This article addresses the content and ramifications of the unique plea of superior orders, illustrating the complexities of absolving wartime behaviour on this basis as well as the legitimate rationale for doing so in certain cases. The article discusses the general legal obligation for soldiers to obey commands; outlines the historical development and legal content of the corresponding plea of superior orders, including its incorporation into the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC); and assesses the potential future application by the ICC of this specialized “mistake of law” doctrine. The author argues that in light of its moral and practical ramifications it should be considered by the court as both a full defence and a factor in mitigation of sentence, in a manner conceptually distinct from duress. However, the author cautions that the ICC must be careful to encourage, rather than discourage, individual moral autonomy, to the extent possible. A full defence should remain open to soldiers only when they have acted under a reasonable albeit mistaken belief in the legality of their orders. Especially on the modern battlefield, soldiers must continue to act and be judged as “reasoning agents” and not as mere automatons.

Existing theoretical approaches to international human rights law governing the state’s duty to respect and ensure the right not to be arbitrarily deprived of life fail to provide a satisfactory analytical framework within which to consider the problem of a rogue civil airliner — a passenger-carrying civil aircraft under the effective control of one or more individuals who intend to use the aircraft itself as a weapon against persons or property on the surface. A more satisfactory approach is provided by the addition of a norm of proportionality of effects that is analogous to those that have been developed within the frameworks of international humanitarian law, moral philosophy, and modern constitutional rights law. This additional norm would apply only where there is an irreconcilable conflict between the state’s duties in respect of the right to life such that all of the courses of action available will result in innocent persons being deprived of life.

This article examines the role of regional arrangements under the Charter of the United Nations (UN Charter) in the maintenance of international peace and security. The African Union Peace and Security Council (AU PSC), the organ within the AU charged with addressing threats to international peace and security on the African continent, is used as a case study. The author contends that the major challenges facing regional arrangements in exercising mandates under Article 53 of the UN Charter of the United Nations have more to do with inadequate financial and logistical resources than the nature of those mandates. Taking the AU’s role in Somalia, Sudan, and other African countries as examples, the article demonstrates that the AU PSC has failed to achieve its objective of maintaining peace and security precisely because the United Nations (UN) Security Council — a more powerful and better resourced organ — has failed to live up to its responsibility of extending the assistance necessary to enable the AU PSC to perform its functions. Consequently, the author concludes that the UN Security Council, when delegating powers to regional arrangements to maintain international peace and security, should provide adequate resources to such regional arrangements, especially those that will otherwise have minimal or no capacity to fulfil their mandate effectively.

La façon dont les divers acteurs de l’ordre juridique international ont appréhendé la relation entre les piliers économique et environnemental du développement durable témoigne d’une évolution: alors qu’une première interprétation estimait que cette relation se fondait sur la recherche d’une conciliation, une seconde interprétation a par la suite considéré qu’elle était au contraire caractérisée par l’existence d’un soutien mutuel. Si cette seconde conception, qui conduit à extraire du développement durable toute idée de tension entre l’environnement et l’économie, a connu une influence grandissante au cours des dernières années, la Cour internationale de Justice a réaffirmé dans l’ Affaire des Usines de pâte à papier sur le fleuve Uruguay son attachement à la première interprétation de la relation entre les piliers économique et environnemental. Il semble donc actuellement coexister en droit international deux lectures opposées du développement durable, l’une se fondant sur le paradigme de la conciliation, l’autre sur le paradigme du soutien mutuel.

The majority judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada in R v Hape held that, in general, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not apply to Canadian government agents when they are acting in foreign state territory. This comment considers whether this rule should extend to high seas interdictions, by Canadian agents, of foreign-flagged vessels. In particular, it considers the potential application of the Charter to Canada’s policing of high seas fisheries. It concludes that the legal regimes governing high seas fisheries are sufficiently distinct from those pertaining to state territory, that the rule in Hape should not apply to high seas interdictions, and that the Charter should therefore apply to Canada’s high seas fisheries policing activities.

In light of the global prevalence of secessionist movements, some have proposed “remedial secession” as a last resort solution where a “people” is either denied internal self-determination or is faced with massive human rights violations by a repressive regime. While lack of state practice largely confined this concept to academic circles through the 1990s and much of the 2000s, remedial secession received renewed international legal attention in the proceedings concerning the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) 2008 advisory opinion in the case Accordance with International Law of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Respect of Kosovo(Kosovo case). In light of support for remedial secession expressed in the submissions of eleven states, as well as its apparent endorsement in the separate opinions of two ICJ judges, advocates of remedial secession may plausibly argue that the soft law status of the concept has been strengthened and perhaps even that it is in the process of emerging as a regional customary norm for those states that supported it. However, the impact of the Kosovo case on solidifying the legal status of remedial secession should not be overstated, as opponents of the concept may point to a number of contrary indicators that also emerged from the formal discourse surrounding the case.