International law prohibits states from intervening in the internal and external affairs of other states, but only if the method of intervention is coercive. This Article argues that coercion can be understood in two different ways or models. First, as coercion-as-extortion, a demand coupled with a threat of harm or the infliction of harm, done to extract some kind of concession from the victim state—in other words, an act targeting the victim state's will or decision-making calculus. Second, as coercion-as-control, an action materially depriving the victim state of its ability to control its sovereign choices. This may be done even through acts like cyber operations that the victim state is entirely unaware of. The Article argues that many of the difficulties surrounding the notion of coercion arise as a consequence of failing to distinguish between these two different models.

This article examines the authority of the 2005 International Committee of the Red Cross Study on Customary international humanitarian law within the international legal system by collecting and analysing citations to the Study in documents containing expressions of State positions, in the judgments of international and domestic courts and tribunals and in the outputs of other influential actors. Our analysis establishes that the Study is increasingly seen as a highly authoritative instrument, such that a particular proposition will be found to reflect customary international law simply on the basis that the Study says so. We argue that the Study's authority will likely only increase over time.

The judgment of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR or Court) in Makuchyan and Minasyan v. Azerbaijan and Hungary is remarkable both on account of its facts and the peculiar legal issues it raised. In 2004, an ax-wielding Azerbaijani army officer (R.S.) beheaded one Armenian officer, and attempted to kill another, while attending a NATO-organized English language course in Budapest, Hungary. R.S. was prosecuted in Hungary and given a life sentence. Eight years later, R.S. was transferred to Azerbaijan to serve the remainder of his sentence. However, upon his arrival, R.S. received a hero's welcome. He was released, pardoned, promoted, and awarded salary arrears for the period spent in prison, as well as the use of a state apartment in the capital. Many high-ranking Azerbaijani officials expressed their approval of R.S.'s conduct and pardon. (The long-standing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan of course looms in the background of this story.)

This article examines the applicability of the European Convention for Human Rights (ECHR) when a State loses control over parts of its territory. It argues that the jurisprudence of the European Court for Human Rights, which insists on residual positive obligations based in sovereign title over territory, is problematic and needs to be rethought. The Court's current approach is not only likely to provoke backlash, since it requires it to decide politically explosive questions of sovereign title, but does so for very little practical benefit for the protection of human rights. The article therefore explores more preferable alternatives.

A strange thing about the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is that for most of its life, it has thought about its death. The Tribunal, of course, kept getting a reprieve. But today it seems more likely than not that the ICTY will indeed close down sometime in 2017, after the conclusion of the two cases it currently has at trial. Yet even after its closure, the ICTY will continue in a sort of un-death, through the unfortunately named Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, which will complete retrial and appellate proceedings in the cases currently tried before the ICTY.

This article provides an overview of the rules governing the end of application of international humanitarian law (IHL), or the law of armed conflict. It articulates the general principle that, unless there is a good reason of text, principle or policy that warrants an exception, the application of IHL will cease once the conditions that triggered its application in the first place are no longer met. For IHL to apply, its distinct thresholds of application – international armed conflict, belligerent occupation and non-international armed conflict – must continue to be satisfied at any given point in time. The article also examines situations in which a departure from the general rule is warranted, as well as the factors that need to be taken into account in determining the end of each type of armed conflict. In doing so, the article analyzes terminating processes and events, which generally end the application of IHL (but not necessarily all of it), and transformative processes and events, which end the application of one IHL sub-regime but immediately engage another. Finally, the article briefly looks at the (putative) armed conflict between the United States and Al Qaeda and its seemingly imminent end.

This article comments on Jörn Griebel and Milan Plücken's recent analysis in the Leiden Journal of International Law of the approach of the International Court of Justice to state responsibility in its judgment in the Genocide (Bosnia v. Serbia) case. The article also provides more general remarks on the law of state responsibility as it pertains to acts of non-state actors. In that regard, it discusses attribution based on de facto organ status and attribution based on direction and control, as well as whether, as a matter of policy, the law of state responsibility meets the needs of the modern world.

This article examines the European Court of Human Rights's encounter with general international law in its Behrami and Saramati admissibility decision, where it held that the actions of the armed forces of States acting pursuant to UN Security Council authorizations are attributable not to the States themselves, but to the United Nations. The article will try to demonstrate that the Court's analysis is entirely at odds with the established rules of responsibility in international law, and is equally dubious as a matter of policy. Indeed, the article will show that the Court's decision can be only be explained by its reluctance to decide on questions of State jurisdiction and norm conflict, the latter issue becoming the clearest when Behrami is compared to the Al-Jedda judgment of the House of Lords.

The article explores the political context of the Bosnian Genocide case recently decided by the International Court of Justice. It strives to show that an appreciation of the larger disputes within Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia is necessary for understanding the Court's judgment properly, particularly when it comes to the litigation strategies of the two parties which shaped the final outcome of the case, and, above all, for understanding how the judgment was perceived by the general public of the former Yugoslavia.