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"The issue of refugees is testing Europe's soul", the former prime minister of Italy, Enrico Letta, recently warned. As is often the case when souls are tested transnationally, international law with its limits and moving boundaries, and the wavering commitment of states towards its good faith implementation, seemingly offers a framework that is too weak to provide solutions. With increasing numbers of migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, old debates on asylum, jurisdiction, responsibility and burden sharing are intensifying. Yet while human tragedy is currently bringing refugee law and policy to the forefront of global attention, this is a field that remains a lesser stepchild of international law.
The claims made by migrants seeking protection under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugee Convention) have created a staggering body of state practice emerging from the interpretation by national courts of what is the earliest universal human rights treaty. The first edition of James Hathaway's The Law of Refugee Status, alongside Guy Goodwin-Gill and Jane McAdam's The Refugee in International Law, is one of the essential texts on every refugee lawyer's bookshelf. Now in its second edition, co-authored by Hathaway and Michelle Foster, The Law of Refugee Status is likely to maintain its standing.
The authors acknowledge that, apart from its analytical framework, their book bears little resemblance to its predecessor. The dramatically revised second edition of The Law of Refugee Status provides a marker of the broader transformation in international law that has occurred in the twenty-three years between the two editions. Most central among the developments in the intervening period is the role of national courts, as they have increasingly been called upon to interpret international norms and treaties. The emerging body of jurisprudence, while not authoritative outside the respective national jurisdictions
