Hamburg Talk Series in International Law

• 28 June 2021, 6 pm CEST
  UN Diplomacy 2.0?
  Blanca Montejo & Maximilian Waßmuth
  

On 16 March 2020, all meetings and conferences at the UN headquarters in New York were canceled or postponed. They were soon switched to online fora, at the cost of human interaction and even political momentum. Nevertheless, the UN Security Council still kept delivering its mandate in these challenging times: It continued to pass critical solutions, including e.g. resolution 2532 (2020) supporting the Secretary General’s call for a global ceasere or resolution 2538 (2020) on women in peace operations; it also renewed the mandates of critical missions.

Now that the UN is reopening on 6 July, it is timely to take stock on what has been lost and was gained. Covid-19 should be used to open the door for future reection and reinvention. Can the lessons learned be used to strengthen multilateralism?

For more information, see here (PDF).

• 14 June 2021, 6 pm CEST
  Analyzing Military Necessity
  Dr. Nobuo Hayashi & Dr. Dieter Fleck & Prof. Dr. Stefan Oeter
  

The prin­ciple of mi­li­ta­ry ne­ces­si­ty is, like the other core prin­ciples of in­ter­na­tio­nal hu­ma­ni­ta­ri­an law (IHL) ­such as dis­tinc­tion or pro­por­tio­na­li­ty, an es­sen­ti­al com­po­nent of IHL. It al­lows for mea­su­res that are ne­cessary to ac­complish a la­w­ful mi­li­tary pur­pose. In ge­ne­ral, the only la­w­ful mi­li­tary pur­po­se is to wea­ken the other bel­li­gerent's mi­litary ca­pa­city, which­ can run coun­ter to hu­ma­nitarian ex­i­gencies. Past con­flicts (e.g. the use of le­t­hal force by Is­ra­el or ­the de­struc­tion of cul­tu­ral pro­per­ty in Mali­ ) il­lustrate the chal­len­ges re­gar­ding mi­li­ta­ry ne­ces­si­ty in prac­tice. How can mi­li­ta­ry com­man­ders and legal ad­vi­sors in the field apply mi­li­ta­ry ne­ces­si­ty? How can it be bet­ter ope­ra­tio­na­li­zed?

• 31 May 2021, 6 pm CEST
  Climate Litigation - Law-Making by Nationals Courts?
  Prof. Dr. Andreas L. Paulus & Prof. Dr. Marta Torre-Schaub & Dr. Laura Burgers

On 24 March 2021, the German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) issued an order in the case of the German Federal Climate Change Act. It held that the provisions of the Act governing national climate targets and the annual emission amounts allowed until 2030 were incompatible with fundamental rights in so far as they lack sucient specications for further emission reductions from 2031 onwards. Earlier in February 2021, the Paris Administrative Court had ruled that France had fallen short of meeting the targets of the Paris  Agreement and was found guilty of failing to meet its commitments to combat global warming. After the prominent Urgenda case from 2019, the The Hague Court of First Instance will render its judgment in a case against the energy company Shell on 26 May 2021, which could have implications for future cases and the role of companies in meeting climate targets. Have these national developments anything in common? Are there any international legal implications of these national cases?

• 10 May 2021, 6 pm CEST
  Up in the Air: The European Court of Human Rights' Interpretations of Extraterritorial Jurisdiction in Context
  Kalika Mehta, Dr. Anne Dienelt & Prof. Dr. Stefan Oeter
  
  

On 16 Fe­bru­ary, the Eu­ro­pean Court of Human Rights ruled in favor of Ger­many in the case Hanan v. Ger­many con­cerning a 2009 NATO Kun­duz air­strike re­sulting in the de­aths of ci­vi­lians in Af­ghanistan. Once again, the Court dealt with ques­tions of ex­tra­territorial ju­risdiction. Did it cla­ri­fy or mo­di­fy its con­cept of ex­tra­terroriality? In what si­tua­tions and under which cir­cumstances have other Human Rights sys­tems af­firmed ex­traterritorial ju­risdiction? What are the im­pli­cations of the judgment for the Ger­man con­text?