International human rights law (IHRL) was established in the aftermath of the Second World War to prevent a reoccurrence of the atrocities committed in the name of fascism. Central to this aim was the recognition that out-groups are particularly vulnerable to rights violations committed by the in-group. Yet, it is increasingly apparent that out-groups are still subject to a wide range of rights violations, including those associated with mass atrocities. These rights violations are facilitated by the dehumanisation of the out-group by the in-group. Consequently, this article argues that the creation of IHRL treaties and corresponding monitoring mechanisms should be viewed as the first step towards protecting out-groups from human rights violations. By adopting the lens of dehumanisation, this article demonstrates that if IHRL is to achieve its purpose, IHRL monitoring mechanisms must recognise the connection between dehumanisation and rights violations and develop a positive State obligation to counter dehumanisation. The four treaties explored in this article, the European Convention on Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities and the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, all establish positive State obligations to prevent hate speech and to foster tolerant societies. These obligations should, in theory, allow IHRL monitoring mechanisms to address dehumanisation. However, their interpretation of the positive State obligation to foster tolerant societies does not go far enough to counter unconscious dehumanisation and requires more detailed elaboration.

This contribution examines the various international instruments, in both hard and soft law, that have been established by international organisations such as the WTO and WCO and scrutinises how they have been implemented into EU legislation governing the EU Customs Union, thus demonstrating the substantial influence of international instruments on the Customs Union. As the relevant international instruments affect not only the traditional elements of European customs law, but also the EU’s entire export control regime and the framework of the internal market, this contribution demonstrates, moreover, how the Customs Union functions in a globalised world.

The sharp increase of piracy attacks in the last two decades was followed by a parallel increase of demand in the maritime security sector. A plenty of flag States around the world have started to authorize the deployment of armed security guards, either military or private, aboard commercial ships. In 2011, Italy also introduced the possibility of embarking armed security services to protect Italian flagged ships sailing in dangerous international waters. Like the other flag States’ legal systems, the newly adopted Italian legislation aims to preserve the domestic shipping industry which was particularly disrupted by modern-day pirates. On the other hand, the doubling of approaches of the Italian legal and regulatory framework, initially privileging military personnel and then opting for the private solution, took the author to investigate the main relevant features of the Italian model of regulation and to analyze the recent developments of the domestic legal practice on counterpiracy armed security services, focusing on the role that customary and treaty obligations of international law played for the realization at national level of on-board armed protection of Italian ships. The use of lethal force at sea and the relationship between the shipmaster and the security guards will receive specific attention in this article.

Indigenous claims have challenged a number of orthodoxies within state legal systems, one of them being the kinds of proof that can be admissible. In Canada, the focus has been on the admissibility and weight of oral traditions and histories. However, these novel forms are usually taken as alternative means of proving a set of facts that are not in themselves “cultural”, for example, the occupation by a group of people of an area of land that constitutes Aboriginal title. On this view, maps are a neutral technology for representing culturally different interests within those areas. Through Indigenous land use studies, claimants have been able to deploy the powerful symbolic capital of cartography to challenge dominant assumptions about “empty” land and the kinds of uses to which it can be put. There is a risk, though, that Indigenous understandings of land are captured or misrepresented by this technology, and that what appears neutral is in fact deeply implicated in the colonial project and occidental ideas of property. This paper will explore the possibilities for an alternative cartography suggested by digital technologies, by Indigenous artists, and by maps beyond the visual order.

The global financial crisis of 2008 and the following public uproar over offshore tax evasion and corporate aggressive tax planning scandals gave rise to unprecedented international cooperation on tax information exchange and coordination on corporate tax reforms. At the behest of the G20, the OECD developed a comprehensive package of ‘consensus-based’ policy reform measures aimed to curb base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) by multinationals and to restore fairness and coherence to the international tax system. The legitimacy of the OECD/G20 BEPS Project, however, has been widely challenged. This paper explores the validity of the legitimacy concerns raised by the various stakeholders regarding the OECD/G20 BEPS Project.

The Global Forum on transparency and exchange of information for tax purposes has undertaken peer reviews on the implementation of the global standard of exchange of information on request, both from the perspective of formalities available and from the perspective of actual implementation. In the review reports Global Forum advises jurisdictions on required amendments of regulations and practices. With these advices, the Global Forum exercises regulatory authority. The article assesses the legitimacy of the exercise of such authority by the Global Forum and concludes that the exercise of such authority is not legitimate for the reason that the rule of law is abused by preventing jurisdictions to adhere to due process rules.

This contribution approaches the theme of access to justice from an EU law perspective and deals with the question: to what extent can the preliminary reference procedure serve as an empowering tool for individuals and civil society? The first part of the contribution deals with the structure of the EU legal system and the theoretically empowering function of preliminary references. Based on interviews with litigants and their counsellors, the second part deals with this notion from a sociological and empirical perspective. The analysis reveals the practical obstacles to realizing ones rights by preliminary references, and thus nuances the empowerment thesis found both among legal- and political sciences theories as well as in the legitimating rhetoric by propagators of the EU legal system.

‘Fragmentation’, ‘pluralism’, ‘constitutionalisation’ and ‘global administrative law’ are among the most dominant narratives of international legal order at present. Each narrative makes a descriptive claim about the current state of the international legal order, and outlines a normative vision for this order. Yet we must not lose sight of the conflicts between, and the contingency of these, and other narratives. This article seeks to recover both conflicts and contingency by showing how each may be used to explain a given event: the inauguration of a bilateral civil nuclear cooperation between the United State and India, better known as the ‘India-US nuclear deal’. I explain how the four narratives may be, and were, co-opted at different times to justify or critique the ‘deal’. This exercise serve two purposes: the application of four narratives reveal the various facets of the deal, and by its example the deal illuminates the stakes attached to each of the four narratives. In a final section, I reflect on why these four narratives enjoy their influential status in international legal scholarship.

The article critically evaluates the theory of the humanisation of international law. First, it argues that despite human rights having impact on (other areas of) international law, this trend has in the past been somewhat inflated. A number of examples are given where human rights have been tested against other objectives pursued by international law, with humanisation revealing its limits and actual dimensions. The second argument consists in identifying and highlighting obligations erga omnes (partes) and the principle of due diligence as two ‘systemic’ tools, that are central to the humanisation of international law. Both these tools form part of modern positive law, but may also make a positive contribution towards the direction of deeper humanisation in international law, having the potential, inter alia, to limit state will, establish occasional material normative hierarchy consisting in conditional priority in the fulfilment of human rights, give a communitarian tone to international law and invite states to be pro-active in the collective protection of their common interests and values. In its conclusions, the article offers a plausible explanation about the paradox it identifies of the limits of the humanisation on the one hand, and its potential for further development on the other. For, it is inherent in international law that the line separating the law from deontology is thin. The process of humanisation needs to be balanced with the other objectives of international law as well as reconciled with the decentralised and sovereignist origins of the pluralistic international legal system.

Globalization is commonly cited as an important factor in theorising legal phenomena in the contemporary world. Although many legal disciplines have sought to adapt their theories to globalization, progress has been comparatively modest within contemporary analytical jurisprudence. This paper aims to offer a survey of recent scholarship on legal theory and globalization and suggests various ways in which these writings are relevant to the project of jurisprudence. This paper argues, more specifically, that the dominant interpretation of globalization frames it as a particular form of legal pluralism. The resulting concept – global legal pluralism – comes in two broad varieties, depending on whether it emphasizes normative or institutional pluralism. This paper goes on to argue that these concepts coincide with two central themes of jurisprudence, namely its concern with normativity and institutionality. Finally, this paper reflects on the feasibility of constructing a ‘general’ and ‘descriptive’ jurisprudence in light of globalization.

Globalization has generated an increasing necessity of having to litigate in foreign courts and to enforce judgment in other countries. The diversity of procedural regimes represents an important obstacle for an efficient access to justice, which triggered a debate on the need for harmonization of civil procedure. These topics were explored in the conference organized by Dr. Xandra Kramer and Prof. dr. C.H. (Remco ) van Rhee on 17-18 June, 2010, under the auspices of Erasmus University Rotterdam. The instant conference report summarizes the arguments on the future of procedural harmonization in Europe, which seem to favor a horizontal approach to harmonization.

The complexity of the relationship between democracy and modern constitutionalism is revealed by treating democracy as an incomplete ideal. This refers both to the empirical incompleteness of democracy as unable to supply its own terms of application – the internal dimension – and to the normative incompleteness of democracy as guide to good government – the external dimension. Constitutionalism is a necessary response to democratic incompleteness – seeking to realize (the internal dimension) and to supplement and qualify democracy (the external dimension). How democratic incompleteness manifests itself, and how constitutionalism responds to incompleteness evolves and alters, revealing the relationship between constitutionalism and democracy as iterative. The paper concentrates on the iteration emerging from the current globalizing wave. The fact that states are no longer the exclusive sites of democratic authority compounds democratic incompleteness and complicates how constitutionalism responds. Nevertheless, the key role of constitutionalism in addressing the double incompleteness of democracy persists under globalization. This continuity reflects how the deep moral order of political modernity, in particular the emphasis on individualism, equality, collective agency and progress, remains constant while its institutional architecture, including the forms of its commitment to democracy, evolves. Constitutionalism, itself both a basic orientation and a set of design principles for that architecture, remains a necessary support for and supplement to democracy. Yet post-national constitutionalism, even more than its state-centred predecessor, remains contingent upon non-democratic considerations, so reinforcing constitutionalism’s normative and sociological vulnerability. This conclusion challenges two opposing understandings of the constitutionalism of the global age – that which indicts global constitutionalism because of its weakened democratic credentials and that which assumes that these weakened democratic credentials pose no problem for post-national constitutionalism, which may instead thrive through a heightened emphasis on non-democratic values.