Christian Tomuschat and Marcelo G. Kohen (eds.), Flexibility in International Dispute Settlement: Conciliation Revisited

1. Flexibility in International Dispute Settlement: Conciliation Revisited made its timely appearance in 2020. The book contains 8 parts with 11 chapters and two annexes, written by experienced authors and edited by even more experienced editors, Christian Tomuschat and Marcelo G. Kohen. 2. The volume opens with Kohen’s introduction, which highlights the many paradoxes of conciliation, such as its being often talked about and provided in treaties and yet seldom used in practice, etc., and expresses his “firm wish that conciliation will soon become again a dispute settlement means to be seriously considered and employed in these particular times in which many legal disputes are intrinsically mixed with political and other realities that make difficult the use of adjudicative or even other so-called diplomatic means to settle them” (p.7). 3. Part 1, “Looking Back to the Past”, recounts the history of the use of inter-State conciliation between 1931 and 1957,...