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"[I]n all of our operations involving the use of force, including those in the armed conflict with Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces, the Obama Administration is committed by word and deed to conducting ourselves in accordance with all applicable law…[I]t is the considered view of this Administration…that US targeting practices, including lethal operations conducted with the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, comply with all applicable law, including the laws of war." - Harold Koh, US State Department Legal Adviser. "My concern is that these drones, these Predators, are being operated in a framework which may well violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law." - Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions. The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), commonly referred to as "drones", in lethal targeting operations, is one of the most topical and controversial issues in international law. The writer's interest in this area, the relationship between technological developments in warfare and settled principles of international law, developed from his attendance at a lecture given by Professor Harold Koh at Queen's University in Belfast back in May 2013. Professor Koh's now seminal speech to the American Society of International Law in 2010, while serving as Legal Adviser to the US Department of State, set out the US Government's position on the legality of drone strikes under international law. In recent years, the United States has increasingly utilised drone technology to target and kill enemy operatives in its counter-terrorism operations – against Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in Afghanistan and North West Pakistan, and against militants affiliated with Al-Qaeda in Somalia and Yemen. UAVs have taken on an ever more prominent role in the US's current military and counter-terrorism operations, given their relative low cost, greater accuracy and precision, reduced blast radius, advanced surveillance capabilities, and greater flight time than conventional manned aircraft. The recent proliferation of armed UAV technology, and its deployment in situations of asymmetrical conflict for the purpose of conducting targeted killing operations, has fuelled a public and academic debate, centrally focused on issues regarding the compatibility of such technology and current targeting practices with established norms of international law. The term "targeted killing" does not yet have an agreed definition under international law, although Murphy and Radsen have formulated the following useful definition: extra-judicial, premeditated killing by a state of a specifically identified person not in its custody. Targeted killings by means of unmanned drone strikes have proven to be a successful counter-terrorism strategy, not only in terms of locating, targeting and eliminating enemy operatives, but also, and perhaps more importantly, given public discontent at long-standing military deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, in avoiding many of the challenges that flow from the use of traditional military forces, such as public hostility to the deployment of traditional ground forces, the detention of enemy forces, as well as security threats to military personnel from insurgent attacks. In the context of the US drone program, three discrete areas of international law are of particular relevance: 1. the jus ad bellum, which sets out the narrow circumstances in which a state can lawfully resort to the use of armed force; 2. international human rights law, the corpus of which is of universal application, particularly in situations of armed violence falling below the threshold of an armed conflict; 3. the jus in bello, international humanitarian law, which regulates the conduct of hostilities in situations of armed conflict. What follows in this work is an analysis of the legality of US drone strikes in key target states through the prism of each of the three aforementioned paradigms. What shall become clear is that, while the use of armed drones per se may not violate international law as an unlawful means and method of warfare, the broad interpretation of the jus ad bellum favoured by the United States in the years since the 9/11 attacks, in particular those rules relating to the resort to force by a victim state in self-defence in response to an armed attack, as well as current US targeting practices, in particular the controversial use of Signature Drone Strike Protocol (SDSP), have been the subject of rigorous academic debate, and for the most part have proven difficult to reconcile with established principles of international law. This debate remains far from settled, and in consequence the entire US drone program, shrouded in a veil of secrecy, remains of dubious legality, particularly when examined through the prisms of international human rights law and international humanitarian law.

Cover; THE LIBERAL-WELFARIST LAW OF NATIONS; Title; Copyright; Dedication; CONTENTS; Introduction; PART I: The modern law of nations; Introduction; 1: The law of nations of the Moderns: a new discipline; 2: The liberal purpose of the modern law of nations: liberty, equality and security for states; 3: State self-interest and self-esteem; 4: The law of nations of the Moderns between free enterprise and protectionism; 5: The welfarist purpose of the modern law of nations: the happiness of the people and the advancement of states.

Mode of access: Internet. ; French, English, German, Italian. ; "Servant d'organe à l'International law association."

CCSI prepared a Scoping Study for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. Also available are: A summary version of the study (33 pages) A webinar (March 24, 2020), hosted by CCSI and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, discussed the Scoping Study and its findings (see also accompanying slides with speaking notes). A webinar organized by UNCITRAL (April 21, 2020). CCSI presented the Scoping Study. A video link of the webinar along with CCSI's slides are available in English (with speaking notes) and French at that link. CCSI Senior Fellow Karl Sauvant also presented his UNCITRAL Academic Forum Concept paper, available at that link. The primary research question that the Scoping Study was requested to address is: How can adequate legal defense for parties in proceedings under International Investment Agreements (IIAs) be better secured? The Scoping Study provides a broad and inclusive overview of issues, concerns, empirical evidence, opinions, lessons learned, and proposed solutions as they relate to potential or expanded Assistance Mechanisms for international investment law. This Scoping Study reflects input received on a confidential basis from: government officials (of all World Bank Group economic development levels); individuals who have experience establishing or working for existing or attempted Assistance Mechanisms; individuals who have experience working for an arbitral institution; academics who have written on and/or advised states with respect to international investment law; private practitioners; representatives of non-governmental organizations; and representatives of private sector foreign investors. Concerns about IIAs and ISDS are much more fundamental than only the financial costs of participation in this system. The Scoping Study considers the range of problems that states and other actors have in engaging with and benefiting from international investment law and in participating effectively in investor-state dispute settlement processes related to: investment policy-making IIA negotiation implementation and management of their IIAs and associated policies dispute prevention pre-dispute management and consultations case staffing anticipating, and potentially resolving, ISDS cases at an early phase appointing arbitrators dealing with uncertainty and ambiguity working with experts engaging in discovery of and managing information. The Scoping Study surveys a wide variety of models that Assistance Mechanisms, both with respect to international investment law as well as those employed in other legal fields, have taken and may take to address various concerns. Various cross-cutting issues emerged from analysis of and experience with existing Assistance Mechanisms. These cross-cutting issues should be considered by policy-makers as they consider the breadth and depth of services as well as the model(s) that an Assistance Mechanism could follow. The cross-cutting issues that are explored in depth in the Scoping Study include: Quality, reliability, reputation, and trust; Funding of an Assistance Mechanism and scope of services; Costs of support and who bears them; Stakeholder tensions; Identifying the client/beneficiary; Location, staffing, and remuneration; Institutionalized vs. ad hoc mechanisms; "Politics" surrounding the role of an Assistance Mechanism; and Intersection with other reforms.

My subject today is "International Organizations and Customary International Law"--that is, the role of international organizations in relation to the formation and determination of rules of customary international law. Charney devoted a good part of his well-known article on "Universal International Law" to what he termed "contemporary international law-making." By that, he meant chiefly law-making within "international forums"--that is, within organs of international organizations and at international conferences. He starts the discussion from the somewhat heretical position that "[w]hile customary law is still created in the traditional way, that process has increasingly given way in recent years to a more structured method, especially in the case of important normative developments. Rather than state practice and "opinio juris," multilateral forums often play a central role in the creation and shaping of contemporary international law." Charney's conclusions, however, are perhaps not as radical as his premise. He acknowledged that "[s]ome may question the authority to legislate universally, even in the face of some dissent, because it appears to be inconsistent with the sovereignty and autonomy of states. Such apprehension is not unreasonable. The international legal system, however, will invoke this authority sparingly."

Mediation as a method of resolving labor, family, civil and other disputes is not an innovative approach. The use of this procedure depends on many factors, the most important of which are both the desire of the parties to the dispute to agree and fully participate in a constructive dialogue, as well as the professionalism of the mediator – an independent mediator who helps disputing parties to find common ground and come to a mutu-ally beneficial solution. However, some aspects of the mediation procedure are quite controversial and require detailed analysis. The article examines the institution of the mediation procedure and its implementation as a form of legal regulation. The author acknowledges that it is necessary to attribute mediation to non-jurisdictional forms of protection, while the issue of recognizing mediation as one of the ways of self-defense of civil rights in the system of non-jurisdictional form is quite debatable. The author criticizes the position on the application of the mediation procedure in a legal conflict through its recognition as an institution of self-defense. Considering the problem of the relationship between self-defense and self-regulation, the author de-fends the position that self-defense is realized in a protective legal relationship and arises from an illegal legal action. At the same time, legal conflicts leading the disputing parties to the mediation procedure do not have such a feature. In connection with the foregoing, the author comes to the conclusion that it is impossible to rec-ognize the mediation procedure as such a way of protecting civil rights and substituting the studied concepts in law. As a conclusion, the author presents his own position on the self-regulation of the parties when referring to the mediation procedure and its recognition as a form of individual legal regulation. This work is one of the ways to solve the existing problem of determining the place of mediation in the system of the institute for the protection of civil rights.

Cover -- Half Title -- Series -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- Part One Theoretical Foundations: Private International Law and Globalization -- 1 Introduction: Private Law in a World of Globalization -- 2 The Theory and Practice of Transnational Legal Pluralism -- 3 Talking Past One Another: Private International Law and International Political Economy -- Part Two Private Law Technologies and the Construction of Globalization -- 4 The Technologies of Private International Law I: Contract and Party Autonomy -- 5 The Technologies of Private International Law II: The Pluralism-Harmonization Dynamic -- 6 The Technologies of Private International Law III: International Commercial Arbitration and the Private Settlement of Disputes -- 7 International Investment Law and Investor-State Arbitration: Incorporating Private Law Technologies into Public Law -- Part Three Conclusion -- 8 PIL and Power in the Contemporary Political Economy: Contention Amidst Cooperation -- Bibliography -- Index.