Congratulations to Dr Ineta Ziemele, Professor at Riga Graduate School of Law and Judge at the European Court of Justice, on the publication of the second revised edition of her book “State Continuity and Nationality: The Baltic States and Russia. Past, Present and Future as Defined by International Law.”
The book is published by the esteemed academic publishing house Brill Nijhoff, which focuses on high-quality, peer-reviewed publications and serves a global scholarly community.
In this book, Dr. Ziemele examines the relationship between the claims to State continuity and determination of nationality of the Baltic States and the Russian Federation, adopted in the early 1990s following the demise of the USSR. This is done within the context of the relationship between statehood and nationality in light of post-1945 developments in international law. In this context and using the example of the Baltic States, Dr. Ziemele analyses the tensions between the two maxims in international law – ex injuria jus non oritur, i.e., unlawful acts or omissions cannot be the basis for legal rights or entitlements, and ex factis jus oritur, i.e., current reality can generate normative consequences despite its illegality. This tension is particularly evident when the question of the Soviet time settlers is addressed. The 2nd revised edition of the book takes stock of the developments over the last 20 years, including the relevant case law of the European Court of Human Rights with regard to the consequences of the Soviet occupation. This analysis is especially valuable in view of the legal questions that arise in connection to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation in 2022.
Since the publication of the first edition of the book 20 years ago it has played a significant role in the global academic debate, becoming an important reference for future research and publications.
“While working on the new edition for the last two years, I found it very interesting to assess how the understanding of what the Baltic states were trying to communicate to the world in the 1990s has evolved and how the claims of the Baltic States and the solutions thereof exemplify the role that international law can play,” says Dr. Ineta Ziemele.
More about the book here:
The book will be launched with a panel discussion, “The struggle for strengthening the principle of continuity of the Baltic States in an international academic thought and its impact on developments in international diplomacy and politics,” on 4 December 2025.