Latest blog articles

A brief explainer about the ICJ case brought by South Africa against Israel

On 29 December, almost three months after the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel and the ensuing Israeli military strikes on the Gaza Strip, which had by then resulted in the deaths of more than 21,000 people and more than...

The Ius Commune Workshop on Contract Law took place on 25 November with its main theme being Empirical Research in Contract Law. During the workshop, five presenters reported on either their fully-fledged projects or shared ideas on early-stage studies.

Some of the favourite expressions of online platform providers around the world are that they ‘only offer a platform’ and are ‘in no way responsible for statements made or goods offered by third parties on their platform’. However, recent US case law held Amazon liable for physical harm caused by...

What does the term ‘MOCCA’ evoke in your mind, a kind of coffee or a specific brand? This Kat randomly asked this question to her friends currently at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition Munich. Most of them regarded ‘MOCCA’ as a kind of coffee instead of a specific brand except...

Nobuki Yamamoto, a Japanese contemporary artist, made an eye-catching work of ‘goldfish swimming in a phone booth’ (‘Work 1’) by December 2000 at the latest. In October 2011, a student organisation called ‘Goldfish Club’ at Kyoto University of Art and Design produced Work 2 and exhibited it for a...

The yearly Ius Commune conference, this year held online on 26 November 2020, traditionally includes a contract law workshop. This year the theme of the workshop was “Contract law in times of corona and other sanitary crises”. Five researchers presented recent work dealing with subthemes.

The annual Ius Commune conference and its contract law workshop on “Contract law in times of corona and other sanitary crises”. 

To any international lawyer, Hugo de Groot (10 April 1583 – 28 August 1645), usually referred to by his Latin name as Hugo Grotius, does not need any introduction. He is generally seen as the “father of public international law”, often together with Francisco De Vitoria (1483-1546) and Alberico...

Today, on Human Rights Day, the Peace Palace in The Hague will be the venue of the somewhat ironic spectacle of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and global icon of human rights leading her country’s defence against allegations of genocide, the most serious violation of human rights possible.

Recently, Chanel Co., Ltd. lost a trade mark infringement case regarding its ‘Double C’ logo in China. The full text of the decision can be visited via here (Google translatable). The case has drawn wide attention and, mostly, negative comments. Does this seemingly-counterintuitive loss indeed, well...