
Dear Readers, It is my pleasure to announce the publication of the last issue of the German Law Journal’s 20th anniversary year.…
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Academics at the Forum: Yes, it Still Matters; No, it’s Not Any Better, Part 2
In my last post, I discussed the number of academics at the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights, and the lack of improvement in representation over the past three years.…
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Academics at the Forum: Yes, it Still Matters; No, it’s Not Any Better, Part 1
I was asked by someone associated with the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights’ organization if I would again do my count of academics and women academics because they thought it was interesting and important.…
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Symposium on Institutional Innovations in the Enforcement of EU Law and Policies
Much is being said, lately, regarding the effectiveness of EU policies, often arguing that their implementation is too poor or uneven throughout the Union.…
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150 years of humanitarian reflection: A momentous anniversary
Many know the International Review of the Red Cross as an academic publication dedicated to issues of international humanitarian law, policy and action produced by the ICRC and published by Cambridge University Press.,…
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Quarterly Highlight: The Lengthy Journey towards a Treaty on Business & Human Rights
This post is part of the symposium that the BHRJ Blog is running on the revised binding treaty on business and human rights, which was released in July 2019.…
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Product co-creation: together we can build something wonderful
Co-creation is not a new idea. For years companies have been seeking advice from their customers about how they can improve their products and services, either by asking directly, by quietly listening, or by learning from data.…
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GLJ Editorial Message for Issue 20.7
Dear Friends of the German Law Journal! As we have mentioned more often than you probably like to hear, 2019 marks the twentieth anniversary of the German Law Journal (yes, the twentieth anniversary, did we mention that?),…
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Revised Draft: Did States Get a Passing Grade?
This post is part of the symposium that the BHRJ Blog is running on the revised binding treaty on business and human rights, which was released in July 2019.…
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Law and style
In legal discourse, the term ‘style’ is used in a bewildering variety of senses and contexts, mundane and refined, practical and theoretical.…
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Another year of peer review at Cambridge University Press…
Improvements, Iterations, and Infrastructure Cambridge University Press has a set of objectives in the peer review space . . . with several question marks still: Objectives: Increase transparency Support reviewer recognition Offer more training resources for reviewers Improve internal processes to make peer review more efficient Questions: What are the evolving challenges to peer review and opportunities in evolving forms of scholarly communication for peer review and how do we respond to them?…
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A Progressing Approach on Conflict-Affected Settings and Situations of Occupation in the Revised Draft of the Legally Binding Instrument, More Needed
This post is part of the symposium that the BHRJ Blog is running on the revised binding treaty on business and human rights, which was released in July 2019.…
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A new draft Business and Human Rights treaty and a promising direction of travel
This post is part of the symposium that the BHRJ Blog is running on the revised binding treaty on business and human rights, which was released in July 2019.…
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Five ways the new draft treaty on business and human rights can be strengthened
In the second of a two-part article, Doug Cassel outlines the five areas that need addressing to deliver on the promise of the new draft treaty.…
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Legal liability for business human rights abuses under the revised draft of a treaty on business and human rights
This post is part of the symposium that the BHRJ Blog is running on the revised binding treaty on business and human rights, which was released in July 2019.…
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Ecuador’s Revised Draft Treaty: Getting Down to Business
In the first of a two-part article, Doug Cassel raises certain arguments circling around the significant improvements made in the new draft.…
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The 2019 Draft of the Business and Human Rights Treaty: Nothing left to improve?
“This post is part of the symposium that the BHRJ Blog is running on the revised binding treaty on business and human rights, which was released in July 2019.…
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The Revised Draft Business and Human Rights Treaty: Taking Women’s Experiences and Women’s Human Rights Seriously
The revised draft of the Open-ended Intergovernmental Working Group’s business and human rights treaty released on July 16, 2019 is a significant improvement on the Zero Draft in terms of its structure, coherence, and its application to all business activity, not simply transnational.…
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GLJ Editorial Message for Issue 20.6
Dear readers, We are back after a wonderful summer break – and hope you enjoyed yours. And we are back with a bang!…
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Slow Progress in Times of Dynamic Change? Feminist Perspectives on the Road to the Binding Treaty
This post is part of the symposium that the BHRJ Blog is running on the revised binding treaty on business and human rights, which was released in July 2019.…
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Draft Treaty on business and human rights: a digital environment perspective
On July 16, 2019, the UN open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights (the “Working Group”) published a revised draft of a binding treaty on business and human rights.…
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A step in the right direction: corporate responsibility under the 2019 revised draft. Part II: the recognition of corporate violations and its implications
This post is part one of the first in a symposium that the BHRJ blog is running on the revised binding treaty on business and human rights, which was released in July 2019.…
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A step in the right direction: corporate responsibility under the 2019 revised draft. Part I: beyond transnational conduct and corporations by means of non-reductionist approaches
This post is part one of the first in a symposium that the BHRJ blog is running on the revised binding treaty on business and human rights, which was released in July 2019.…
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Education is key in fostering trade opportunities for women
Women's empowerment is now an established feature of the debate at the WTO. Over the years, the WTO has worked to further strengthen the role of trade in empowering women; to assess the impact of international trade on women's economic development; to make trade as inclusive as possible and thus to contribute to the implementation of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
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Developing a National Action Plan on a Polycentric Governance System: Case of Indonesia
Indonesia is the only country in Southeast Asia to be a member of the G20 and, in the first quarter of 2019, was recorded as having the third-largest economic growth among the G20 countries, which was 5.07 percent.…
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New book highlights key outcomes from WTO Ministerial Conferences
A new book containing all the key results from WTO Ministerial Conferences since the organization was established in 1995 was unveiled at the WTO on 18 July. Spanning 11 Ministerial Conferences held between 1996 and 2017, “WTO Ministerial Conferences: Key Outcomes” includes Ministerial Decisions and Declarations as well as Conference Chairpersons’ statements.
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The UK’s Closure of Investigations into Alleged Torture and Ill-Treatment in Iraq
The way a state responds to alleged war crimes and human rights violations says much about its approach to international law, transparency, and redress for victims.…
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How to Write A Great Peer Review
Reviewers often ask the editorial team at Law & Social Inquiry for tips on writing peer reviews. Here are what I see as four key attributes of reviewer reports that are most valuable to editors and authors.…
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GLJ Editorial Message for Issue 20.5
Dear readers, We bring you best wishes and some light summer reading from the HQ of the German Law Journal. Our latest issue touches on several topical aspects of European Union Law – a field that has begun to entail to many diverse policy areas and disciplinary traditions that it is perhaps meaningless to still pretend some level of overall coherence.…
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The People’s Right to Know and State Secrecy
Transparency is the mantra of democratic governance. It is cherished as a tool for curbing corruption and abuses of power, and achieving political accountability.…
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The UN Guiding Principles Should Apply to Low Waged Workers in the United States: Case of App-Based Drivers
The New York Times headline, Why Are Taxi Drivers in New York Killing Themselves? should sound human rights alarms. Drivers who committed suicide shared with their families that they had a difficult time making a living as Uber began to dominate the ride-hailing, app-based taxi industry.…
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A Special Issue of the IJLIC on Law, Liberty and Technology―Criminal Justice in the Context of Smart Machines
The criminal justice system has been something of a test-bed for new technologies―witness, for example, the use of CCTV surveillance and DNA profiling technologies.…
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‘We should/could ensure rights-holders affected by our clients’ activities have greater access to remedy, but we won’t let them know about it’: The Dutch Banking Sector Agreement’s Discussion Paper on Enabling Remediation
On 24 May 2019, the Dutch Banking Sector Agreement (DBA) published a discussion paper on enabling remediation, which explores the role and responsibility of banks with regard to remedying human rights impacts.…
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“50/50” Gender Equality and the Persistence of Bridewealth in Democratic South Africa
Michael Yarbrough is Assistant Professor, Law and Society Major, Department of Political Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY).…
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Celebrating Law & Social Inquiry
Cambridge University Press was proud to chair a session at this year’s Law and Society Association Annual Meeting in Washington DC to commemorate the journal Law & Social Inquiry’s move to publication with Cambridge in 2019.…
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Will Innovations Disrupt Existing Regulatory Frameworks?
In May 2013, Defense Distributed, an online open-source organisation, released a plan called ‘The Liberator’ on the Internet. The plan allowed the manufacturing of a 3D-printable, single-shot handgun.…
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Towards a case for legally recognising and labelling ‘forced-to-penetrate’ cases as rape
Section 1 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 defines rape as the non-consensual and intentional penile penetration of the victim’s vagina, anus, or mouth by the perpetrator, and that the perpetrator does not have a reasonable belief in the victim’s consent.…
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The politics of Islamic family law reform
In particular since the 2000s, family laws – the laws regulating marriage, divorce, custody, polygyny and guardianship among other matters – have been reformed across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).…
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The Effect on Business: The Reality of the Nevsun Case in Canada
As the business and human rights discourse gains space in courts and transnational litigation in home countries rise to prominence, a question that arises is: what does this mean for businesses and their investors?…
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The Human Rights Obligations of International Organisations towards their Civilian Personnel
This analysis starts from the assumption, accepted by most scholars, that International Organisations (IOs) are bearers of at least some human rights (HRs) obligations, namely those stemming from jus cogens and, to some extent, international customary law.[1]…
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Business and Human Rights in the Republic of Korea and Extraterritorial Jurisdiction
The National Human Rights Commission in the Republic of Korea recommended that the Korean government adopt a new National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights as part of its efforts to implement the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in Korea on July 2016.[1]…
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Jurisdiction, access to remedy in business and human rights cases and the corporate structure: A tale of two cases.
This note introduces two cases, both concerned with liability under a duty of care of parent companies, the obligation of ‘due diligence’ in supply chain operations and the obstacles presented by the corporate structure.…
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Jabir et al vs. KiK: Do EU companies have an extraterritorial duty towards suppliers in global production chains?
Multinational companies not only maintain subsidiaries in multiple jurisdictions but have increasingly outsourced production to independent suppliers. Industrial disasters like the Ali Enterprises (AE) factory fire in Karachi, Pakistan, or the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh, are only the most extreme examples of the results of precarious working conditions in global supply chains.…
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Clarifying the limits of extraterritorial jurisdiction of English courts to try business-related human rights violations
On 10 April 2019, the UK Supreme Court passed a landmark decision in Vedanta v Lungowe and allowed claims alleging severe environmental pollution in Zambia to be tried in England.…
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Vedanta v Lungowe: An irreconcilable regulatory overreach?
Vedanta was an appeal of the Court of Appeal’s decision in respect of the liability of a UK parent company for the activities of its Zambian subsidiary.…
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Ghosts and Judges: The Self as a Historical Subject
Lawyers love a good ghost story. In his opinion in a famous case involving a dispute between a local council and a firm of contractors, British Law Lord Cyrill Radcliffe mused that during the proceedings, the parties had become “so far disembodied spirits that their actual persons should be allowed to rest in peace.”…
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GLJ Editorial Message for Issue 20.4
Dear Readers, It is with great pleasure that I announce the publication of vol 20(4) of the German Law Journal and our new call for special issue proposals for volumes 21 (2020) and 22 (2021).…
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Australia as a jurisdiction for transnational human rights litigation: Kamasaee v Commonwealth
Renewed focus on access to remedy for business related human rights abuses has drawn attention back to jurisdictions that have developed a body of jurisprudence which, to varying degrees, will allow domestic courts to accept jurisdiction over claims where extraterritorial human rights violations are framed as civil suits and brought against a corporate actor in its home jurisdiction.…
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Extraterritoriality: A Problem of Terminology
It is well accepted that host states have a duty to protect human rights from the adverse impacts of business conduct.…
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Introducing the BHRJ Blog Symposium on Business, Human Rights and Extraterritoriality
We are delighted to announce the launch of our first BHRJ blog symposium. Over the coming days, we will publish nine pieces from scholars and practitioners around the world covering the theory and practice of extraterritoriality in relation to business and human rights.…
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Brexit: An editor’s dream
I have spent the last three years focussed on Brexit. Mostly, I confess, it has been rather depressing – not particularly because I do not like the probable destination of the process, which I don’t – but because it has been so hard to establish that fact and analysis could play a fundamental role in resolving not only the technical issues but also the political ones.…
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Tips on Publishing in a Peer-Reviewed Journal
Christopher W. Schmidt, the Editor of Law & Social Inquiry, offers advice on publishing in a peer-reviewed journal. Your Abstract Is More Important Than You Think Law & Social Inquiry (LSI) regularly receives strong manuscripts with weak abstracts.…
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Cambridge Studies in Law and Christianity
Over the past two generations, a major new field of law and religion field study has emerged, involving more than 1500 scholars around the globe. …
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Giving the Treaty a Purpose
The U.S. is an international anomaly in that it has several instruments at its disposal to conclude agreements with other countries. The choice of the instrument determines what steps need to be taken in order to turn an informal promise into a formal and binding agreement under U.S. law. Whereas treaty ratification needs the support of two-thirds of the Senate, the congressional-executive agreement (“CEA”) requires a simple majority in both the Senate and the House.
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Business and Human Rights in Slovenia
Slovenia prides itself on being among those countries committed to respecting and protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms. It has, for instance, in 2018 presided the United Nations Human Rights Council.…
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What Effects Might Brexit have on Business and Human Rights in the UK and Beyond?
The Brexit deadline and the nature and even implementation of a transitional deal with the EU remain uncertain at the time of writing.…
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Brexit and European Legal Studies
Brexit may have a surprising potential to animate European Legal Studies as a field of legal enquiry. Never has the demand for European legal expertise been higher than it is now as we come to terms with the complexities of the process from withdrawing from the EU.…
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Parent Companies can have a Duty of Care for Environmental and Human Rights Impacts: Vedanta v Lungowe
On 10 April 2019, the UK Supreme Court gave its much anticipated decision in Vedanta v Lungowe as to whether English tort law meant a parent company can have a duty of care to victims of the actions by a foreign subsidiary.…
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GLJ Editorial Message for 20.2 and 20.3
Esteemed readers, The bad news is that our teenage years are over – the German Law Journal turned twenty these days.…
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Brexit and the Rights of UK Nationals in the EU
What is the common point between Shamima Begum, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliff and the one million British citizens in the EU in a Brexit context? Whatever their (many) differences, all raise the question of what a state’s obligations are towards its citizens abroad
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One British Thing: A Bottle of Welfare Orange Juice
What does an empty bottle of concentrated orange juice have to do with colonialism? Some of you may remember the Welfare Orange Juice that the British government provided to pregnant women and young children from the middle of the Second World War until 1971.…
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Cambridge holds inaugural Partners Summit
Academic welcomed 50 of our journal society partners and editors from all over the world to our inaugural summit
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Why Publish in Law & Social Inquiry?
The American Bar Foundation and Law & Social Inquiry (LSI) are thrilled to begin our new partnership with Cambridge University Press and encourage you to read our first issue published together here.…
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Slavery and gender-blind regulatory responses
International Women’s Day offers a good opportunity to assess the extent to which gender considerations are integrated into the business and human rights (BHR) agenda.…
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Toward a “New MFN Debate” in Investment Treaty Arbitration
Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) clauses present, in the words of the U.N. International Law Commission (ILC), one of the “most vexed interpretive issues under international investment agreements.” The clause nevertheless persists, supplying one of the key non-discrimination requirements in modern investment treaties and free trade agreements. In essence, the MFN clause prohibits nationality-based discrimination among foreign investors: the host state undertakes to treat the investor’s investment as favorably as investments from other countries.
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GLJ Editorial Message for Issue 20.1
Dear Readers, Winter has been short, but we have used time well and can happily announce: this Issue of the German Law Journal, marking its twentieth anniversary, is the first one published jointly with Cambridge University Press — for all friends of this remarkable project truly a moment to rejoice!…
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A trading of ideas: how the CUP Marketing team collaborates with the WTO (World Trade Organization)
Q and A with Sian Welch – Senior Marketing Executive What is your job title and how long have you been working at Cambridge University Press?…
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The 2019 Smit-Lowenfeld Prize for the best article in the field of international arbitration
The International Arbitration Club of New York (IACNY) announced today that Simon Batifort and J. Benton Heath are the recipients of the 2019 Smit-Lowenfeld Prize for the best article in the field of international arbitration. The prize is being awarded for the article, “The New Debate on the Interpretation of MFN Clauses in Investment Treaties: Putting the Brakes on Multilateralization”, which was published in the American Journal of International Law (Vol. III No. 4).
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The Bureaucratization of Religion in Southeast Asia: Expanding or Restricting Religious Freedom?
Although the narrative of the secular state is pervasive, most countries in the world do regulate the religions in their jurisdictions in one way or another, and thus, public commitments notwithstanding, do not abide by a secular-separationist ideology.…
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