Dear Editors in Chief:

The recent uprising for racial justice marked a pivotal shift in national and global debates on race. One enduring legacy is that the language we use to speak, think, and label people is consequential. Most style guides that previously called for lowercasing Black altered their positions. This letter to the editors urges the American Journal of International Law (AJIL) to join those organizations that have also changed their policies to capitalize White.

The international investment regime is in flux. The mainstream practice of investment law and arbitration works on the basis of the regime's foundations in contract and property law. However, critical scholarship in the field has unearthed the coloniality of power that permeates both the practice of international investment law and the current reform exercise led by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Working Group III. These critical scholars warn of the imminent reproduction and entrenchment of the systemic inequities, power asymmetries, and investment law's investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) regime which is skewed against post-colonial host states. The two books1 under review offer a range of thought-provoking approaches for analyzing the past, present, and future of investment law. This Review Essay categorizes these books into two modes of critical scholarship on international investment law: moderate and radical.2 In Part II, I flesh out the conceptual categories of moderate and radical critique. In Part III, I analyze the books under review through the lens of these two conceptual frameworks. In Part IV, I turn to the question of race and investment law. This Review Essay suggests that race should not be neglected in our analysis of the past, present, and, most importantly, the future of investment law—a core theme that both books under review does not engage with. Part V briefly concludes.

In June 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the precedent set by the 1973 decision in Roe vs. Wade, leaving access to abortion to be regulated by each state, rather than a U.S. constitutional right. Some states are setting gestational age limits, beyond which point only under certain circumstances can an abortion be obtained. Other states are banning abortion outright (regardless of gestational age) unless an “exception” is met. Certain states include an exception for abortion when a woman’s physical health is at risk if they continue the pregnancy, but, at the same time, do not provide an exception for women whose mental health is at risk (a “mental health exception”).

Mental health conditions that develop, continue, or are exacerbated during pregnancy may be manageable or treatable, and women may want to continue their pregnancy even while experiencing such conditions. However, the absence of a choice to terminate their pregnancy as a result of these mental health conditions means women who are unable to successfully manage or treat their mental health during pregnancy have no choice but to experience the impact on their mental health – and reconcile any resulting impact on the fetus.

This article will discuss the role a mental health exception plays in state abortion statutes by analyzing the impact of pregnancy on mental health and resources available to support those who experience mental health impacts during pregnancy while, simultaneously, advocating for the inclusion of a mental health exception in state abortion laws.

With the rapid development of the maritime industry and the emergence of unmanned ships, it is necessary to continuously review the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (1972, COLREGs). This paper provides an overview of the developing history of the COLREGs and summarises the interpretations made by the International Maritime Organization official and academic scholars. Additionally, the paper discusses the application of the COLREGs in collision avoidance geometry and autonomous collision avoidance systems. Furthermore, the necessity and key points of revisions to adapt to industry advancements are discussed, along with an analysis of the main challenges faced. Finally, in light of the continuous progress and implementation of the outcome of the Regulatory Scoping Exercise for the Use of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS), the paper points out that achieving consistency between manned and unmanned vessels, as well as developing COLREGs-based autonomous collision avoidance systems for more complex scenarios, is expected to be a significant trend in the future.

National regulatory authorities (NRAs) play a key role in energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. A recent judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union has clarified the requirements of NRA independence under European Union (EU) energy law. The Court classified the exclusive competence of NRAs to fix network tariffs as purely technical assessments of factual realities. This article challenges this assumption and examines whether the technical administrative tasks of NRAs can in fact be separated from political choices. It also explores the delineation of competences between NRAs and national governments at the EU and national levels, as exemplified by the Netherlands and by the proposed Dutch Energy Act.

Arab social science scholarship, and IR in particular, has been systematically underfunded and sidelined by governments across the region. As such, IR scholars in the Arab world have struggled to produce scholarship in hostile and authoritarian environments, let alone address efforts to decolonise. Of the few initiatives of indigenising social science that exist in the Arab world, the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (DI) and its founding institution, the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (ACRPS), are the main examples. In this intervention, I will review the attempts to indigenise and decolonise IR within these institutions. I focus on how the DI is implementing three main approaches: increasing access to the discipline, rethinking how we teach IR, and facilitating theory production from the region. I demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of the three abovementioned approaches by drawing attention to performative measures on the part of regional scholars, and pretending localism on the part of scholars in the Global North, which together help to perpetuate neomarginalisation. The shortcomings discussed permeate and distort attempts to decolonise the discipline within the Arab world.

Some people have engaged in acts of civil disobedience to protest against the climate policies of their governments and corporations. This article argues that these disobedient actions are justified at present since governments fail to do all they reasonably can to respond to this pressing issue.