Aims & Scope

The Journal of International Law and Jurisprudence (JILJ) is a double-blind peer-reviewed, open-access law journal published by the Department of International Law and Jurisprudence, Faculty of Law, University of Jos, Nigeria. It publishes original legal scholarship in international law and in jurisprudence, and gives particular attention to work that measures Nigerian and African law against international standards, draws lessons from other jurisdictions, or brings legal theory to bear on practical problems of justice and governance. It also publishes doctrinal studies of Nigerian law and practice that make an original contribution.

SUBJECT AREAS

• Public international law — sources and the law of treaties, statehood and sovereignty, jurisdiction and immunities, state responsibility, the United Nations and other international and regional organisations, the use of force, and the maintenance of international peace and security.
• International humanitarian law — the conduct of hostilities, the principles of distinction and proportionality, the protection of civilians, means and methods of warfare including autonomous weapon systems, command responsibility, and the legal analysis of contemporary armed conflicts.
• International criminal law — the Rome Statute and the International Criminal Court, complementarity, immunities, genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, and the domestic prosecution of international crimes.
• International and comparative human rights law — civil, political and socio-economic rights, the right to health, fair trial, protest and assembly, the rights of women, children, detainees and victims of crime, refugees, migrants and internally displaced persons, and the African human rights system.
• International economic, energy and environmental law — trade and investment, regional integration, petroleum and mining law, host communities, decommissioning and remediation, renewable energy, climate change and climate justice.
• Air, space, maritime and transnational law — civil aviation safety and regulation, the law of the sea, and transnational crime including terrorism and counter-terrorism.
• Jurisprudence and legal theory — schools of legal thought, social contract and other theories of the state, sovereignty, the rule of law, justice, rights, the judicial process, precedent and conflicting judgments, and law in relation to society, religion and technology.
• Constitutional law, governance and democracy — constitutionalism, the judiciary, electoral law and electoral justice, and the prevention and resolution of sectarian and communal conflict.
• Comparative law — studies that set Nigerian law beside the law of another jurisdiction, such as South Africa, Ghana or Canada, on any subject.
• Nigerian law and practice — criminal justice, evidence, civil procedure, customary and area courts, consumer protection and competition, intellectual property, family law including surrogacy, housing and land, labour, and the legal profession and legal education.

METHODS: doctrinal analysis of treaties, statutes, case law and the decisions of international courts and tribunals; comparative legal studies; jurisprudential and theoretical inquiry; socio-legal and other non-doctrinal research (interviews, questionnaires, case studies) that states its population, sample and instrument; and critiques of legislation, bills, policy and reform proposals. Every paper is expected to state its problem, analyse the law critically rather than describe it, set out its findings, and end with a conclusion and practicable recommendations.

MANUSCRIPT TYPES: full-length research articles of 15 to 20 A4 pages including the abstract and footnotes; case reviews, statute reviews and short commentaries of not more than 5,000 words; and book reviews of not more than 3,000 words. Each article carries a concise title of not more than 18 words, an abstract of not more than 250 words and not more than five keywords listed alphabetically. Manuscripts are typed in Times New Roman 12 point with 1.5 line spacing and 2.5 cm margins, in British English, with not more than six main numbered sections. All sources are cited in automatically numbered footnotes in Times New Roman 10 point, in compliance with the Nigerian Association of Law Teachers (NALT) Uniform Format and Citation Guide; in-text author-date citation and endnotes are not accepted. Manuscripts are submitted through the journal website as a Microsoft Word .docx file of not more than 10 MB, prepared for double-blind review: author names, affiliations and contact details are entered on the submission form and must not appear in the manuscript file. Submissions must be original, written in English, and neither published nor under consideration elsewhere.

READERSHIP: law teachers, researchers and postgraduate students in international law, jurisprudence and related fields; judges and other judicial officers; legal practitioners; diplomats, military and security lawyers and officials of international and regional organisations; legislators, law reform bodies and regulators; and civil society organisations working on human rights, humanitarian action and justice in Nigeria, Africa and beyond.

OUT OF SCOPE: papers in international relations, political science, strategic studies, economics, sociology or religion that contain no legal analysis and engage no treaty, statute, case or other legal source; narrative accounts of a conflict, crisis or policy that are not tied to a legal question; purely descriptive summaries of a treaty, statute or judgment that advance no argument and reach no finding; opinion pieces, speeches and newspaper-style commentary without authority for their claims; manuscripts that cite sources in APA, MLA, Harvard or any other in-text style, or that use endnotes, rather than NALT footnotes; papers with no footnotes or with only a closing reference list; survey-based studies that do not report the population, sample and instrument; unrevised long essays, dissertations, theses and course papers; and manuscripts already published elsewhere or under consideration by another journal.