Law Commons^™

Proportionalities, Youngjae Lee

Notre Dame Law Review Reflection

“Proportionality” is ubiquitous. The idea that punishment should be proportional to crime is familiar in criminal law and has a lengthy history. But that is not the only place where one encounters the concept of proportionality in law and ethics. The idea of proportionality is important also in the self-defense context, where the right to defend oneself with force is limited by the principle of proportionality. Proportionality plays a role in the context of war, especially in the idea that the military advantage one side may draw from an attack must not be excessive in relation to the loss of …

A Guide To Mireille Delmas-Marty's “Compass”, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

This essay appears as the Afterword (pp. 55-64) to a volume featuring an important work by the late Mireille Delmas-Marty (1941-2022) titled A Compass of Possibilities: Global Governance and Legal Humanism. A Collège de France de Paris law professor and one of the pre-eminent legal thinkers of her generation, Delmas-Marty and the essay’s author were longtime colleagues and collaborators. The volume contains an English translation of a 2011 lecture by Delmas-Marty, originally titled “Une boussole des possibles: Gouvernance mondiale et humanismes juridiques.” Amann’s essay surveys that writing, in a manner designed to acquaint non-francophone lawyers and academics with Delmas-Marty’s …

The Failure To Grapple With Racial Capitalism In European Constitutionalism, Jeffrey Miller

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

Since the 1980s prominent scholars of European legal integration have used the example of U.S. constitutionalism to promote a federal vision for the European Community. These scholars, drawing lessons from developments across the Atlantic, concluded that the U.S. Supreme Court had played a key role in fostering national integration and market liberalization. They foresaw the possibility for the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to be a catalyst for a similar federal and constitutional outcome in Europe. The present contribution argues that the scholars who constructed today’s dominant European constitutional paradigm underemphasized key aspects of the U.S. constitutional experience, including judgments …

Unity And Diversity In International Law, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

The primordial Greek sea-god Proteus could alter his shape at will, notwithstanding that his divine substance remained the same. Reinventing himself by adapting to new circumstances, Proteus still stayed unchanged in essence.

Unlike the sea-god’s protean nature, the substance of international law may well undergo alterations when examined through the telescope of legal culture, or with predispositions of divergent educational backgrounds. For the thoughtful reader, scholarly speculation on such variations will be triggered by reading Is International Law International?. In that book, Professor Anthea Roberts explores a variety of elements in the teaching and practice of international law, viewed …

R2h And The Prospects For Peace: An Essay On Sovereign Responsibilities, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay examines novel threats to peace – social and political threats as well as military and technological. It worries that familiar conceptions of state sovereignty cannot sustain a legal order capable of meeting those threats, not even if we understand sovereignty as responsibility to protect human rights. The essay tentatively proposes that recent efforts to reformulate state sovereignty as responsibility to humanity – ‘R2H’ for short – offer a better hope. Under this reformulation, states must take into account the interests of those outside their sovereign territory as well as those of the of their own people – in …

Theory And Theoretical Approaches To Wto Law, Chios Carmody

Law Publications

This article examines the role of theory in relation to the law of the World Trade Organization (WTO), and more broadly, international economic law. It posits that an absence of agreement about an underlying theory of WTO law can be traced to lack of clarity about what a ‘theory’ is as well as the fact that the current vogue for interdisciplinary approaches to law means that WTO law, in particular, is analyzed through non-normative frameworks that are removed from the law’s legality. The article goes on to examine three theoretic frameworks – textual, political, and economic – that have been …

International Legal Structuralism: A Primer, Justin Desautels-Stein

Publications

International legal structuralism arrived on the shores of international thought in the 1980s. The arrival was not well-received, perhaps in part, because it was not well-understood. This essay aims to reintroduce legal structuralism and hopefully pave the way for new, and more positive, receptions and understandings. This reintroduction is organized around two claims regarding the broader encounter between international lawyers and critical theory in the ‘80s. The first was a jurisprudential claim about how the critics sought to show how international law was nothing more than a continuation of international politics by other means. The second was a historical claim …

Misappropriation Of Shuar Traditional Knowledge (Tk) And Trade Secrets: A Case Study On Biopiracy In The Amazon, Winston P. Nagan, Eduardo J. Mordujovich, Judit K. Otvos, Jason Taylor

Winston P Nagan

Where the murkiness of biopiracy as a general matter leaves little room for legal theory to anchor, the relative clarity of specific instances of biopiracy may provide sufficient factual information from which to develop appropriate legal theories. In particular, the way biopiracy has been used to misappropriate the traditional knowledge (TK) of the Shuar Nation of Ecuador suggests that there may be legal theories for which the process of misappropriation may give rise to liability under international law as well as under developments in the domestic laws of the United States and Ecuador. The possible efficacy and legal coherence of …

The Judge And The Drone, Justin Desautels-Stein

Publications

Among the most characteristic issues in modern jurisprudence is the distinction between adjudication and legislation. In the some accounts, a judge's role in deciding a particular controversy is highly constrained and limited to the application of preexisting law. Whereas legislation is inescapably political, adjudication requires at least some form of impersonal neutrality. In various ways over the past century, theorists have pressed this conventional account, complicating the conceptual underpinnings of the distinction between law-application and lawmaking. This Article contributes to this literature on the nature of adjudication through the resuscitation of a structuralist mode of legal interpretation. In the structuralist …

What Useful Role (If Any) Could Legal Positivism Play In The Study Or Advancement Of International Law?, Mortimer N.S. Sellers

All Faculty Scholarship

What useful role (if any) could legal positivism play in the study or advancement of international law? For most of those who remember this once fashionable term at all, "international legal positivism" is redolent of the early years of the twentieth century-of Lassa Oppenheim' at best, and at worst of his model, John Austin, who famously denied that international law is or ever could be genuine law at all, "properly so called." 2 "Positive" law in its central and most usual sense is law "set by a sovereign individual or a sovereign body ... to a person or persons in …

Economic Development And The Problem With The Problem-Solving Approach, Justin Desautels-Stein

Publications

Scholars and practitioners alike have recently pointed to the idea of a "new moment" in the field of law and economic development, as well as a hope for a fruitful rethinking of political economy. The idea is that we have passed out of the period of high "neoliberalism," associated at one time with Reagan, Thatcher, and the so-called Washington Consensus and now eclipsed by the ascendance of the Obama Administration. The hope attending the new consensus is that, in the wake of neoliberal law and policy, the field of law and development might be on the verge of a new …

Finding International Law, Part Ii: Our Fragmenting Legal Community, Harlan G. Cohen

Scholarly Works

Is there an “International Community?” This Article suggests that there is not, that the oft-discussed fragmentation of international law reveals that there are in fact multiple overlapping and competing international law communities, each with differing views on law and legitimacy.

This Article reaches this conclusion by taking a fresh look not only at the sources of fragmentation, but at the sources of international law itself. Building on earlier work rethinking international law’s sources and drawing insights from legal philosophy, compliance theory, and international relations, this Article takes a closer look at three areas that have challenged traditional interpretations of international …

Is International Law Really Law? Theorizing The Multi-Dimensionality Of Law, Elizabeth M. Bruch

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Is International Law Part Of Natural Law?, Anthony D'Amato

Faculty Working Papers

The affinity of international law to natural law goes back a long way to the classic writers of international law. "Natural law" is the method of dispute resolution based on a conscious attempt to perpetuate past similarities in dispute resolution. "International law" has a deep affinity to this natural law method, for it consists of those practices that have "worked" in inter-nation conflict resolution.

Misappropriation Of Shuar Traditional Knowledge (Tk) And Trade Secrets: A Case Study On Biopiracy In The Amazon, Winston P. Nagan, Eduardo J. Mordujovich, Judit K. Otvos, Jason Taylor

UF Law Faculty Publications

Where the murkiness of biopiracy as a general matter leaves little room for legal theory to anchor, the relative clarity of specific instances of biopiracy may provide sufficient factual information from which to develop appropriate legal theories. In particular, the way biopiracy has been used to misappropriate the traditional knowledge (TK) of the Shuar Nation of Ecuador suggests that there may be legal theories for which the process of misappropriation may give rise to liability under international law as well as under developments in the domestic laws of the United States and Ecuador. The possible efficacy and legal coherence of …

Who Is The "Human" In Human Rights? The Claims Of Culture And Religion, Peter G. Danchin

Peter G. Danchin

Modern critiques of international human rights law force us to confront at least two conceptual puzzles in the area of the claims of culture and religion. The first concerns the two concepts, often run together, of the secular (or secularism) and freedom, and the question of how rights—e.g. the right to freedom of conscience and religion—mediate between these purportedly universal or objective positions and the imagined subjective claims of particular religious or cultural norms. The second concerns the question of what we mean by “human equality” and how this idea relates to deeply-situated issues of collective identity and culture. Such …

Globalization In Comparative Perspective: A New Approach To Comparative Law And Legal Thought, Tamara Lothian, Katharina Pistor

Tamara Lothian

No abstract provided.

Richard Posner Meets Reb Chaim Of Brisk: A Comparative Study In The Founding Of Intellectual Legal Movements, Samuel J. Levine

San Diego International Law Journal

This Essay aims to examine some of the common elements of law and economics and the Brisker method that have contributed to their success as intellectual movements. Toward that end, the Essay compares the founding principles of these movements, exploring similarities in their essential characteristics. Part I presents and analyzes representative examples of the conceptual approach underlying each of these methods. Drawing on these and other examples of each method, Part II observes that the success of the methods stems in part from their common reliance on historical antecedents as well as their emphasis on conceptual frameworks broadly applicable within …

Lost In Translation: The Economic Analysis Of Law In The United States And Europe, Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt

ExpressO

In this essay, we examine the reasons why the economic analysis of law has not flourished in European countries as it has in the U.S. In particular, we focus on three European countries - the United Kingdom (U.K.), Germany, and France. We argue that differences in culture, the legal system and the academy have led to differing degrees of success of the law and economics movement in each country. We speculate that, although there is currently less interest in the economic analysis of the law in Europe than in the United States, European interest could dramatically increase if scholars adopt …

Compliance Theory And The Inter-American Court Of Human Rights, Morse Tan

ExpressO

Abstract This essay fills a gap by exploring compliance theory in international law to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. After introducing the topic and setting the context, it delves into the question of why nations follow international law. Interacting with prominent theoretical models (including the managerial model, fairness and legitimacy, transnational legal process, self-interest, and a comparative perspective with Europe), it arrives at a critical synthesis in the conclusion.

Compliance Theory And The Inter-American Court Of Human Rights, Morse Tan

ExpressO

This essay fills a gap by exploring compliance theory in international law in relation to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. After introducing the topic and setting the context, it delves into the question of why nations follow international law. Interacting with prominent theoretical models (including the managerial model, fairness and legitimacy, transnational legal process, self-interest, and a comparative perspective with Europe), it arrives at a critical synthesis in the conclusion.

Compliance Theory And The Inter-American Court Of Human Rights, Morse Hyun-Myung Tan

ExpressO

This essay fills a gap by exploring compliance theory in international law to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. After introducing the topic and setting the context, it delves into the question of why nations follow international law. Interacting with prominent theoretical models (including the managerial model, fairness and legitimacy, transnational legal process, self-interest, and a comparative perspective with Europe), it arrives at a critical synthesis in the conclusion.

Meditating Comparisons, Or The Question Of Comparative Law, Igor Stramignoni

San Diego International Law Journal

Many today claim that, after WWII, the fall of the Berlin wall and, now, September 11, 2001, the changing nature of nation states, democracy, and the law can no longer be sensibly ignored. How can comparative law contribute to such an important debate? In what follows, it is argued that one way to contribute to the debate over the changing nature of nation states, democracy, and the law would be to engage in poetic comparisons of law's many domains. What, then, are poetic comparisons of law, and what do they invite us to do? Learning from Martin Heidegger's life-long advocacy …

Democratic Justice In Transition, Marion Smiley

Michigan Law Review

Ruti Teitel's Transitional Justice and Ian Shapiro's Democratic Justice come out of very different academic traditions. But they both develop a view of justice that might loosely be called pragmatic by virtue of its treatment of justice as a value that is simultaneously grounded in practice and powerful in bringing about social and political change. Moreover, they both use this shared pragmatic view of justice to provide us with two things that are of great importance to the study of transitional justice and democracy in general. The first is an explanatory framework for understanding how legal institutions and claims about …

From International Treaties To Internet Norms: The Evolution Of International Trademark Disputes In The Internet Age, Ajay K. Mehrotra, Marcelo Halpern

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In today's dynamic, digital economy, there is a global clash between geographically bounded intellectual property rights and the limitless reach of the Internet. Traditionally, discrepancies in international intellectual property rights, such as trademark disputes, have been resolved through time-consuming, multilateral state-to-state treaty negotiations that have global harmonization as the primary goal.

With the explosion of e-commerce and the birth of a New Economy, however, such a traditional process is no longer economically viable. Instead, a new approach towards international intellectual property is fast emerging - one that rests not on treaties between multiple states, but on the private contracting of …

Diverting The Danube:The Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Dispute And International Freshwater Law, Aaron Schwabach

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of Passion: An Essay On Personality , Richard F. Devlin Frsc

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Passion is a cogently structured, compel Jingly argued and seductively enthralling masterpiece which, in years to come, will undoubtedly stand out as an inspirational source for many who seek social transformation. Unger's style, in this essay at least, is lucid and inviting. Substantively, Passion demonstrates not only the depth of his penetrating intellect but also his command of an array of' disciplines. Unger's polymathy is all the more impressive when we remember that ours is an era in which idiosyncratic specialization is the norm.

Extradition Between France And The United States: An Exercise In Comparative And International Law, Christopher L. Blakesley

Scholarly Works

In 1878 Cardaillac defined extradition as “the right for a State on the territory of which an accused or convicted person has take refuge, to deliver him up to another State wich has requisitioned his return and is competent to judge and punish him.” The term “extradition” was imported to the United States from France, where the decret-loi of Febraury 19, 1791, appears to be the first official document to have used the term. The term is not found in treaties or conventions until 1828. The Latin equivalent to extradition, “tradere”, is not found in early Latin works, but the …

A New Concept Of Consent And World Public Order, Stuart S. Malawer

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

There have been, however, many instances under traditional international legal theory when a state's consent has not been required. Professor Brierly, in a trenchant critique, has stated that consent as the basic concept of obligation under customary international law has involved no more than the use of a legal fiction. Moreover, the traditional notion of consent in treaty law has stated that any form of coercion on the state does not invalidate a treaty; freely given consent is not required. Furthermore consent by new states to existing rules of customary international law has been implied regardless of any actual consent. …