International Soft Law

InternatIonal Soft law

Although the concept of soft law has existed for years, scholars have not reached consensus on why states use soft law or even whether “soft law” is a coherent analytic category. In part, this confusion reflects a deep diversity in both the types of international agreements and the strategic situations that produce them. In this paper, we advance four complementary explanations for why states u...

On Teaching International Law

International Law, International Relations and Compliance

Commitments are a persistent feature of international affairs. Disagreement over the effect of international commitments and the causes of compliance with them is equally persistent. Yet in the last decade the long-standing divide between those who believed that international rules per se shaped state behavior and those who saw such rules as epiphenomena1 or insignificant has given way to a mor...

"COVID-19" and International Law: Prosecution of China in International Court of Justice

"COVID-19", which was first seen in China in December 2019, outbreak worldwide in a short time and took the lives of many people around the world. In addition to claims concerning Chinachr('39')s fault in creating the disease and failing to prevent its spread, it is seriously claimed that China has delayed and sometimes incorrectly reported information concerning disease to the World Health Org...

Beyond International Law: Unilateral Resort to Force in Syria

On April 14, 2018, the United States, Britain and France launched missile attacks on specific targets in the Syrian Arab Republic, including the provinces of Damascus and Homs. According to coalition of three states, these attacks were followed by the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons and targeted solely against its chemical weapons facilities. What have in the days after the act been...