It may be commonplace to state that the world will never be the same as it was before 11 September 2001. Yet, it is obvious that the magnitude and audacity of the horrifying events of that day have presented international terrorism in an unprecedented way, namely as a real and potentially catastrophic threat to human security and international peace. This raises the question with regards to the role of international law, and to what extent current public international law provides an adequate framework for combating international terrorism. Are further development and adaptation of principles and rules of international law necessary to deal more effectively with the threat of terrorist attacks and with those who do not play by these rules? These issues will be addressed in section 2 of this article.

These days, a century after the famous Paris convention on comparative law, comparative legal research is booming. A large percentage of legal research – at least in the Netherlands – currently is conducted on a comparative basis. However, whereas the interest in conducting comparative legal research is growing, the interest i n how to carry out this type of research is diminishing. Applied comparative legal research is supposed to be ‘good’; discussions on how to carry out this type of research are considered a waste of time. I would agree wholeheartedly with the latter statement if there were a clear, crystallized and accepted theory, or if there were no need for a method at all. In my opinion, the latter statement thus must be rejected. Although, as is often said, ‘a lot’ has been written about the methods of comparative law, there is still no consensus on a theory of comparative law. Ideas on methodology are elaborated from different points of view and no unequivocal concepts are used. The idea that there is no need for a method denies both the academic character of comparative legal research and the fact that nowadays a great deal of comparative legal research is carried out by relatively young and – in the field of comparative legal research – inexperienced PhD students who would welcome some clear guidelines. As methods are simply lessons learned by people who have done something by trial and error, why shouldn’t one benefit from the lessons learned by others?

Without question, countries from Sub-Saharan Africa are very minimally involved in the Dispute Settlement Process (DSP) of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Out of the 275 panel and Appellate Body decisions that have been rendered within the WTO DSP since 1995, only three have involved disputants from Sub-Saharan Africa. The region plays a minimal role in the global economy generally and in the WTO specifically, a fact that has generated much discussion lately. The highest levels of the WTO leadership recognize that ‘smaller developing countries’ need to be more integrated and resourced to enable them to participate fully in the global economy.