Since 2019, the editorial board of VRÜ/WCL awards the annual “VRÜ/WCL article prize” to the contribution that resonates best with the mission statement of the journal and that exemplifies the type of scholarship that the journal wishes to encourage in the future.
For volume 53 (2020), the editorial board has decided to award the article prize to two contributions of equally outstanding quality:
· Stéphanie de Moerloose, Indigenous Peoples’ Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) and the World Bank Safeguards: Between Norm Emergence and Concept Appropriation, VRÜ/WCL 53 (2020), 223-244
· Vikram A. Narayan and Jahnavi Sindhu, A Case for Judicial Review of Legislative Process in India?, VRÜ/WCL 53 (2020), 358-410
De Moerloose’s article makes an important contribution to the fields of international law, human rights, and law and development. It combines a careful study of the localization of global norms and of relevant international institutional law with a critical and contextual approach that is sensitive to hierarchies as well as entanglements between North and South. The article thus corresponds extraordinarily well to the mission of the journal to promote scholarship that uncovers the particularities of legal configurations as well as their interdependencies in an interconnected world.
Narayan and Sindhu provide an excellent example of comparative work on a highly relevant topic that draws from a breadth of comparative sources from North and South, including Israel, Germany and South Africa, and thus goes beyond the usual comparators of Indian constitutional law. Although focused resolutely on providing doctrinal solutions that the Indian judiciary might adopt, the piece also displays a sophisticated understanding of the external circumstances which shape the evolution of legal doctrine and thus exemplifies the type of contextual comparison that our journal seeks to promote.
In both cases, the board has also taken into account that the authors are non-tenured or early-career scholars, which makes their scholarly achievement all the more impressive.
The board congratulates the authors to this achievement, which it hopes will inspire other scholars and future submissions to the journal. The article prize will be announced on the journal’s website and includes a one-year subscription to the journal.
For the editorial board
Philipp Dann Michael Riegner
In 2019, the editorial board has decided to award the “WCL / VRÜ article prize” to Ricarda Rösch for her contribution “A New Era of Customary Property Rights? – Liberia’s Land and Forest Legislation in Light of the Indigenous Right to Self-Determination”, published in issue 4/2019.
The article is a careful socio-legal study of the localization of global norms on indigenous peoples’ rights. Thematically, it makes an original contribution to the global legal debate on indigenous peoples and aligns particularly well with a “world” perspective on comparative law. Methodologically, the article combines legal analysis with empirical field research and generates original socio-legal insights, which are still too rare in comparative legal scholarship. Its geographic focus on an under-researched jurisdiction like Liberia further broadens and pluralizes the case selection of comparative public law. Finally, the board has taken into account that the author is a non-tenured scholar in the earlier stages of her career, which makes this scholarly achievement all the more impressive.
The board congratulates Ricarda Rösch to this achievement, which it hopes will inspire other scholars and future submissions to the journal. The article prize will be announced on the journal’s website and includes a one-year subscription to the journal.