Just war and military morale: a brief reflection on the correlation between the legality of war and the moral repercussions for members of US and UK forces arising from the questionable legality of the campaign Iraqi Freedom of March 2003

Does it matter to a member of the military whether the military campaign in which he is taking part is lawful or not? Despite the observation that the crime of aggression (post Kampala 2010) constitutes a ‘leadership crime par excellence,’ which limits any (future) criminal responsibility accordingly, the legality or illegality of any military action under international law can create moral implications for the common foot soldier and mid-level officer and also have a tangible impact on the national legal frameworks under which these forces operate. This short article uses the example of Operation Iraqi Freedom (2003) to discuss the repercussions of a—most likely—illegal military campaign for individual members of democratic armed forces before the background of the present discussion of NATO led action in Libya

Biodiversity, Species Protection, and Animal Welfare Under International Law

The chapter explores the influence of the concept of animal welfare on international biodiversity law. A close examination of the recent evolution of this branch of international law shows that animal welfare has an ambivalent place in biodiversity-related agreements. Indeed, while welfare is only a faint consideration in the development of international regimes dealing with biodiversity as a whole, the concept has become an essential element for agreements dealing with the conservation of specific endangered species. Despite its role in these agreements, the place of animal welfare in international biodiversity law highlights that this corpus of rules is currently insufficient to be an effective tool for the protection of wildlife welfare. The last section of this study suggests that the adoption of international rules aiming at ensuring the protection of wild animals’ welfare could serve the double purpose of strengthening the conservation purpose of biodiversity regimes while also filling the welfare gap of international biodiversity law

The role of valuation and bargaining in optimising transboundary watercourse treaty regimes

In the face of water scarcity, growing water demands, population increase, ecosystem degradation, climate change, and so on transboundary watercourse states inevitably have to make difficult decisions on how finite quantities of water are distributed. Such waters, and their associated ecosystem services, offer multiple benefits. Valuation and bargaining can play a key role in the sharing of these ecosystems services and their associated benefits across sovereign borders. Ecosystem services in transboundary watercourses essentially constitute a portfolio of assets. Whilst challenging, their commodification, which creates property rights, supports trading. Such trading offers a means by which to resolve conflicts over competing uses and allows states to optimise their ‘portfolios’. However, despite this potential, adoption of appropriate treaty frameworks that might facilitate a market-based approach to the discovery and allocation of water-related ecosystem services at the transboundary level remains both a challenge, and a topic worthy of further study. Drawing upon concepts in law and economics, this paper therefore seeks to advance the study of how treaty frameworks might be developed in a way that supports such a market-based approach to ecosystem services and transboundary waters

Advances in structure elucidation of small molecules using mass spectrometry

The structural elucidation of small molecules using mass spectrometry plays an important role in modern life sciences and bioanalytical approaches. This review covers different soft and hard ionization techniques and figures of merit for modern mass spectrometers, such as mass resolving power, mass accuracy, isotopic abundance accuracy, accurate mass multiple-stage MS(n) capability, as well as hybrid mass spectrometric and orthogonal chromatographic approaches. The latter part discusses mass spectral data handling strategies, which includes background and noise subtraction, adduct formation and detection, charge state determination, accurate mass measurements, elemental composition determinations, and complex data-dependent setups with ion maps and ion trees. The importance of mass spectral library search algorithms for tandem mass spectra and multiple-stage MS(n) mass spectra as well as mass spectral tree libraries that combine multiple-stage mass spectra are outlined. The successive chapter discusses mass spectral fragmentation pathways, biotransformation reactions and drug metabolism studies, the mass spectral simulation and generation of in silico mass spectra, expert systems for mass spectral interpretation, and the use of computational chemistry to explain gas-phase phenomena. A single chapter discusses data handling for hyphenated approaches including mass spectral deconvolution for clean mass spectra, cheminformatics approaches and structure retention relationships, and retention index predictions for gas and liquid chromatography. The last section reviews the current state of electronic data sharing of mass spectra and discusses the importance of software development for the advancement of structure elucidation of small molecules

The Role of the National Courts in the Field of International Environmental Law

In 1996 the American Society of International Law\u27s Interest Group in International Environmental Law (ASIL-IELIG) undertook a comparative study of the application of international environmental law by national courts. The present issue of RECIEL contains six articles adapted from reports from this study. The full study will be published by the British Institution of International and Comparative Law, and will include reports on a broad range of countries from around the world. Each country report surveys the domestic case-law involving the direct or indirect application of international environmental law, as well as the barriers to the greater application of international environmental law by national courts. This article provides background on the rationale of the study, its relationship to existing scholarship, the criteria for case selection, and an analysis of the project results