This article deals with recent developments in the United States' refugee legislation and policies. After an examination of the relevant procedural aspects, the author discusses several concepts and criteria that play an important role in the decision whether an alien will be granted asylum in the United States. Despite recent jurisprudence, the related concepts of ‘wellfounded fear’ and ‘clear probability’ of persecution remain vague and illdefined. Thus, according to the author, it is doubtful whether the present standards of United States refugee law contribute to the protection of truly politically persecuted. Besides, the concept of ‘safe haven’ should not replace the concept of ‘firm resettlement’.

The EU's consistent policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been that Israel's presence in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip (prior to the 2005 disengagement) and the Golan Heights is subject to the laws of belligerent occupation, that any purported Israeli annexation is illegal and null and void, that Israel's settlements in the Territories are in breach of public international law and constitute a serious obstacle to peace, and that Israel and Palestine should settle their conflict on the basis of public international law and through the two-state solution. In recent years the EU attempted to concretize this policy through its trade and trade-related agreements with Israel, withholding the benefits of EU-Israeli co-operation from companies and research institutions based in the Territories or operating therein, as well as from products produced therein (the New Approach). Thus, from the EU perception, the New Approach towards the long-standing conflict and its reliance on international law may be seen as an instrument to reinforce internal and external legitimacy, buttress identity cohesiveness and as a manifestation of its more robust effectiveness. But this article seeks to conduct a more careful and balanced analysis of the New Approach and in doing so to reveal that the EU's (almost) exclusive focus on non-governmental entities, such as corporations situated in the Territories, and on Territories’ products, is misplaced in terms of public international law and effectiveness. The New Approach's deficiencies, in abstracto and in concreto, as evaluated in this article, are likely to prevent it from serving as a paradigm shift in EU-Israel relations.

Dr René Lefeber stayed at the helm of the Leiden Journal of International Law as its Editor-in-Chief for more than four important years (1996–2000), marked by innovation and change in practically every aspect of the Journal. Barely two years after a profound re-organization, the Journal's volume was doubled with three issues per year in 1997, and four issues in 1998. Meanwhile, the number of pages, the quality, and the diversity of published material saw dramatic growth. The section on Hague International Tribunals became a standard feature; a sub-section on the International Criminal Court was set up in 1998 to regularly cover ongoing developments in this important institution; an annual specialized bibliography on dispute settlement was introduced; and regular Editorial notes by members of the Board figured in each issue. All in all, a very different Journal than the one handed down four years earlier.

A visible sign of changing relations between the Global South and Global North are reparation claims for colonial injustice. An interesting case is the 1904–1907 Namibian Genocide. Germany has recently concluded a draft agreement with Namibia on reconciliation and compensation. Nevertheless, Germany maintains that it is not under any legal obligation to pay reparations. This article challenges that position, arguing that colonial international law was far too ambiguous to support this conclusion. For this purpose, the article contrasts this ‘conventional view’ of colonial international law with post-colonial and pluralistic approaches. Post-colonial approaches reveal colonial-era law as a deeply ambiguous, contradictory practice that mirrors the identity crisis of the colonizers. Pluralistic approaches juxtapose colonial international law with autochtonous views of inter-polity law, i.e., the normative framework governing colonial encounters. To reconstruct autochtonous views, the article draws on letters by Hendrik Witbooi and Maharero, traditional leaders from Namibia, and examines the contours of their inter-polity law relating to territorial sovereignty and warfare. These contending perspectives undermine the cogency with which the conventional view rejects reparation claims. While ambiguity as such does not give rise to compensation claims, other options come to mind, such as a duty to negotiate, shifts in the burden of proof – or a profound recalibration of international law towards greater solidarity.

This article addresses the dispute between Greece and Turkey concerning the reach of their sovereign rights and jurisdiction in the Eastern Mediterranean, which is essentially about delimitation of the continental shelf and exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Turkey has delineated its continental shelf in the region to extend directly to the outer limits of the territorial waters of the Greek islands, specifically Crete, Rhodes, and Kastellorizo. Greece sees this as an attempt to deprive the islands of their maritime zones. The present article discusses what the two states might expect if they would request the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to determine the course of their maritime boundaries. The outcome of such a process would be difficult to foresee because international case law regarding the effect of islands on the delimitation of the continental shelf and EEZ is rather diffuse. Nevertheless, this article will explore what an equitable solution could look like. In particular, the small island of Kastellorizo, Greece’s most remote outpost in the Eastern Mediterranean, which lies just off the Turkish coast, requires special consideration. The present article discusses different options for dealing with this island in a future delimitation.

The subject of this analysis is the role that regional trade agreements (RTAs) play in balancing between personal data commodification and protection of privacy and personal data, approached from the perspective of Karl Polanyi’s theory of double movement. We analyse provisions on cross-border information transfers and data protection in order to establish the models for balancing between the ideas of personal data commodification and social protection, understood as allowing for the use of measures that ensure privacy and personal data protection. Our analysis indicates that there are two general models concerning the liberalization of cross-border information transfers: one model restricts states’ ability to restrict data flows while the other is more open to such measures. Next, we identify three primary models governing how data protection is treated in the agreements that liberalize data flows: one that is based on the inclusion of substantive standards of protection in the content of the given agreement; one that uses international standards as a proxy for establishing certain level of protection; and one that is based on national data protection laws. Combining identified models of liberalizing data flows with identified models of ensuring data protection allows us to show that the inclusion of seemingly similar provisions on cross-border data transfers in various RTAs has resulted in developing several different models for balancing between commodification of personal data and data protection.

This article examines China’s Polar Silk Road (PSR) and its legal implications for the future governance of the Northern Sea Route (NSR). It first discusses China’s economic and geopolitical interests in the so-called Polar Silk Road. The article then focuses on comparing Russian regulation of the NSR and Chinese regulation of foreign vessels as a coastal state. Both China and Russia are contracting parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The comparison of domestic legislations aims to provide a detailed analysis on convergence and divergence of their implementation and enforcement of the UNCLOS on issues related to freedom of navigation, especially when it comes to foreign vessels, including military vessels, within national jurisdiction. The comparative study, therefore, helps determine to what extent China could vocally shape the development the NSR regulations in an era of climate change.

To adjudicate a claim on individual criminal responsibility, the court has to establish objective and subjective links between the individual and the crime. This article studies the material (actus reus/objective) elements of the crime of aggression (conduct, consequence and circumstance) and suggests a reading that solves most of the conceptual and practical issues regarding criminal responsibility for this crime. The main contribution is an ontological distinction between the material act of use of violence and the act of aggression, which are both subsumed under the term ‘state/collective act’. The former is a consequence element and therefore is to be understood in its naturalistic meaning – a perceivable result of one’s action. The latter is a legal-evaluative notion and as such constitutes a circumstance that renders the violation of the prohibitory norm (the union of conduct and consequence) as being wrongful. This distinction is crucial for the system of attribution of criminal responsibility, as different mental (subjective) elements apply to consequences and circumstances.

In 2013 the Netherlands lost its standard bearer in international law. After a short period of illness, Pieter Hendrik Kooijmans died at the age of 79 on 13 February 2013. Some time before his illness the author had an extensive and frank interview with Judge Kooijmans who reflected on his life and work, especially on his intellectual formation, his understanding of the essence and core functions of law, his experiences as UN special rapporteur on torture, his ideas on reform of the International Court of Justice, and the great changes that have taken place in international law. This portrait shows a fine man with a strong sense of justice who was fully dedicated to the substance of public international law without turning a blind eye to its shortcomings and relative influence in international and domestic affairs. The interview is preceded by an introduction and concludes with some observations on his long and productive life in the service of peace, justice, and respect for human rights through the law.

In February 2000, two distinguished judges, Judge Christopher G. Weeramantry and Judge Stephen M. Schwebel, resigned from the International Court of Justice as respectively Vice-President and President. Both men left a clearly recognizable stamp on the Court's case law, although their trademark was very different. What they had in common, however, was that they wrote a great number of highly interesting and thought-provoking opinions, sometimes of considerable length. In this article, the intention has been to let both judges speak for themselves as members of the Court, as representatives of the judicial branch which they both held in high esteem.

Progress in International Law, edited by Russ Miller and Rebecca Bratspies, is one of the most notable compiled volumes in the field of general international law for 2008. It merits the reader's attention for several reasons. First, it deals with a central mantra of internationalism, namely the Kantian idea that international law can be a catalyst for social progress on a global level. While progress is regularly used in international law writings as a slogan to accentuate diverse claims of renewalism, it is a notion that has received as such little attention in scholarship. In this sense, the book at hand responds to an important gap in the literature. Second, the editors have clearly devoted a lot of attention in the planning and production of the book to ensuring that the essays are meaningfully juxtaposed, complementary, and in dialogue with one another. Although this is an essential quality for any compiled volume, it is easier said than done, and this book has done reasonably well. The final product boasts some forty contributors and more than 900 pages of text, packed together in an attractive (but steeply priced) hardback edition by Martinus Nijhoff (Brill). Third, the book aspires to ‘survey the state of the contemporary legal order’ (p. 11). This is a broad and unusually ambitious scholarly project aimed at ‘cataloguing this generation's tangled international legal order’ and hoping ‘to map the current tendencies, theories, doctrine, and trends’ (p. 11). This last promise alone would have been sufficient to trigger anyone's interest in the book at the beginning of (what is perceived to be) a new era of internationalism.

The law of international organisations needs to address comprehensively, the legal question of the accountability of such Organisations. In the contemporary world, whereas states, multinational corporations, and individuals can be held accountable under applicable systems of law, there is no equivalent set of rules that applies to international organisations. The OPCW, a global disarmament Organisation, is a good model of an accountable Organisation. The Chemical Weapons Convention embodies various sets of rules and provisions, which ensure the accountable functioning of the Organisation. This article examines the concept of the accountability of international organisations as envisioned by the International Law Association, and analyses the concept in the context of the OPCW.

Until recently, the Permanent Court of Arbitration has been an institution that one reads about, if at all, principally in the background sections of international law casebooks. This article suggests, and indeed this issue of the Leiden Journal of International Law confirms, that the level of scholarly attention to the Court is changing due to recent developments in the work of the PCA. The purpose of this article is to report and reflect on an emerging effort in the international community to restore the PCA to a prominent place in international arbitration. This article describes the impetus for this effort and the actions taken to reestablish the PCA, as well as the challenges that lie ahead in that effort.

Contrary to the way Hobbes has been interpreted for centuries, I will argue that Hobbes laid the groundwork for contemporary international law and for a distinctly moral approach to the rules of war. The paper has the following structure. First, I will explain the role that the laws of nature play in Hobbes's understanding of the state of war. Second, I will explain Hobbes's views of self-preservation and inflicting cruelty. Third, I reconstruct Hobbes's important insight that rationality governs all human affairs, even those concerning war. Fourth, I explicate the idea of cruelty moving from what Hobbes says to a plausible Hobbesian position. Fifth, I address recent philosophical writing on how best to understand the rules of war. Sixth, I then turn to legal discussions of cruelty's place in debates about the laws of war, showing how my Hobbesian approach can ground these laws.