Over the month of June 2015, Dr Alexander Orakhelashvili presented four papers at high-level academic conferences in the UK and abroad.
Dr Orakhelashvili’s first paper was on “Kosovo UDI and Intersecting Legal Regimes: An Inter-Disciplinary Approach”, presented on 4 June at a conference held at St Andrews University on Independence in an Interdependent and Multicultural World. The paper focused on inter-disciplinary issues that the law and politics of the Kosovo UDI situation entails from the international law and international relations perspective, especially in terms of political realism.
The second paper was presented on 13 June 2015 at the University of Kyoto (Japan), on Jus Cogens and the International Court’s Decision on Germany v Italy (2012), in which Dr Orakhelashvili outlined the deficiencies in the International Court’s reasoning and in outcomes reached in the case, as well as placed the Court’s decision in the context of State practice, especially one developing after the Court rendered its judgment in 2012.
The third paper was presented on 14 June 2015 at the Ritsumeikan University at Kyoto (Japan), on the British experience with post-colonial claims of reparation, especially in the context of litigation before English courts arising out of claims in relation to Mau Mau events in Kenya in 1950s. The presentation concentrated on underlying issues of public international law, especially the use by English courts of the doctrine of incorporation, as well as aspects of English tort law used by courts to reach the outcome compatible with international law.
The final paper was presented at the conference on Hybrid Warfare, held at Lancaster University on 26 June 2015. Dr Orakhelashvili’s presentation addressed the claims that the use of the right to self-defence under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter should apply not just to armed attacks perpetrated by States but also to ones perpetrated by non-State actors. The presentation outlined the lack of evidence to sustain such position, the problems the acceptance of this position would produce in the entire body of the law of armed conflicts, and concluded that the International Court’s rejection of these claims was correct.