New articles of note
May 16, 2024
The Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law has recently published new versions of two articles examining pivotal areas of international law:
- Obligations erga omnes by Jörg Kammerhofer is a fresh exploration of the international legal obligations that are owed by States to the international legal community as a whole. This entry provides new discussion of conceptual distinctions vis-à-vis the related concepts of ius cogens norms and obligations erga omnes partes; it also surveys the impact of the assessment of erga omnes obligations in recent case-law from the International Court of Justice and other tribunals and discusses standing issues for erga omnes claims before international courts and tribunals.
- Ius cogens by Dire Tladi, who has recently been elected as a judge of the International Court of Justice, provides a valuable survey of the topic of peremptory norms in international law, especially in light of the adoption of the Draft Conclusions on the Identification and Legal Consequences of Peremptory Norms in May 2022. As Tladi explains in this entry, ‘The ILC Draft Conclusions of 2022 seek to offer objective criteria for the identification of ius cogens and, from this perspective, a common language for assessment of the ius cogens status of individual norms of international law.’ This new entry provides detailed consideration of the difficulties involved in the identification of ius cogens norms as well as the debate over the potentially far-reaching consequences of breaches of norms that have been identified as ius cogens.
Both of these entries have been made freely available through 1 August 2024.
Furthermore, Oxford University Press has also recently published Dire Tladi’s book The International Law Commission’s Draft Conclusions on Peremptory Norms. As the leader of the project that culminated in the adoption of the Draft Conclusions, Tladi offers unique insights into the process of the International Law Commission as well as an analysis and evaluation of the broader legal issues raised by the Draft Conclusions.
