Judicial consciousness, judicial function, and the international court of justice

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

E Pluribus Unum? A Divisible College?: Reflections on the International Legal Profession

Anthea Roberts’ ambitious monograph, Is International Law International?, calls on international lawyers to suspend our universalist pretensions and reflect from the perspective of different communities of international lawyers, conceived instead as a ‘divisible college’. Her innovative and contemporary empirical work – on the educational and discursive practices across the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – represents nothing less than a first stab at a sociology of the international legal profession. In doing so, Roberts has adopted a consciously descriptive approach, with all of the consequences entailed thereby. Moreover, her privileging of certain methods and the focus on the five veto-wielding powers has the potential to reproduce the very power imbalances that she seeks to illuminate and possibly to challenge. Finally, an important counterpoint to the divisibility of the international legal profession is that, however diverse we may be, we nevertheless remain united by certain other tenets – in particular, our shared understanding of what concepts and ideas find purchase on the international plane and our engagement with, commitment to, or resistance to these concepts and ideas. The ties that bind our epistemic community might be obscured by undue emphasis on our profession as a divisible college

The International Judge: A Book Review

status: publishe

Legal Consequences of an Impermissible Reservation to a Human Rights Treaty: Where Do We Stand?

The Vienna Convention's regime on reservations is particularly unfit to cope with the specific characteristics of human rights treaties due to the very limited and particular role played by reciprocity and the ‘inward-targeted’ nature of the obligations stipulated in such instruments. Regional human rights courts and UN human rights treaty bodies have developed certain methods of monitoring the reservations practice of states parties to the respective instruments, but a central question has hitherto remained very controversial, namely that of the legal consequences of a reservation to a human rights treaty which is considered incompatible with that treaty's object and purpose and therefore impermissible. After many years of dealing with the topic of reservations, the UN International Law Commission has finally addressed this issue: Special Rapporteur Alain Pellet has proposed a solution which finds itself essentially in accord with the ‘severability’ doctrine advocated by the human rights community, reconciling this approach and the principle of treaty consent through the introduction of a presumption of severability of an invalid reservation from the body of a human rights treaty, to which the State making such a reservation will then remain bound in full. This chapter supports the Special Rapporteur's proposal, traces its development, and discusses both the advantages and the specific challenges posed by a presumption of severability