The Netherlands Yearbook of International Law was first published in 1970. It has two main aims. It offers a forum for the publication of scholarly articles of a more general nature in the area of public international law including the law of the European Union. In addition, it aims to respond to the demand for information on state practice in the field of international law. Each Yearbook therefore includes an overview of state practice of the Netherlands.

The jurisprudential conception of effective control is rooted in outmoded conc- tions of hierarchical organizational structure. By extension, the current template for evaluating effective control poses an increasing risk that culpable commanders will escape liability by exploiting the lacunae in current case law. This article p- poses that jurists should analyze command/superior responsibility cases with full cognizance of modern command and control theory in order to sustain its viability as a practical prosecutorial tool to regulate the crimes committed by loosely knit groups and non-state actors conducting atrocities in chaotic circumstances. The Composite Theory proposed herein would support liability for the acts of subor- nates on the theory that commanders who field fighting organizations without the proper methods for enforcing compliance with the laws and customs of war - sume the risk of criminal sanction where criminal violations occur by their sub- dinates, regardless of the nature of the organization. Despite its broad acceptance and frequent regurgitation in jurisprudence, the doctrine of effective control drawn from the essence of the leader's authority is increasingly inapplicable to non-state actors who conduct hostilities in non-tra- tional conflicts. The independent emergence of the principle that the commander's orders operate with the force of law to limit the application of violence in widely disparate cultures and historical periods suggests that it is more than just a legal technicality, but instead is fundamental to the nature of warfare itself.

Two major factors brought about the establishment of the Netherlands Yearbook of International Law: demand for the publication of national practice in international law, and the desire for legal practitioners, state representatives and international lawyers to have access to the growing amount of available data, in the form of articles, notes etc. The Documentation section contains an extensive review of Dutch state practice from the parliamentary year prior to publication, an account of developments relating to treaties and other international agreements to which the Netherlands is a party, summaries of Netherlands judicial decisions involving questions of public international law (many of which are not published elsewhere), lists of Dutch publications in the field and extracts from relevant municipal legislation. Although the NYIL has a distinctive national character it is published in English, and the editors do not adhere to any geographical limitations when deciding upon the inclusion of articles.

Modem international organisations are complex, multi-faceted institutions that are I As a corol transforming the way in which States comply with international rules. lary of that transformation independent action by individual states is under pres sure from other states in a range of cooperative regimes that make up modem international society.2 The World Trade Organization (WTO)3 exemplifies this trans formation. It has emerged from its former institutional framework of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) into a fully-fledged international economic 4 organisation, with a specific mechanism for the settlement of disputes and a strong ethos of enforcement. Notwithstanding such developments, there is no satisfactory theory to explain what determines a compliance decision in WTO law or to account for the fact that 5 Instead, there is a general assumption that some Members choose not to comply. WTO Members are in compliance with their obligations and, more particularly with decisions which have been adopted by the Dispute Settlement Body. The issue of compliance with multilateral treaty regimes has been of consider able interest to political scientists and has spurned a burgeoning literature at the 6 intersection of international relations and international law, often arising from enquiries into the effectiveness of international regimes. In the context ofmultilat 7 eral treaty regimes two different perspectives on compliance have emerged in the 1. J.E. Alvarez, International Organizations as Law-makers (Oxford, Oxford University Press 2005) pp. ix-xxi at xv.

The Netherlands Yearbook of International Law was first published in 1970. It has two main aims. It offers a forum for the publication of scholarly articles of a more general nature in the area of public international law including the law of the European Union. In addition, it aims to respond to the demand for information on state practice in the field of international law. Each Yearbook therefore includes an overview of state practice of the Netherlands.