It has been forty years since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) initiated the modernization project of Post-Mao China. As with other sectors, learning from the West was one of the basic strategies taken by the CCP to achieve the modernization of Chinese socialist legality, even as Chinese law is meant to be grounded in the orthodoxies of Marxism-Leninism. In order to learn from the West, the CCP generally adopted an elastic and dualistic approach to reform that is based on the utilitarian incentives of Deng Xiaoping. In the political sector, for example, the CCP looked back into the past and the CCP’s successful experiences under Marxist-Leninist doctrine. The aim was to immunize politics from the influence of western liberal-democratic ideology. But in the economic area, the CCP moved toward the West by vigorously adopting advanced western rules and institutions for managing the economy. This article examines how this strategy formed the basic contours of Chinese socialist legality in the past forty years. The article identifies the resulting internal lacuna, especially with respect to the realization of the “rule of law.” This article also analyses the possible future of a Chinese-socialist rule of law. That possibility will be affected by changing external circumstances, particularly the deterioration of China-US relations.

Perpetuating Britain’s controversial administration of the Chagos Archipelago (BIOT – British Indian Ocean Territory) raises questions about the UK’s commitment to the rules-based order and international law. This interdisciplinary article examines British administration of the Chagos Archipelago by taking a legal-international relations perspective. It provides an overview to the rules-based order concept and its relation with international law, briefly examines the Territory’s history, and outlines how BIOT violates the principles enshrined in the rules-based order concept, specifically promotion of self-determination, prohibition of forced displacement and respect for international institutions. This study is significant due to its timing – set in a period of increased international pressure on the United Kingdom to cede sovereignty of the Chagos Archipelago to Mauritius – and also significant in a period of increased rules-based order strain throughout the Indo-Pacific. This article argues that, despite Britain’s assertion that it is a champion of the rules-based order, of which international law is a component, continued British administration of the Chagos Archipelago is in contravention of both. In an era of rules-based order strain, British BIOT policy provides fertile ground to criticisms of its foreign policy and international law selectivity and double standards.

Corporations are notoriously powerful actors in the current configuration of our globalized economy. Their activities play a key role in shaping a new age of ecological precarity—the Anthropocene. Much of this environmental damage occurs in cross-border settings, hampering victims’ access to legal remedies due to widespread corporate impunity and institutional hurdles in host states. Several transnational lawsuits have recently tested the willingness of European home state judiciaries to adjudicate the extraterritorial conduct of domestic corporations. To contribute to a more nuanced understanding of this novel phenomenon, this article analyzes three legal sagas from a comparative perspective: Vedanta v. Lungowe (England & Wales), Dooh v. Shell (The Netherlands) and Lliuya v. RWE (Germany). It argues that transnational tort suits remain a problematic vehicle for the attainment of procedural and substantial environmental justice. The inherent limitations of tort law, extra-legal hurdles to transnational litigation, and the socio-cultural contingency of legal institutions severely circumscribe the space for legal contestations of the corporate Anthropocene.

For a long time, discussions on the diversity of international legal academia and practice have not been properly addressed. Protagonists from the Global South were not even considered as relevant issue-setters of international law. However, the situation is gradually changing. More and more academics, practitioners, and students both from the Global South and Global North raise their voices to address pressing issues of discrimination, sexism, and racism that we currently observe in the international legal sphere. This article offers a glimpse into some of these challenges drawing from the author’s personal experiences. It points to existing problems of the diversity in international legal institutions, representation in international legal academia, and publishing practices. This article finally offers suggestions for how international lawyers can help each other to overcome existing inequalities and create a better environment for future generations of international legal scholars and practitioners.

This article analyses the US and the EU systems of risk regulation through the lens of two ideal models: evidence-based and socially acceptable risk approaches. The examination is conducted against the backdrop of these ideal regulatory paradigms, which broadly inform US and EU risk governance. The article employs an analysis of transatlantic divergencies in the regulation of pesticides and agricultural biotechnologies to illustrate that neither approach can lay claim to neutrality and objectivity; non-scientific normative frames are always at stake in the field of risk regulation. Through these case studies, the article thus challenges the narrative that transatlantic divergencies result from a focus on “risks” or “hazards,” “science” or “politics.” The US and the EU systems reflect different approaches to scientific uncertainty, the pursuit of different levels of protection, and consideration of different non-scientific factors. They also have very different implications. The conclusive section of the article sketches out some final considerations on the strategic vision of the Biden administration. Environmental and public health protection are high on President Biden’s agenda; further, public interest litigation is thriving in the US. Will this be sufficient to break regulatory path dependency and lay the foundations for a paradigm shift in US risk governance?