Three questions about “informal regulation”

In the grand debates of international law, the jus ad bellum is often proclaimed dead, and just as often praised as the “cornerstone” of the contemporary legal order. Both perspectives tend to ignore that the jus ad bellum is not static, but a body of law that states adjust over time. In an important contribution, Monica Hakimi proposes to look at one particular aspect of such adjustment, a concept she frames as “informal regulation” through Security Council action. This essay engages with Hakimi's approach. It inquires whether this approach is as “informal” as Hakimi suggests, and asks whether “informal regulation”—rather than constituting a new category of state activities to study—is not already part of conventional approaches to the jus ad bellum. Proceeding from Hakimi's analysis, the comment assesses whether there is room for “informal regulation” beyond the Security Council

State succession to investment treaties: mapping the issues

Following recent decisions in Sanum v Laos and World Wide Minerals v Kazakhstan, investment lawyers have begun to engage with the legal rules governing State succession to treaties. As State succession is one of the more technical and controversial areas of general international law, this engagement can present challenges; however, the issues are too important to be ignored. This article maps out the most pressing questions of State succession that investment lawyers have faced, or are likely to face in the future. It identifies the three most salient problems — viz the succession of new States to ICSID membership and to old BITs, and the impact of cession of territory on investment protection. With respect to each of these three problems, the article analyses the general regime of State succession and its application to the investment law context, highlighting uncertainties in the law and proposing ways of dealing with them

Peace through international adjudication: the Permanent Court of International Justice and the post-war order

No abstract available

The 'International Community' as a Legal Notion

The 'international community' is omnipresent in international debates. It is a point of reference. Much international action is undertaken in its name. And many a catastrophe - from Aleppo to climate change - is portrayed as a failure of the international community. As is clear from these random references, the functions, meanings and content of the concept of 'international community' are fluid: it is as appealing as it is evasive - and in fact, often it appeals precisely because it is evasive, and because a wide range of diverse, sometimes competing, meanings and expectations are projected onto it. The working paper seeks to unveil some of the functions, meanings and expectations projected upon the notion of 'international community'. While it focuses on debates in one particular field, viz. international law, its themes are of significance to a wider audience

Responsible careers: systemic reflexivity in shifting landscapes

This article examines responsible careers, in which people seek to have an impact on societal challenges such as environmental sustainability and social justice. We propose a dynamic model of responsible careers based on studying 32 individuals in the emerging organizational fields of corporate responsibility, social entrepreneurship, sustainability, and social investing. We describe six career practices – expressing self, connecting to others, constructing contribution, institutionalizing, field shaping, and engaging systemically. Observations suggest that development of these practices is influenced by four learning dynamics: people’s perceptions of ‘shifting landscapes’ in which they seek to orient themselves, exploration and both biographical and systemic reflexivity. Our interdisciplinary and empirically grounded approach, integrating psychological intentions and institutional context, strengthens theorizing about responsible careers. The proposed model depicts responsible careers as continually evolving, sometimes precarious, and as dynamically enacted in relation to pluralist, shifting landscapes

Oceans and space: new frontiers in investment protection?

This article provides background and introduces into the overarching themes of the contributions to the Special Issue dealing with investment protection in areas beyond territorial jurisdiction at sea and in outer space. It explains that fast-paced commercialization, evolving technological advances, and the inevitable need for regulatory intervention make the oceans and space into an increasingly important topic in international investment law. At the same time, investment lawyers, as well as experts in the law of the sea and space law, have largely ignored the legal issues foreign investments raise in these spaces. The article sketches out a framework for addressing the underlying issues from an investment law perspective, pointing out both familiar conceptual approaches and novel challenges

A clever and dangerous move – or: a Roman Court goes Lutheran

No abstract available

NeuroIS-Alternative or Complement to Existing Methods? Illustrating the Holistic Effects of Neuroscience and Self-Reported Data in the Context of Technostress Research

This is the final version. Available from Association for Information Systems via the DOI in this recordRecent research has made a strong case for the importance of NeuroIS methods for IS research. It has suggested that NeuroIS contributes to an improved explanation and prediction of IS phenomena. Yet, such research is unclear on the source of this improvement; while some studies indicate that NeuroIS constitutes an alternative to psychometrics, implying that the two methods assess the same dimension of an underlying IS construct, other studies indicate that NeuroIS constitutes a complement to psychometrics, implying that the two methods assess different dimensions of an IS construct. To clarify the role of NeuroIS in IS research and its contribution to IS research, in this study, we examine whether NeuroIS and psychometrics/psychological methods constitute alternatives or complements. We conduct this examination in the context of technostress, an emerging IS phenomenon to which both methods are relevant. We use the triangulation approach to explore the relationship between physiological and psychological/self-reported data. Using this approach, we argue that both kinds of data tap into different aspects of technostress and that, together, they can yield a more complete or holistic understanding of the impact of technostress on a theoretically-related outcome, rendering them complements. Then, we test this proposition empirically by probing the correlation between a psychological and a physiological measure of technostress in combination with an examination of their incremental validity in explaining performance on a computer-based task. The results show that the physiological stress measure (salivary alpha-amylase) explains and predicts variance in performance on the computer-based task over and above the prediction afforded by the self-reported stress measure. We conclude that NeuroIS is a critical complement to IS research