Zeitschrift für ausländisches öffentliches Recht und Völkerrecht / Heidelberg Journal of International Law

The current human disasters – like illegal wars of aggression, violent suppression of human and democratic rights, health pandemics, climate change, ocean pollution, overfishing and other biodiversity losses, non-compliance with United Nations...

This article examines the legal requirements for a listing on the so-called European Union (EU) terror list, an aspect that remains underdeveloped in both legal scholarship and policy debates on counter-terrorism measures. The analysis elucidates...

Annex VI of the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty (so-called Liability Annex) was adopted in 2005. It establishes the liability of States parties and operators for specific cases of environmental pollution in Antarctica....

The constitutional role of parliament in foreign policy in general and in the further development of international law relevant to Switzerland cannot be reduced to a simple denominator. In the small state of Switzerland, the parliament’s...

This article reviews the prevailing narrative in Switzerland on the relative openness of the Swiss Federal Constitution towards international law. Two aspects of the topic – which are interlinked – are distinguished: entering international legal...

Switzerland is generally considered to be ECHR-friendly. The Convention does play an important role concerning constitutional review in the context of fundamental rights protection. However, challenges to Switzerland’s European Convention on Human...

This article examines the question to what extent the provisions of the Austrian Federal Constitution on the direct applicability of international treaties on the one hand and customary international law on the other can be regarded as “open”...

The constitutional principle of friendliness towards international law cannot fully avoid competition between the protection of fundamental rights under the Basic Law and the pro-tection of human rights under the European Convention on Human Rights...

The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) enjoys constitutional status in Austria. This is a special case, both in comparison with the integration of the ECHR in the legal systems of other contracting states and in comparison with the rank of...

This article deals with the constitutional limits of interpretations of the German Basic Law in the light of public international law. To this end, it first presents the jurisprudence of the Second Senate of the German Constitutional Court that has...

According to case law and doctrine, there is a principle of interpreting domestic law in con-formity with international law in Austrian law. This principle follows in particular from Ar-ticle 9 para. 1 of the Austrian Federal Constitutional Law and...

The practical effectiveness of international treaty and customary law rules depends on their applicability within the domestic legal sphere. The article presents the German constitutional law concepts related to this issue, as theyhave been...

The provisions of the Basic Law with references to international law form the foundation of the constitutional principle of friendliness towards international law. They are the basis for its content as well as for its limits. However, the content of...

Austrian constitutional law theory is slowly but steadily warming up to the concept of “Völkerrechtsfreundlichkeit” (“friendliness towards international law”). Due to its largely technical and unemotional formulations, the Austrian Federal...

Based on the Swiss reading of the concept of Völkerrechtsfreundlichkeit (friendliness towards international law), this article examines Swiss legal practice with regard to the direct applicability of international law and concludes that it can be...

The article traces the development and judicial practice on the “friendliness” or openness towards international law. From a rather sceptical note in a judgment dealing with the “Con-cordats” of the Länder, the Federal Constitutional Court...

A principle of friendliness towards international law can mitigate the national bias of law appliers in the coordination of domestic law with international law that they need to perform. This is particularly important in times of populism,...

This article discusses the scope and limits of consistent interpretation in Switzerland and discusses the extent to which construing national law in conformity with public international law is indicative of the ‘friendliness towards international...