The 2015 July issue of the German Law Journal features a remarkable special collection on the legal implications of the Ukrainian Crisis – curated by Zoran Oklopcic, who is alumnus of the Comparative Constitutional Law Program and Associate Professor at the Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada).
We congratulate to Professor Oklopcic on this occasion, wishing him further success in his professional career.
See below quotes from the introduction of the 2015 July issue of the German Law Journal, by Russell Miller, Editor-in-Chief:
“The German Law Journal has a tradition of taking-up the international law issues presented by moments of crisis – often under the leadership of guest editors. Under Professor Oklopcic’s guidance, we are able to present a deep consideration of the issues involved from well-known experts in the field and insightful emerging commentators. A number of different disciplinary perspectives are represented. The contributions do not turn-away from the doctrinal challenges this still-unfolding crisis presents. There are critical re-examinations of the principle of self-determination; the principle of democratic governance in international law; and the meaning of the state and state-territory in an increasingly complex and combustible global order.
The fundamental challenge the Ukrainian Crisis poses to the meaning and efficacy of international law is confronted throughout these pieces. This is an old challenge – one that each generation of lawyers must take-up anew – with a view to the lessons and learning of the past and in light of the conditions of the age. This special issue returns us to that endeavor, with no utopian optimism, but also without sacrificing what U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, in his 1945 address at the annual ASIL meeting, called our “faith” in international law. Then, in the still-smoldering ruins of WWII – and not long before he would take up his service as Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials – Justice Jackson implored us “to go forward on the assumption that reason has power to summon force to its support, confident that acceptable moral standards embodied in law for the governance nations will so appeal to the better natures of men that somehow they will ultimately vouchsafe the force to make them prevail.” Professor Oklopcic and these contributors renew that summons for Ukraine, for today.“
Zoran Oklopcic, Introduction: The Crisis in Ukraine Between the Law, Power, and Principle, 16 German Law Journal (2015), available at: http://www.germanlawjournal.com/index.php?pageID=11&artID=1679