08 October 2025
The International Law of Meat Trade
The legal barriers erected by international trade law tend to stymie animal welfare policies. States might, in good faith, fear to violate international trade law. They also use the international trade regimes as a scapegoat for not promoting animal welfare domestically. This happened in Switzerland with foie gras, a cruelty meat product which, after discussion in Parliament, has not been prohibited. The argument was that a market ban might violate WTO law. Continue reading >>
0 
01 October 2025
Defund Meat: A Call for Transformative Meat Governance
“Defund Meat” may be an unusual and perhaps provocative title for a critical interdisciplinary discussion around meat in the Anthropocene. At first blush, it may sound like a crude activist slogan, or a hopelessly idealistic call for abolishing the meat system. Upon closer examination, however, it turns out to be a sheep in wolf’s clothing. As I shall argue, defunding meat is a much more commonsensical, pragmatic, and mainstream(able) proposition than its radical overtone might initially suggest. Continue reading >>
0
20 September 2025
Neither Reform nor Reconstruction
Contemporary international law is in crisis, but not yet in a systemic crisis. Based on historical experience, therefore, a reconstruction of international law is not to be expected for the time being. In the foreseeable future, the existing system will continue to exist, but in the absence of meaningful reform it will also be further weakened. We must prepare ourselves for a prolonged period of stagnation and even atrophy, a progressive wasting away and marginalisation of norms and institutions built in the past. Continue reading >>
0
16 September 2025
Killing For Show
On September 2 and 15, President Trump ordered the United States Navy to destroy small speed boats in the Caribbean. In both cases, all on board died. International lawyers have uniformly criticized the killings as unlawful. The President and his closest advisers have repeated that they simply do not care whether the killings violated the law. This may well be President Trump's most dangerous assault on the rule of law to date. And, yet, government officials in states long committed to the rule of law at home and abroad have remained largely silent. Continue reading >>
0
12 September 2025
From Sidelines to Center Stage
The trilogy of climate advisory opinions from the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, Inter-American Court of Human Rights, and the International Court of Justice marks a watershed moment not only for climate litigation but also for understanding the evolving role of Conferences of the Parties (COPs) in international law. This post analyses the courts' engagement with COPs and argues that it represents another step in clarifying their institutional role in global governance – one that elevates these treaty bodies from largely diplomatic forums to authoritative interpreters and potentially norm-creators within treaty regimes. Continue reading >>
0
06 August 2025
Crisis and Legal Scholarship
References to crisis abound. Since the 2008 financial crash and with the popularisation of the term “polycrisis” after the COVID-19 pandemic, the idea that we live in times of crises shapes public opinion, political discourse, and academic debates. A review of posts published on Verfassungsblog between January and July 2025 reveals an average of 15 posts per month mentioning some kind of crisis. Crisis is certainly a catchword, and these are hard to resist. But the pervasiveness of this term can also tell us something about the kind of knowledge produced by legal scholarship. Continue reading >>24 July 2025
What We Lost in the Skies Above Tehran
The damage that Merz and Steinmeier have inflicted on both Germany’s international credibility and the order put in place with the founding of the United Nations will likewise be felt for decades to come. As things stand right now, as far as the jus contra bellum is concerned, there might not be much left to reconstruct when the community of international law scholars meets up in Berlin in September. In that, the realists may find reason to rejoice. They, too, will come to miss it once it’s gone. Continue reading >>28 June 2025
U.S. Attacks on Iran
Israel and the United States attacked Iran in mid-June 2025 with the aim of ending its nuclear program. Iran counter-attacked. While some world leaders justified what Israel and the U.S. were doing, they did so in line with political deterrence theory, not the plain terms of the United Nations Charter. The lawful use of force in self-defense depends on an armed attack occurring. Concerns over nuclear weapons are to be resolved through treaties and negotiations. Honoring deterrence theory over the law is undermining the surest path to peace. Continue reading >>20 June 2025
“Wavering Between Hope and Despair”
Reflections From Within German International Law Scholarship Continue reading >>
0
02 June 2025
Peace at What Price?
In recent months, a growing number of voices – from political figures such as U.S. President Donald Trump and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico to various public opinion polls – have suggested that a resolution to the war in Ukraine may require Kyiv to cede some of its territory to Russia. These arguments, now gaining renewed attention as peace talks have begun, frame territorial concessions as a pragmatic step toward ending the conflict. Ceding Ukrainian land under these conditions, however, would reward historical revisionism as a geopolitical strategy and set a dangerous precedent in international law. Continue reading >>
0