The growth in cross-border trade and movement of people over the past decades has led to an increasing judicial, legislative and scholarly development of private international law, creating harmonised rules in some areas and new approaches in others. Many of these developments are reflected in...

One of the most contentious issues in international law involves when a state may use force in self-defense against another state or when a state may use force against a non-state group, which the state believes intends to do it harm. This thesis looks at the disparate theories of when a state...

The ratification and promulgation of the 2010 Kenyan Constitution brought with it a hope for the realization of the hopes and aspirations of the Kenyan people. It marked a rebirth of a new nation and marked some considerable changes in the Kenyan legal order. One of the changes introduced by the...

With around 2.3 billion users, the Internet has become part of the daily lives of a significant percentage of the global population, including for political debate and activism. While states are responsible for protecting human rights online under international law, companies responsible for...

Part I of this article takes a brief tour through military history on the consistent use of mercenaries through the ages, which Peter Singer illuminates masterfully in Corporate Warriors. Next, a brief overview on the binding nature (or not) of international custom and treaty is explored in Part...

A principle that prohibits States from weakening their domestic levels of environmental protection continues to emerge at varying speeds within international trade, investment and environmental law. We explore the principle’s diverse history, rationale and legal expression in each of these...

The development of nanotechnology for military application is an emerging area of research and development, the pace and extent of which has not been fully anticipated by international legal regulation. Nano-weapons are referred to here as objects and devices using nanotechnology or causing...

Since 1985, the eight Great Lakes states and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec have cooperated to prevent almost all diversions of water from the Great Lakes basin. In 2005, the eight states signed an Agreement to create a tiered system of reviews for diversions and a draft interstate...

This article explores how international human rights law has influenced relations between organized civil society and the State in Japan. More specifically, it analyzes whether global norms on human rights have had any broad influence on the role of civil society as a public actor, or on the...

After the end of the Cold War, democratic transitions in many parts of the world, a significant increase in the number of signatories to global and regional human rights instruments containing participatory rights, and a growing interest in ‘free and fair’ elections on the part of the UN and...