Law Commons^™

How U.S. Government Policy Documents Are Addressing The Increasing National Security Implications Of Artificial Intelligence, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Artificial intelligence is affecting many areas of our lives and governmental policy. National security is one arena in which artificial intelligence is playing an increasingly important and controversial role. U.S. Government and military agencies are producing a steadily expanding corpus of publicly available literature on this topic. This literature documents how these agencies have this topic's national security implications historically and currently while also addressing potentially emerging national security issues where artificial intelligence will intersect with national security. This presentation demonstrates examples of the growing variety of publicly available national security artificial intelligence literature while also addressing the implications of …

Barriers Between Effective Transnational Changemaking: Relationships Between Ingos And Moroccan Ngos, Julia Walters

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper seeks to explore the relationships held between international non-governmental organizations, primarily based in the West, and Moroccan NGOs. The existing literature on the topic explores the ways in which international NGOs can both benefit and harm domestic NGOs, which seek to fix issues not thoroughly addressed and solved by the state or by the market, such as issues of gender-based violence, female education, and lack of rural healthcare. The data gathered was organized into two types of relationships; financial and non-financial. Financial relationships between INGOs and NGOs were often depicted as crucial in enabling critical projects, such as …

Strategic Implications For The United States Of The Belt And Road Initiative In Africa, Alec Monnie

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The belt and road initiative is one of the most significant developments of the twenty-first century, which the United States will need to learn to adapt to. Much of the academic literature regarding the belt and road initiative mentions that Africa is a significant participant in this policy development, but fail to elaborate as to why that is, or what the implications for this are for the United States. This article expands upon the strategic significance of the African continent, and explains the implications thereof for the United States and China. This article argues that the belt and road initiative …

Marxist Implementation Of Climate Change As A Geopolitical Fear Tactic, Katelyn Larossa

Senior Honors Theses

In recent years the climate change debate has shifted from the peripheries of international political discussions to center stage, manifesting in the Paris Agreement in November of 2016 under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. However, the science behind the climate change debate is disputed and does not support the claims made by global leaders who continue to push for increasing environmental regulations and financial aid to those most adversely affected by the supposed climate change (underdeveloped and developing nations). Examining the geopolitical and economic implications of climate change actions reveals the underlying political philosophies guiding global leaders. …

Tracing Race Through The Narrative Of A Oaxacan Ex-Bracero, Carlina Green

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

On March 21st, 2019, I was at a birthday lunch for my host mother at her parents’ house in Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico, where I am currently studying abroad. Her father began to ask me about the normal meal times in the United States, and shared that he had witnessed this cultural difference firsthand during his time as a migrant worker in the United States. I asked him more questions and learned that he had first gone to Chesterfield, Missouri as a participant in the bracero program in 1953 and later to Los Angeles as an undocumented migrant in the …

Deterrence Under Nuclear Asymmetry: Thaad And The Prospects For Missile Defense On The Korean Peninsula, Inwook Kim, Soul Park

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The 2016 decision to deploy Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) to South Korea has generated multitude of intensely politicized issues and has proved highly controversial. This has made it challenging to alleviate, let alone clarify, points of analytical and policy tensions. We instead disaggregate and revisit two fundamental questions. One is whether THAAD could really defend South Korea from North Korean missiles. We challenge the conventional “qualified optimism” by giving analytical primacy to three countermeasures available to defeat THAAD–use of decoys, tumbling and spiral motion, and outnumbering. These countermeasures are relatively inexpensive to create but exceedingly difficult to offset. …

Humanitarian Negotiations & Humanitarian Principles: The Interaction Between Humanitarian Negotiations For Access And Organizations' Ability To Adhere To Humanitarian Principles, Gabriela Gil

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Aim: To examine how do humanitarian organizations apply, or fail to apply, the humanitarian principles through humanitarian negotiations in modern conflict settings.

Methods: A literature review identified relevant peer-reviewed and grey literature on international humanitarian norms and law, the landscape of modern conflict, and existing guidelines on humanitarian negotiations. Five semi-structured interviews were conducted with experts in humanitarian negotiations chosen on the basis of their relevant background. A coded analysis of these interviews was conducted to identify major themes and subthemes in responses.

Background: Multiple international mechanisms outline the humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence and States, non-State …

Environmental Consciousness For The Politically Autonomous: The Basque Country, Miranda L. White

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

When discussing the issue of political autonomy, the usual topics that are taken into consideration are based around human rights, language, culture, society or economics. Those are the most commonly discussed for good reason, as they are important for the rights and freedoms of a community itself. However, this research paper aims to investigate further into the discussion of the environmental effects of political autonomy in Spain, specifically in the matter of autonomous competencies for waterway and air management. Therefore, in order to test such a hypothesis, this study will use the Basque Country of Spain as the subject, and …

Refuge In A Place Without Refugees, Jane Roarty

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The question of who should be given legal status as a refugee has consistently been veiled in discussions of ‘practicality,’ political motives, and inaction. Centered in these discussions tend to be state officials, international organization officials, and academics. More importantly, typically excluded from this assembly of decision makers and the thinkers are those actually and personally affected by the specifics of the term. In Jordan, this discussion is particularly interesting because the government does not legally recognize refugees since the United Nations refused to recognize Palestinians under the 1951 Convention definition. This paper aims to unpack the term refugee: both …

Silenced Bodies: (En)Gendering Syrian Refugee Insecurity In Lebanon, Jessy Abouarab

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

While there has been a shift in security studies from the security of states to that of people, realpolitik still takes place under the banner of an emerging discourse of ‘refugee crisis.’ Refugee insecurities are (en)gendered and experienced where their depth and breadth pose significant challenges to asylum seekers, neighboring host-states, and humanitarian agencies. To this end, this research captures the unique dynamics of a South-South refugee crisis in Lebanon, in which Syrians residents make up nearly one-third of its population. It applies a transnational feminist framework to trace how refugee security norms get defined, are managed, and how they …

Public Interest Litigation & Women’S Rights: Cases From Nepal & India, Jordan E. Stevenson

2019 Symposium

As a complex, diverse and dynamic region with diverging, constantly changing constitutional and jurisprudential contexts as well as lasting legacies of patriarchy, South Asia’s traditions of public interest litigation are one of the most well-studied institutions by Western audiences due to their contradictory progressive and innovative nature. Particularly in India, where public interest litigation gives ordinary citizens extraordinary access to the highest courts of justice, questions have been raised as to the effectiveness of public interest litigation as a tool to address gender disparities across the region. Although Supreme Court justices have been a key ally in eliminating legal barriers …

Mass Atrocities And Their Prevention, Charles H. Anderton, Jurgen Brauer

Economics Department Working Papers

Counting conservatively, and ignoring physical injuries and mental trauma, data show about 100 million mass atrocity-related deaths since 1900. Occurring in war and in peacetime, and of enormous scale, severity, and brutality, they are geographically widespread, occur with surprising frequency, and can be long-lasting in their adverse effects on economic and human development, wellbeing, and wealth. As such, they are a major economic concern. This article synthesizes very diverse and widely dispersed theoretical and empirical literatures, addressing two gaps: a “mass atrocities gap” in the economics literature and an “economics gap” in mass atrocities scholarship. Our goals are, first, for …

Book Review: Not Enough: Human Rights In An Unequal World, Harlan G. Cohen

Scholarly Works

Review of the book Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World. By Samuel Moyn. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press 2018. Pp. ix, 220. Index.

Online Dispute Resolution, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

This chapter was prepared from a presentation given by the author at the 2019 Summer School in Transnational Commercial Law & Technology, jointly sponsored by the University of Verona School of Law and the Center for International Legal Education (CILE) of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. In the paper, I review online dispute resolution (ODR) by considering the following five questions, which I believe help to develop a better understanding of both the concept and the legal framework surrounding it:

A. What is ODR?

B. Who does ODR?

C. What is the legal framework for ODR?

D. What …

Foreign Nations, Constitutional Rights, And International Law, Austen L. Parrish

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Theorizing The Judicialization Of International Relations, Karen J. Alter, Emilie M. Hafner-Burton, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

This article introduces a Thematic Section and theorizes the multiple ways that judicializing international relations shifts power away from national executives and legislatures toward litigants, judges, arbitrators, and other nonstate decision-makers. We identify two preconditions for judicialization to occur—(1) delegation to an adjudicatory body charged with applying designated legal rules, and (2) legal rights-claiming by actors who bring—or threaten to bring—a complaint to one or more of these bodies. We classify the adjudicatory bodies that do and do not contribute to judicializing international relations, including but not limited to international courts. We then explain how rights-claiming initiates a process for …

The Dynamism Of Treaties, Yanbai Andrea Wang

All Faculty Scholarship

How do treaties change over time? This Article joins a growing body of scholarship focusing not on formal change mechanisms but instead on informal change arising from a treaty’s implementation in practice. Informal implementation is often murky, poorly documented, and may be indistinguishable from noncompliance. Yet it is significant both doctrinally under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties—a set of rules for the formation and operation of treaties—and in its own right, when it does not meet the requirements to be doctrinally relevant. Based on a deep dive into the history of one of the oldest areas of …

Borders Rules, Beth A. Simmons

All Faculty Scholarship

International political borders have historically performed one overriding function: the delimitation of a state’s territorial jurisdiction, but today they are sites of intense security scrutiny and law enforcement. Traditionally they were created to secure peace through territorial independence of political units. Today borders face new pressures from heightened human mobility, economic interdependence (legal and illicit), and perceived challenges from a host of nonstate threats. Research has only begun to reveal what some of these changes mean for the governance of interstate borders. The problems surrounding international borders today go well-beyond traditional delineation and delimitation. These problems call for active forms …

Do Self-Reporting Regimes Matter? Evidence From The Convention Against Torture, Beth A. Simmons, Cosette D. Creamer

All Faculty Scholarship

International regulatory agreements depend largely on self-reporting for implementation, yet we know almost nothing about whether or how such mechanisms work. We theorize that self-reporting processes provide information for domestic constituencies, with the potential to create pressure for better compliance. Using original data on state reports submitted to the Committee Against Torture, we demonstrate the influence of this process on the pervasiveness of torture and inhumane treatment. We illustrate the power of self-reporting regimes to mobilize domestic politics through evidence of civil society participation in shadow reporting, media attention, and legislative activity around anti-torture law and practice. This is the …

The Cisg: Applicable Law And Applicable Forums, Ronald A. Brand

Articles

Despite being in effect for over thirty years, a debate continues on whether the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) has been a success. With 89 Contracting States, it clearly is widely accepted. At the same time, empirical studies show that private parties regularly opt out of its application. It has served as a model for domestic sales law, and as an important educational tool. But has it been a success? In this article I consider that question, and suggests that the scorecard is not yet complete; and that it will perhaps take significantly …

Pledging, Populism, And The Paris Agreement: The Paradox Of A Management-Based Approach To Global Governance, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

For many observers, the Paris Agreement signaled a historic breakthrough in addressing the problem of global warming. In its basic design, however, the Agreement is far from novel. Its dependence on each nation’s self-determined pledge to reduce greenhouse gases mirrors the domestic policy strategy called management-based regulation—a flexible regulatory approach that has been used to address problems as varied as food safety and toxic air pollution. In this article, I connect insights from research on management-based regulation to the international governance of climate change. Unfortunately, management-based regulation’s track-record at the domestic level gives little reason to expect that the Paris …

Analyzing The Trump Administration's International Trade Strategy, Rachel Brewster

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.