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AbstractNumerous governments have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by declaring states of emergency and restricting individual liberties protected by international law. However, many more states have adopted emergency measures than have formally derogated from human rights conventions. This Editorial Comment critically evaluates the existing system of human rights treaty derogations. It analyzes the system's problems, identifies recent developments that have exacerbated these problems, and proposes a range of reforms in five areas—embeddedness, engagement, information, timing, and scope.

In a working paper based on extensive field research and interviews, Karen Alter, James Gathii, and I analyze three recent backlash attempts against sub-regional courts in East, West, and Southern Africa. Our paper analyzes credible proposals by African governments to restrict the jurisdiction of these courts in response to politically embarrassing rulings. These events are not widely known, and they are at odds with the prevailing view that it is difficult to sanction international judges.

The international intellectual property system provides an important illustration of how regime complexity shapes domestic and international strategies of states and non-state actors. This article describes and graphically illustrates the multifaceted nature of the international intellectual property system. It then analyzes the consequences of regime complexity for international and domestic politics, emphasizing the strategy of regime shifting and its consequences for chessboard politics and the domestic implementation of international rules.

Abstract
Over the last decade, scholars have debated whether the shifting landscape of individual rights protection in Europe has influenced the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). In our article, 'Walking Back Human Rights in Europe?', we analysed every minority opinion of the ECtHR Grand Chamber between 1998 and 2018. We found a substantial increase in what we labelled as 'walking back dissents' – minority opinions asserting that the Grand Chamber has overturned prior case law or settled doctrine in a way that favours the government. In their Reply, Stone Sweet, Sandholtz and Andenas (SSA) offer two principal critiques. First, they assert that they could not 'replicate' our coding. Second, SSA challenge our claim that legal and political developments in Europe have incentivized the ECtHR to move in a rights-restrictive direction. These claims are inaccurate and mischaracterize our article. First, SSA do not 'replicate' our study. Instead, they code a very small subset of judgments using more restrictive, subjective and vague criteria – which, unsurprisingly, yield fewer walking back dissents. Second, SSA narrowly focus on the Brighton and Copenhagen conferences, ignoring numerous other changes at the national and regional level that have created a more constrained environment for the ECtHR.