Baltic Yearbook of International Law

Volume 22 is an open access volume and includes articles which emerged from a research forum of the European Society of International Law entitled "Regional Developments of International Law in Eastern Europe and Post-Soviet Eurasia". The research forum was held on 27-28 April 2023 at the University of Tartu in Estonia. The articles deal with diverse issues such as Western and Russian approaches to cyber conflict and international law, human rights in Central Asia, the legal status of the Caspian Sea, Russian approaches to post-Soviet secession, desovietization of international law, provisional measures in Ukraine’s international adjudication cases against Russia, East European civilian non-violent defence against Russian warfare and aspects of international humanitarian law, and Russia’s approaches to the freedom of navigation. From the practice of the Baltic States, there is also a general article on Latvian responses to the migration crisis at Latvia’s border with Belarus. 

Open access for the volume was funded by Grant PRG969 from the Estonian Research Council.

Volume content

Opening of the 21st volume of the Baltic Yearbook of International Law.

Volume 21 is published during Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine. This war – in terms of its modus operandi and the scale of atrocities committed – is only too familiar to the historical memory of the Baltic nations. This issue therefore includes papers from a Baltic Yearbook online seminar organized on 19 September 2022 on the theme of “Russia’s War in Ukraine and the Baltic States”. The seminar departed from the premise that the war which the Russian Federation is waging against the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine shares notable parallels with Soviet aggression against the Baltic States of 1939/1940, leading to fifty long years of unlawful occupation. The key question that international lawyers – especially in the Baltic States – are asking is whether international law in 2022, as compared to the inter-war period, is more consolidated and offers legal tools necessary to address such a grave violation of international law as the Russian Federation has been committing against Ukraine. The comparison of ‘then’ and ‘now’ appears to attest in favour of today’s international legal order, with more instruments and greater will to use them to counter particularly grave challenges to the foundational values of that legal order. The perspective from within the Baltic States on aspects of international law relevant to determine Russia’s responsibility for the war against Ukraine is undoubtedly of wider interest.

Articles on Estonian Tradition in International Law  was put together mainly by international law scholars at the University of Tartu. It also includes papers from a symposium "The approaches of non-Western States tointernational law and cyber operations", co-organized together with CCDCOE, the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, in Tallinn.

Concepts such as statehood, State continuity, State responsibility, equal participation in international decision-making and recently rule of law in international law and consolidation of legal regulation at an international level in different fields of cooperation, have been of relevance and interest both in practice and academic research in the field of international law in Latvia. The volume contains a selection of articles introducing historical and current research on these and other related issues.

Opening of the volume 19 of the Baltic Yearbook of International Law.

Volume 18 is the second volume of the Baltic Yearbook of International Law appearing under the aegis of cooperation between the Riga Graduate School of Law and Brill | Nijhoff Publishers. This volume is devoted to highlighting the reflections aired in Riga when the Law School was implementing the Jean Monnet Project in 2017-2019. These reflections broadly focused on the law of the European Union.

The editors of the Baltic Yearbook are certain that the EU-law perspective will be of interest to international lawyers throughout the world, whether as an option or as an idea as to what the international legal order might look like with ever growing globalization and migration of the world’s people.
 

It is highly symbolic that the Baltic Yearbook of International Law, having been founded and hosted for many years by the Raoul Wallenberg Institute at Lund University in Sweden, has now, from 2018, come home and has taken up residence at the Riga Graduate School of Law (RGSL) in Latvia, in the very heart of the three Baltic States. Among the selected authors, the Yearbook is glad to continue to introduce new authors from the region.

The editors of the Yearbook launched a call for papers on a theme: the Baltic States and International Law. The volume contains a selection of articles examining diverse issues and it is no surprise that the history of statehood and international law are closely intertwined in the case of the Baltic States.

Following World War I, pro-independence national forces in the territories of today’s Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had the opportunity and the will to proclaim the establishment of their respective States. Lithuania was the first to do so on 18 February 1918, followed by Estonia, whose declaration of independence was adopted on 24 February 1918, while the Declaration Establishing a Provisional Government of Latvia and the Political Platform was adopted on 18 November 1918. These respectively mark the founding dates of the three Baltic States.

It thus offers ground-breaking articles within several areas of international law, including international humanitarian law, international human rights law, peaceful settlement of disputes, European Union law, and the history of international law. Naturally, issues relevant to the international legal status of the Baltic States and the consequences of their occupation by the Soviet Union are also explored, as well as questions relevant to transitional justice and the collapse of communism. Finally, articles on new areas, such as bioethics and cyberspace, are also included, showing where the development of science prompts the need for legal regulation. This wide-ranging selection reflects the Yearbook’s aim to offer a unique forum among international legal periodicals – where the past meets the future.