Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 31 - 60 of 143

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

Norm Conflict In International Law: Whither Human Rights?, Marko Milanovic Oct 2009

Norm Conflict In International Law: Whither Human Rights?, Marko Milanovic

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

No abstract provided.


Treaties As "Part Of Our Law", Ernest A. Young Jan 2009

Treaties As "Part Of Our Law", Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


American Law And Transnational Corruption: Is There A Need For Lincoln’S Law Abroad?, Paul D. Carrington Jan 2009

American Law And Transnational Corruption: Is There A Need For Lincoln’S Law Abroad?, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Citizenship, Public And Private, Karen Knop Jul 2008

Citizenship, Public And Private, Karen Knop

Law and Contemporary Problems

Knop develops private international law as the private side of citizenship. She shows that although individuals think of citizenship as public, private international law covers some of the same ground. Private international law also harks back to a historical conception of the legal citizen as someone who could sue and be sued, and someone who belonged to a community of shared or common law that was not necessarily a territorial community. She demonstrates that Anglo-Canadian private international law has particular value as private citizenship in a post-9/11 world because its treatment of enemy aliens, illegal immigrants, and members of religious …


Can Might Make Right? The Use Of Force To Impose Democracy And The Arthurian Dilemma In The Modern Era, Scott Thompson Apr 2008

Can Might Make Right? The Use Of Force To Impose Democracy And The Arthurian Dilemma In The Modern Era, Scott Thompson

Law and Contemporary Problems

US President George W. Bush used force to bring the Taliban to its knees and create a fledgling democracy in Afghanistan, then invaded Iraq with the end goal of establishing a democracy there, as well. Meanwhile, presidential hopeful Barack Obama praised those who built democracy's arsenal to vanquish fascism, and who then built a series of alliances and a world order that would ultimately defeat communism, seeming to extol and vindicate the previous US efforts to impose democracy by force. These two leaders' struggles to nail down a definitive answer on whether force should ever be used to impose democracy …


Naturalism In International Adjudication, J. Patrick Kelly Apr 2008

Naturalism In International Adjudication, J. Patrick Kelly

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

No abstract provided.


Intent, Presumptions, And Non-Self-Executing Treaties, Curtis A. Bradley Jan 2008

Intent, Presumptions, And Non-Self-Executing Treaties, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Unratified Treaties, Domestic Politics, And The U.S. Constitution, Curtis A. Bradley Jan 2008

Unratified Treaties, Domestic Politics, And The U.S. Constitution, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

Under contemporary treaty practice, a nation's signature of a treaty typically does not make the nation a party to the treaty. Rather, nations become parties to treaties through an act of ratification or accession, which sometimes occurs long after signature. Nevertheless, Article 18 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which many commentators regard as reflecting customary international law, provides that when a nation signs a treaty it is obligated to refrain from actions that would defeat the “object and purpose” of the treaty until such time as it makes clear its intent not to become a party …


Tyranny Of The Available: Under-Represented Topics, Approaches, And Viewpoints, Katherine Topulos, Marci Hoffman Jan 2008

Tyranny Of The Available: Under-Represented Topics, Approaches, And Viewpoints, Katherine Topulos, Marci Hoffman

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


International Delegation And State Sovereignty, Oona A. Hathaway Jan 2008

International Delegation And State Sovereignty, Oona A. Hathaway

Law and Contemporary Problems

Hathaway rebuts the claim that state sovereignty almost always suffers when states delegate authority to international institutions. Critics of delegation err, she contends, by overemphasizing the costs but losing sight of some of the substantial benefits of cooperation. She considers the challenge to sovereignty posed by international delegation by focusing on recent debates over the influence of international legal commitments on domestic governance.


Delegation Success And Policy Failure: Collective Delegation And The Search For Iraqi Weapons Of Mass Destruction, Michael J. Tierney Jan 2008

Delegation Success And Policy Failure: Collective Delegation And The Search For Iraqi Weapons Of Mass Destruction, Michael J. Tierney

Law and Contemporary Problems

Tierney argues that international delegation can have important consequences, even for powerful states. In particular, he contends that the US delegation of inspection authority to United Nations weapons inspectors and to the International Atomic Energy Association after the Gulf War of 1990-91 entailed significant sovereignty costs by affecting the timing and costliness of the subsequent 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Among other things, he notes that the inspectors' independent behavior made it much more difficult for the US to assemble the type of multilateral coalition that would share the costs as it had in the earlier Gulf War. Tierney also …


Vote-Trading In International Institutions, Ofer Eldar Jan 2008

Vote-Trading In International Institutions, Ofer Eldar

Faculty Scholarship

There is evidence that countries trade votes among each other in international institutions on a wide range of issues, including the use of force, trade issues and elections of judges. Vote-trading has been criticized as being a form of corruption, undue influence and coercion. Contrary to common wisdom, however, I argue in this paper that the case for introducing policy measures against vote-trading cannot be made out on the basis of available evidence. This paper sets out an analytical framework for analyzing vote-trading in international institutions, focusing on three major contexts in which vote-trading may generate benefits and costs: (1) …


Odious Debt, Old And New: The Legal Intellectual History Of An Idea, James V. Feinerman Oct 2007

Odious Debt, Old And New: The Legal Intellectual History Of An Idea, James V. Feinerman

Law and Contemporary Problems

In a sense, all debts are odious; that is, to use dictionary definitions, "hateful; disgusting; offensive." Yet insofar as international economic law today is concerned, only a certain few debts can be considered "odious debts" in order to contest and perhaps eventually to repudiate them. Here, Feinerman examines the concepts of odious debt and related international legal phenomena, in both historical and contemporary context, with a view of determining the role that denomination of certain debts as odious may play in the overall process of sovereign debt rescheduling.


Odious Debt, Odious Credit, Economic Development, And Democratization, Tom Ginsburg, Thomas S. Ulen Jul 2007

Odious Debt, Odious Credit, Economic Development, And Democratization, Tom Ginsburg, Thomas S. Ulen

Law and Contemporary Problems

When a country signs an international treaty, it is not the government but the state that is bound, and the obligation will stand until a subsequent government formally exits the treaty. Exit is presumed to be costly: a government that "repudiates" earlier treaty obligations will suffer reputational harm in its international relations. Moreover, this general background norm of international law applies as well to debt: a government can announce that it is renouncing debt, but it will suffer severe reputational harm in the debt marketplace, much as a government that repudiates public international law obligations suffers a reputational harm. Here, …


Devilry, Complicity, And Greed: Transitional Justice And Odious Debt, David C. Gray Jul 2007

Devilry, Complicity, And Greed: Transitional Justice And Odious Debt, David C. Gray

Law and Contemporary Problems

Several issues relating to odious debt and contemporary efforts to expand the odious debt doctrine to cover all debts of odious regimes are maddeningly complex, implicating difficult issues in areas ranging from the international law of state succession to the law of commercial paper--itself a source of biannual trauma for thousands of bar aspirants. However, the scope of the debate as it has been developed in the literature is too narrow and, therefore, the questions posed too simple. In particular, any analysis of odious debt must account for issues that inhere to transitions and transitional justice. Here, Gray make some …


The Institutionalist Implications Of An Odious Debt Doctrine, Paul B. Stephan Jul 2007

The Institutionalist Implications Of An Odious Debt Doctrine, Paul B. Stephan

Law and Contemporary Problems

Sovereigns incur debts, and creditors look to the law to hold sovereigns to their obligations. In legal terms, the question is whether to recognize and define an odious debt defense through a treaty or national legislative acts, on the one hand, or through the decisions of authoritative dispute-settlement bodies, whether international arbitral organs or domestic courts. Moreover, others may think that odious debt doctrine as a means can optimize the social welfare generated by sovereign-debt contracts. Here, Stephan examines the social welfare in the economic sense but attacks the problem from a different direction and concludes that no satisfactory mechanism …


Renegotiating The Odious Debt Doctrine, Tai-Heng Cheng Jul 2007

Renegotiating The Odious Debt Doctrine, Tai-Heng Cheng

Law and Contemporary Problems

Following the United States' invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq,' the US government argued that the successor government in Iraq was not responsible for Iraq's Saddam-era debt under the purported doctrine of odious-regime debt. This purported doctrine apparently excused--by operation of law--all successor regimes from repaying debts that were incurred by oppressive predecessor regimes. Here, Cheng presents three-part response regarding the purported rule that oppressive debts of a predecessor government do not bind its successor.


A Critique Of The Odious Debt Doctrine, Albert H. Choi, Eric A. Posner Jul 2007

A Critique Of The Odious Debt Doctrine, Albert H. Choi, Eric A. Posner

Law and Contemporary Problems

Choi and Posner indicate that it is unclear whether the doctrine will improve the welfare of the population that might be subject to a dictatorship in terms of the odious debt doctrine. The traditional backward-looking defense of the odious debt doctrine, which suggests that the doctrine is costless because it releases a suffering population from an unjust debt, is seriously incomplete. Although in specific cases the benefits of loan sanctions may exceed the costs, the defenders of the doctrine have not made the empirical case that the net benefits are sufficiently high in the aggregate as to warrant routine application …


Odious, Not Debt, Anna Gelpern Jul 2007

Odious, Not Debt, Anna Gelpern

Law and Contemporary Problems

The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 revived public and academic debate about a wobbly old doctrine of international law: the Doctrine of Odious Debt. This doctrine allows governments to disavow debts incurred by their predecessors without the consent of or benefit for the people, provided creditors knew of the taint. It has roots in nineteenth century jostles over colonial possessions. However, for the past eighty years, Odious Debt's rhetorical appeal has vastly outstripped its "legal vitality." Here, Gelpern argues that the Doctrine of Odious Debt frames the problem of odious debt in a way that excludes a large number, …


Insolvency Principles And The Odious Debt Doctrine: The Missing Link In The Debate, A. Mechele Dickerson Jul 2007

Insolvency Principles And The Odious Debt Doctrine: The Missing Link In The Debate, A. Mechele Dickerson

Law and Contemporary Problems

Politicians as well as many members of the international human-rights community, view the odious debt doctrine as fundamentally unfair that the Iraqi people may be saddled with the debts Saddam Hussein's brutal regime incurred. Furthermore, some in the human-rights community generally argue that rich (creditor) countries have a moral duty or obligation to protect citizens of poor (debtor) countries and that richer nations should forgive the debts of poorer nations to help reduce existing inequalities between developed and developing countries. Here, Dickerson evaluates the doctrine of odious debts using the insolvency framework found in the United States Bankruptcy Code.


Sovereigns, Trustees, Guardians: Private-Law Concepts And The Limits Of Legitimate State Power, Jedediah Purdy, Kimberly Fielding Jul 2007

Sovereigns, Trustees, Guardians: Private-Law Concepts And The Limits Of Legitimate State Power, Jedediah Purdy, Kimberly Fielding

Law and Contemporary Problems

One major tradition of understanding the powers and duties of sovereigns has particular relevance to arguments for revival and refurbishment of the odious debt doctrine. Here, Purdy and Fielding survey the critical role of private-law concepts in the development of this tradition. In this account, the state is a constructed and purposive legal actor, composed of a set of powers assigned by its subjects for the pursuit of certain human interests and bound by the obligation to secure and respect those interests. Moreover, they narrate that if there are inherent powers in a sovereign, they are only those that are …


Law, Ethics, And International Finance, Lee C. Buchheit Jul 2007

Law, Ethics, And International Finance, Lee C. Buchheit

Law and Contemporary Problems

Cross-border financial flows can have dramatic effects on the recipients of the money--for good or for ill. This is particularly true in countries whose economies and capital markets are underdeveloped. Moreover, ethical questions about who should receive cross-border financing, in what amounts, for what purposes, and on what conditions have long engaged the attention of international financial institutions such as World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the regional development banks. Here, Buchheit analyzes a difficult area where law and ethics have not yet found a happy coexistence--the problem of odious debts.


Reflections On Transatlantic Approaches To International Law, John B. Bellinger Iii Apr 2007

Reflections On Transatlantic Approaches To International Law, John B. Bellinger Iii

Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

No abstract provided.


Civil Procedure To Enforce Transnational Rights?, Paul D. Carrington Jan 2007

Civil Procedure To Enforce Transnational Rights?, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Federal Judicial Power And The International Legal Order, Curtis A. Bradley Jan 2007

The Federal Judicial Power And The International Legal Order, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Case Comment, Sanchez-Llamas V. Oregon, Curtis A. Bradley Jan 2006

Case Comment, Sanchez-Llamas V. Oregon, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Rule-Based Dispute Resolution In International Trade Law, Rachel Brewster Jan 2006

Rule-Based Dispute Resolution In International Trade Law, Rachel Brewster

Faculty Scholarship

Why does the United States ever prefer to settle disputes under a system of rules rather than a system of negotiations? Powerful states are advantaged by negotiation-based approaches to settling disagreements because they have the resources to resolve individual disputes on favorable terms. By contrast, rule-based dispute resolution advantages weak states as a means to hold powerful states to the terms of their agreements. Then why did the United States want a rule-based system to settle international disputes in the WTO? To answer this question, we have to understand domestic politics as well as international politics. International constraints, particularly international …


Sosa, Customary International Law, And The Continuing Relevance Of Erie, Curtis A. Bradley, Jack L. Goldsmith, David H. Moore Jan 2006

Sosa, Customary International Law, And The Continuing Relevance Of Erie, Curtis A. Bradley, Jack L. Goldsmith, David H. Moore

Faculty Scholarship

Ten years ago, the conventional wisdom among international law academics was that customary international law (CIL) had the status of self-executing federal common law to be applied by courts without any need for political branch authorization. This "modern position" came under attack by so-called "revisionist" critics who argued that CIL had the status of federal common law only in the relatively rare situations in which the Constitution or political branches authorized courts to treat it as such. Modern position proponents are now claiming that the Supreme Court's 2004 decision in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain confirms that CIL has the status of …


Enforcing The Avena Decision In U.S. Courts, Curtis A. Bradley Jan 2006

Enforcing The Avena Decision In U.S. Courts, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Rule Of (Administrative) Law In International Law, David Dyzenhaus Oct 2005

The Rule Of (Administrative) Law In International Law, David Dyzenhaus

Law and Contemporary Problems

No abstract provided.