Making the Client\u27s Peace: Privatizing Peace? Global Law Firms Offering Pro Bono Services in Post-Conflict Settings

Lawyers of global law firms have begun to take on complex pro bono representations for clients in peace and constitution-building settings. These lawyers, who often cooperate across different offices of a global law firm, are not acting based on an external mandate but pursuant to an attorney-client relationship. The client is the source of authority and the owner of the process; yet, global law firms that serve pro bono clients are also a form of profit-making transnational corporation. In their day-today business they represent the interests of paying clients. This article will discuss whether and how such constellations can lead to power, infrastructure, and knowledge asymmetries between law firms and their often weak pro bono clients in post-conflict settings. Accordingly, it raises and discusses the following questions: Are the legal profession\u27s domestic codes of conduct strong enough to guarantee good professional conduct by global law firms when providing pro bono services in post-conflict settings with weak or temporarily absent local legal profession institutions? Is it desirable to create a transnational code of conduct for lawyers, law firms, and other institutions for providing pro bono legal services in such fragile peace and constitution building settings? By addressing these questions, this article also approaches pro bono services of global law firms as an example of how interests of the private sphere of lawyer-client relations and the public sphere of peace and constitution building merge, and how the legal profession\u27s codes of conduct regulate global law firms and their legal professionals\u27 conduct as global agents of \u27privatized peace and constitution building efforts

National, societal and human security: on the transformation of political language

"Der Artikel beschreibt die Erweiterung des Sicherheitsbegriffs über die letzten fünfzig Jahre. Dabei werden vier Dimensionen des Begriffswandels unterschieden: die Referenzdimension, die Sachdimension, die Raumdimension und die Gefahrendimension. Der Prozess der Begriffserweiterung wird nicht allein auf die Versicherheitlichung von Problembereichen, also auf bewusste Sprechakte, sondern auf den makrosozialen Prozess der Dissoziation von Staat und Gesellschaft und die Durchsetzung liberaler Werte zurückgeführt." (Autorenreferat)"The article traces the extension of the concept of security over roughly the last fifty years. It differentiates between four dimensions of conceptual change: the referent object, the issue dimension, the spatial dimension and the dimension of perceived danger. The process of conceptual extension is explained not only as securitization, i.e. the result of voluntary speech acts, but as a macro-social process of the dissociation of state and society and the prevalence of liberal values." (author's abstract

International Arbitration: A New Mechanism to Settle Intra-State Territorial Disputes between States and Secessionist Movements? - The Divorce of Sudan and South Sudan and the Abyei Question

In 2008, the Government of Sudan (GoS) and the Sudan People\u27s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) submitted an arbitration agreement with the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague. In a unique fast track procedure, an international arbitration tribunal had to determine in accordance with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005, in particular the Abyei Protocol and Abyei Appendix, the Interim National Constitution (INC) and general principles of law, whether the Abyei Border Commission (ABC) exceeded its mandate, which was to define and demarcate the area of the nine Ngok Dinka chiefdoms transferred to Kordofan in 1905. In case of excess, the parties entrusted the tribunal with redefining the boundaries of the disputed territory based on the parties’ submissions. To guarantee the transparency of the procedure and to generate acceptance by all stakeholders on the ground, all hearings and documents were made publically available. The procedure and the more than 200-pages-long final Award from July 2009 constitute an illustrative example of an international dispute settlement procedure dealing with an intra-state (territorial) dispute between a state and a secessionist movement. The paper asks why and how the parties initiated the arbitration procedure and evaluates the still disputed status of the Abyei Region and the record of the parties’ (non-)compliance with the Abyei Award and its role in the ongoing status-negotiations between Sudan and the newly independent South Sudan. By inter alia taking a comparative perspective with other international dispute settlements the paper critically discusses the legal-political implications of the Abyei Arbitration and whether it could serve as a model or lesson learned when it comes to the effectiveness and success of international arbitration and its potential contribution to the settlement of intra-state (territorial) disputes

Making the Client\u27s Peace: Privatizing Peace? Global Law Firms Offering Pro Bono Services in Post-Conflict Settings

Lawyers of global law firms have begun to take on complex pro bono representations for clients in peace and constitution-building settings. These lawyers, who often cooperate across different offices of a global law firm, are not acting based on an external mandate but pursuant to an attorney-client relationship. The client is the source of authority and the owner of the process; yet, global law firms that serve pro bono clients are also a form of profit-making transnational corporation. In their day-today business they represent the interests of paying clients. This article will discuss whether and how such constellations can lead to power, infrastructure, and knowledge asymmetries between law firms and their often weak pro bono clients in post-conflict settings. Accordingly, it raises and discusses the following questions: Are the legal profession\u27s domestic codes of conduct strong enough to guarantee good professional conduct by global law firms when providing pro bono services in post-conflict settings with weak or temporarily absent local legal profession institutions? Is it desirable to create a transnational code of conduct for lawyers, law firms, and other institutions for providing pro bono legal services in such fragile peace and constitution building settings? By addressing these questions, this article also approaches pro bono services of global law firms as an example of how interests of the private sphere of lawyer-client relations and the public sphere of peace and constitution building merge, and how the legal profession\u27s codes of conduct regulate global law firms and their legal professionals\u27 conduct as global agents of \u27privatized peace and constitution building efforts

International Arbitration: A New Mechanism to Settle Intra-State Territorial Disputes between States and Secessionist Movements? - The Divorce of Sudan and South Sudan and the Abyei Question

In 2008, the Government of Sudan (GoS) and the Sudan People\u27s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) submitted an arbitration agreement with the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague. In a unique fast track procedure, an international arbitration tribunal had to determine in accordance with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005, in particular the Abyei Protocol and Abyei Appendix, the Interim National Constitution (INC) and general principles of law, whether the Abyei Border Commission (ABC) exceeded its mandate, which was to define and demarcate the area of the nine Ngok Dinka chiefdoms transferred to Kordofan in 1905. In case of excess, the parties entrusted the tribunal with redefining the boundaries of the disputed territory based on the parties’ submissions. To guarantee the transparency of the procedure and to generate acceptance by all stakeholders on the ground, all hearings and documents were made publically available. The procedure and the more than 200-pages-long final Award from July 2009 constitute an illustrative example of an international dispute settlement procedure dealing with an intra-state (territorial) dispute between a state and a secessionist movement. The paper asks why and how the parties initiated the arbitration procedure and evaluates the still disputed status of the Abyei Region and the record of the parties’ (non-)compliance with the Abyei Award and its role in the ongoing status-negotiations between Sudan and the newly independent South Sudan. By inter alia taking a comparative perspective with other international dispute settlements the paper critically discusses the legal-political implications of the Abyei Arbitration and whether it could serve as a model or lesson learned when it comes to the effectiveness and success of international arbitration and its potential contribution to the settlement of intra-state (territorial) disputes

Opposition and dissidence: two modes of resistance against international rule

Rule is commonly conceptualized with reference to the compliance it invokes. In this article, we propose a conception of rule via the practice of resistance instead. In contrast to liberal approaches, we stress the possibility of illegitimate rule, and, as opposed to critical approaches, the possibility of legitimate authority. In the international realm, forms of rule and the changes they undergo can thus be reconstructed in terms of the resistance they provoke. To this end, we distinguish between two types of resistance - opposition and dissidence - in order to demonstrate how resistance and rule imply each other. We draw on two case studies of resistance in and to international institutions to illustrate the relationship between rule and resistance and close with a discussion of the normative implications of such a conceptualization

Seasonal variability in non-consumptive mortality of Arctic zooplankton

Recent observations from high-latitude marine ecosystems indicate that non-consumptive mortality may be particularly high in Arctic zooplankton during the polar night. Here we have estimated the contribution of dead organisms to the mesozooplankton community in the high Arctic (Svalbard 78–81oN) during the polar night (January), in spring (May) and in late summer (end of August). To identify in situ dead organisms, we used Neutral Red Stain. The dead zooplankton fraction consisted mainly of copepods, while the contribution of dead non-copepods was low in all seasons. The absolute abundance of dead copepods varied little between seasons; however, the relative contribution of dead copepods was highest in January with 11–35% of the copepods classified as dead, in contrast to 2–12% in spring and summer. Furthermore, there were species-specific differences: copepods of the genus Calanus contributed more to the dead fraction of the copepod community during the polar night compared to spring and summer, leading to a higher “dead” biomass in winter. We conclude that non-consumptive winter mortality is considerable in calanoid copepods in the Arctic and an important but so far neglected component of the passive carbon flux, providing carbon in larger portions for higher trophic level consumers during the low-productive winter