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Full-Text Articles in Law
Introduction To The Symposium On Digital Evidence, Melinda (M.J.) Durkee, Tamar Megiddo
Introduction To The Symposium On Digital Evidence, Melinda (M.J.) Durkee, Tamar Megiddo
Scholarship@WashULaw
The past few decades have seen radical advances in the availability and use of digital evidence in multiple areas of international law. Witnesses snap cellphone photos of unfolding atrocities and post them online, while others share updates in real time through messaging apps. Immigration officers search cell phones. Private citizens launch open-source online investigations. Investigators scrape social media posts. Digital experts verify authenticity with satellite geolocation. These new types of evidence and digitally facilitated methods and patterns of evidence gathering and analysis are revolutionizing the everyday practice of international law, drawing in an ever-wider circle of actors who can contribute …
Introduction To The Symposium On Digital Evidence, Melinda (M.J.) Durkee, Megiddo Tamar
Introduction To The Symposium On Digital Evidence, Melinda (M.J.) Durkee, Megiddo Tamar
Scholarship@WashULaw
The past few decades have seen radical advances in the availability and use of digital evidence in multiple areas of international law. Witnesses snap cellphone photos of unfolding atrocities and post them online, while others share updates in real time through messaging apps. Immigration officers search cell phones. Private citizens launch open-source online investigations. Investigators scrape social media posts. Digital experts verify authenticity with satellite geolocation. These new types of evidence and digitally facilitated methods and patterns of evidence gathering and analysis are revolutionizing the everyday practice of international law, drawing in an ever-wider circle of actors who can contribute …
Industry Groups In International Governance: A Framework For Reform, Melinda (M.J.) Durkee
Industry Groups In International Governance: A Framework For Reform, Melinda (M.J.) Durkee
Scholarship@WashULaw
The Sustainable Development Goals and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights encourage engaging with businesses as partners in important global governance agendas. Indeed, many international organizations are now partnering with business groups to secure funding and private sector engagement. At the same time, reforms at the World Health Organization, Food and Agriculture Organization and others seek to restrain the dangers of mission distortion and capture by business groups. Shareholders at major multinational oil and gas companies also recognize these dangers and seek to rein in lobbying that is at odds with the goals of the Paris Climate …
Space Law As Twenty-First Century International Law, Melinda (M.J.) Durkee
Space Law As Twenty-First Century International Law, Melinda (M.J.) Durkee
Scholarship@WashULaw
Space law’s current moment reflects international law’s current moment. That is, lawmaking processes aimed at updating international space law for the commercial space age reveal three larger themes about international lawmaking in the twenty-first century. These themes are: (a) evolutive lawmaking efforts by states; (b) the parallel development of laws in different fora by different actors; and (c) interpretive entrepreneurship by private actors. The themes are interrelated. They offer one story—but not the only possible story—about how international law develops when multilateral cooperation is out of reach. Together, the themes forecast a more pluralist international legal future, demanding new forms …
The Pledging World Order, Melinda (M.J.) Durkee
The Pledging World Order, Melinda (M.J.) Durkee
Scholarship@WashULaw
There is an emerging world order characterized by unilateral pledges within a legal or “legal-ish” architecture of commitments. The pledging world order has materialized in the international legal response to climate change and in other diverse sites. It crosses and blurs the public-private divide. It erodes distinctions between multilateralism and localism, law and not-law, and progress and stasis. It is both a symptom of and a contributor to the dismantling of the Westphalian and postwar orders. Its report card is mixed: While pledging can be highly ineffective as a legal technology, the pledging world order may respond to some legitimacy …
Pandemic Nationalism, Covid-19, And International Law, Leila Nadya Sadat
Pandemic Nationalism, Covid-19, And International Law, Leila Nadya Sadat
Scholarship@WashULaw
This Essay explores possible reforms to the World Health Organization (WHO) considering its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It also suggests using existing mechanisms to enforce the WHO Constitution and the International Health Regulations (IHR). The Essay focuses on three aspects of global health governance: (1) how nationalism of powerful States renders pandemic control difficult given the “weakest-link public goods” character of global health emergencies; (2) how legal and practice reforms might nonetheless strengthen and fortify the WHO’s response; and (3) how existing provisions of the WHO Constitution and the IHR might be enforced through the dispute resolution clauses in …
Interpretive Entrepreneurs, Melinda (M.J.) Durkee
Interpretive Entrepreneurs, Melinda (M.J.) Durkee
Scholarship@WashULaw
Private actors interpret legal norms, a phenomenon I call “interpretive entrepreneurship.” The phenomenon is particularly significant in the international context, where many disputes are not subject to judicial resolution and there is no official system of precedent. Interpretation can affect the meaning of laws over time. For this reason, it can be a form of “post hoc” international lawmaking, worth studying alongside other forms of international lobbying and norm entrepreneurship by private actors. The Article identifies and describes the phenomenon through a series of case studies that show how, why, and by whom it unfolds. The examples focus on entrepreneurial …
Heads Of State And Other Government Officials Before The International Criminal Court: The Uneasy Revolution Continues, Leila Nadya Sadat
Heads Of State And Other Government Officials Before The International Criminal Court: The Uneasy Revolution Continues, Leila Nadya Sadat
Scholarship@WashULaw
This essay takes up the current debate about the relationship between article 27 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and article 98 of the Statute concerning the immunity of sitting Heads of State from investigation or prosecution before the Court and the duty of States to cooperate with the Court as regards their arrest and surrender. The essay traces the history of article 27 and its incorporation into the Statute and observes that it represents a rule of customary international law resting upon the adoption of the Nuremberg Principles after World War II, and reiterated in the …
Interstitial Space Law, Melinda (M.J.) Durkee
Interstitial Space Law, Melinda (M.J.) Durkee
Scholarship@WashULaw
Conventionally, customary international law is developed through the actions and beliefs of nations. International treaties are interpreted, in part, by assessing how the parties to the treaty behave. This Article observes that these forms of uncodified international law—custom and subsequent treaty practice—are also developed through a nation’s reactions, or failures to react, to acts and beliefs that can be attributed to it. I call this “attributed lawmaking.”
Consider the new commercial space race. Innovators like SpaceX and Blue Origin seek a permissive legal environment. A Cold-War-era treaty does not seem adequately to address contemporary plans for space. The treaty does, …
International Lobbying Law, Melinda (M.J.) Durkee
International Lobbying Law, Melinda (M.J.) Durkee
Scholarship@WashULaw
An idiosyncratic array of international rules allows nonstate actors to gain special access to international officials and lawmakers. Historically, many of these groups were public-interest associations like Amnesty International. For this reason, the access rules have been celebrated as a way to democratize international organizations, enhancing their legitimacy and that of the rules they produce. But a focus on the classic public-law virtues of democracy and legitimacy produces a theory at odds with the facts: The international rules rules also offer access to industry and trade associations like the World Coal Association, whose principal purpose is to lobby for their …
Astroturf Activism, Melinda (M.J.) Durkee
Astroturf Activism, Melinda (M.J.) Durkee
Scholarship@WashULaw
Corporate influence in government is more than a national issue; it is an international phenomenon. For years, businesses have been infiltrating international legal processes. They secretly lobby lawmakers through front groups: “astroturf” imitations of grassroots organizations. But because this business lobbying is covert, it has been underappreciated in both the literature and the law. This Article unearths the “astroturf activism” phenomenon. It offers an original descriptive account that classifies modes of business access to international officials and identifies harms, then develops a critical analysis of the laws that regulate this access. I show that the perplexing set of access rules …
Persuasion Treaties, Melinda (M.J.) Durkee
Persuasion Treaties, Melinda (M.J.) Durkee
Scholarship@WashULaw
All treaties formalize promises made by national parties. Yet there is a fundamental difference between two kinds of treaty promise. This difference divides all treaties into two categories: treaties that govern the behavior of state parties and their agents fall in one category; treaties in the second category—those I call “persuasion” treaties—commit state parties to changing the behavior of non-state actors as well. The difference is important because the compliance problems for the two sets of treaties sharply diverge. Persuasion treaties merit our systematic attention because they are both theoretically and practically significant. In areas such as international environmental affairs, …