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Full-Text Articles in Law
Reputation As A Disciplinarian Of International Organizations, Kristina Daugirdas
Reputation As A Disciplinarian Of International Organizations, Kristina Daugirdas
Articles
As a disciplinarian of international organizations, reputation has serious shortcomings. Even though international organizations have strong incentives to maintain a good reputation, reputational concerns will sometimes fail to spur preventive or corrective action. Organizations have multiple audiences, so efforts to preserve a “good” reputation may pull organizations in many different directions, and steps taken to preserve a good reputation will not always be salutary. Recent incidents of sexual violence by UN peacekeepers in the Central African Republic illustrate these points.
The Legal Architecture Of United Nations Peacekeeping: A Case Study Of Unifil, Layan Charara
The Legal Architecture Of United Nations Peacekeeping: A Case Study Of Unifil, Layan Charara
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Note explores the ways UNIFIL is a unique peacekeeping force that can still teach broader lessons about UN peacekeeping It is organized into four parts: Part I provides a contour of UN peacekeeping operations; Part II chronicles the history of UNIFIL; Part III analyzes the current legal regime with respect to UN peacekeeping; and Part IV surveys solutions offered in the past and recommends more apposite courses of action to strengthen the legal recourse available to peacekeepers and their families.
Reputation And Accountability: Another Look At The United Nations’ Response To The Cholera Epidemic In Haiti, Kristina Daugirdas
Reputation And Accountability: Another Look At The United Nations’ Response To The Cholera Epidemic In Haiti, Kristina Daugirdas
Articles
The cholera outbreak in Haiti offers a useful case study of reputation as a disciplinarian of international organizations. On the one hand, UN officials and member states alike have emphasized the need to repair the organization’s damaged reputation. On the other hand, the UN secretariat declined to take certain steps that might have averted—or at least mitigated—that reputational damage in the first place. This contribution argues that the United Nations’ response to cholera in Haiti showcases some important limitations and complications of reputation as a disciplinarian. Reputation will function as a less effective disciplinarian of organizations in the context of …
The Jus Ad Bellum's Regulatory Form, Monica Hakimi
The Jus Ad Bellum's Regulatory Form, Monica Hakimi
Articles
This article argues that a form of legal regulation is embodied in decisions at the UN Security Council that condone but do not formally authorize specific military operations. Such decisions sometimes inflect or go beyond what the jus ad bellum permits through its general standards—that is, under the prohibition of cross-border force and small handful of exceptions. Recognizing that this form of regulation is both part of the law and different in kind from regulation through the general standards should change how we think about the jus ad bellum.
United Nations Against Slavery: Unravelling Concepts, Institutions And Obligations, Vladislava Stoyanova
United Nations Against Slavery: Unravelling Concepts, Institutions And Obligations, Vladislava Stoyanova
Michigan Journal of International Law
The article starts with a section containing a historical description (Part I). The turn to broader historical accounts is apposite since the engagement of international law with slavery, servitude, and forced labor predates the emergence of international human rights law. It is also important to clarify whether there is any continuity between these earlier engagements of international law and Article 8 of the ICCPR. When it comes to slavery, it is important to consider the practices to which this label was attached and how this still influences the contemporary understanding of the term. Notably, the terminological fragmentation between slavery and …
After Atrocity: Optimizing Un Action Toward Accountability For Human Rights Abuses, Steven R. Ratner
After Atrocity: Optimizing Un Action Toward Accountability For Human Rights Abuses, Steven R. Ratner
Michigan Journal of International Law
It is a great honor for me to be here to deliver the John Humphrey Lecture. Humphrey led one of those lives within the UN that shaped what the organization has become today—as one of the first generation of UN civil servants, he was to human rights what Ralph Bunche was to peacekeeping, or Brian Urquhart to UN mediation. To read his diaries, so beautifully edited by John Hobbins, is to see a world that has in many ways vanished, a nearly entirely male club, mostly of Westerners, that hammered out new treaties and mechanisms over fine wine and cigars …
Defensive Force Against Non-State Actors: The State Of Play, Monica Hakimi
Defensive Force Against Non-State Actors: The State Of Play, Monica Hakimi
Articles
This article assesses the implications of the current Syria situation for the international law on the use of defensive force against non-State actors. The law in this area is highly unsettled, with multiple legal positions in play. After mapping the legal terrain, the article shows that the Syria situation accentuates three preexisting trends. First, the claim that international law absolutely prohibits the use of defensive force against non-State actors is increasingly difficult to sustain. States, on the whole, have supported the operation against the so-called Islamic State in Syria. Second, States still have not coalesced around a legal standard on …
Toward A Legal Theory On The Responsibility To Protect, Monica Hakimi
Toward A Legal Theory On The Responsibility To Protect, Monica Hakimi
Articles
Over the past several decades, the central focus of international law has shifted from protecting only sovereign states to protecting individuals. Still, the worst imaginable human rights violations—genocides, ethnic cleansings, crimes against humanity, and systemic war crimes—occur with alarming frequency. And the international response is often slow or ineffectual. The most recent development for addressing this problem is the “responsibility to protect,” an idea that has received so much attention that it now goes simply by R2P. Almost all heads of state have endorsed R2P. The U.N. Secretary General has made R2P a top priority and issued multiple reports on …
Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, Kristina Daugirdas, Julian Davis Mortenson
Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, Kristina Daugirdas, Julian Davis Mortenson
Articles
In this section: • United States Condemns Russia’s Use of Force in Ukraine and Attempted Annexation of Crimea • In Wake of Espionage Revelations, United States Declines to Reach Comprehensive Intelligence Agreement with Germany • United States Defends United Nations’ Immunity in Haitian Cholera Case • French Bank Pleads Guilty to Criminal Violations of U.S. Sanctions Laws • D.C. Circuit Strikes down Administrative Order Requiring Divestment by Foreign-Owned Corporation • United States Adopts New Land Mine Policy • United States Claims That Russia Has Violated the INF Treaty
Palestine Is A State: A Horse With Black And White Stripes Is A Zebra, John Quigley
Palestine Is A State: A Horse With Black And White Stripes Is A Zebra, John Quigley
Michigan Journal of International Law
The article Israel, Palestine, and the ICC by Daniel Benoliel and Ronen Perry, published in Volume 32 of the Michigan Journal of International Law, makes a case against a possible assertion of jurisdiction by the International Criminal Court over war crimes that may have been committed by persons on either side of the 2008-2009 war in Gaza. Benoliel and Perry argue that the International Criminal Court is powerless to investigate or to prosecute such war crimes, despite the strong possibility that such crimes were committed. Concern over such possible crimes has been widely expressed at the international level, including a …
Special Court For Sierra Leone: Achieving Justice?, Charles Chernor Jalloh
Special Court For Sierra Leone: Achieving Justice?, Charles Chernor Jalloh
Michigan Journal of International Law
The creation of the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL or the Court) in early 2002 generated high expectations within the international community. The SCSL was generally deemed to herald a new model or benchmark for the assessment of future ad hoc international criminal courts. As the Court completes the trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor in The Hague-its last-nine years later, this Article offers an early and broad assessment of whether it has fulfilled its promise. More specifically, this Article examines whether the SCSL has achieved, or more accurately-because its trials are still ongoing-whether it is achieving justice. …
Questioning The Peremptory Status Of The Prohibition Of The Use Of Force, James A. Green
Questioning The Peremptory Status Of The Prohibition Of The Use Of Force, James A. Green
Michigan Journal of International Law
It is incontrovertible that the prohibition of the unilateral use of force is a fundamental aspect of the United Nations (U.N.) era system for governing the relations between states. Given this fact, the prohibition, as set out most crucially in Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter, is often seen as the archetypal example of a jus cogens norm (a "peremptory norm" of general international law). Certainly, an overwhelming majority of scholars view the prohibition as having a peremptory character. Similarly, the International Law Commission (ILC) has taken this view and it is arguable that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) …
An Emerging Norm - Determining The Meaning And Legal Status Of The Responsibility To Protect, Jonah Eaton
An Emerging Norm - Determining The Meaning And Legal Status Of The Responsibility To Protect, Jonah Eaton
Michigan Journal of International Law
The responsibility to protect, from its recent nativity in the 2001 report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), is the latest round in an old debate pitting the principle of nonintervention in the internal affairs of states against allowing such intervention to prevent gross and systematic violations of human rights. Advocates for the concept see it as an important new commitment by the international community, injecting new meaning into the tragically threadbare promise to never again allow mass atrocities to occur unchallenged. ICISS offered the concept of responsibility to protect as a new way to confront …
Israel, Palestine, And The Icc, Daniel Benoliel, Ronen Perry
Israel, Palestine, And The Icc, Daniel Benoliel, Ronen Perry
Michigan Journal of International Law
In the wake of the Israel-Gaza 2008-09 armed conflict and recently commenced process at the International Criminal Court (ICC), the Court will soon face a major challenge with the potential to determine its degree of judicial independence and overall legitimacy. It may need to decide whether a Palestinian state exists, either for the purposes of the Court itself, or perhaps even in general. The ICC, which currently has 113 member states, has not yet recognized Palestine as a sovereign state or as a member. Moreover, although the ICC potentially has the authority to investigate crimes which fall into its subject-matter …
Identifying And Enforcing Back-End Electoral Rights In International Human Rights Law, Katherine A. Wagner
Identifying And Enforcing Back-End Electoral Rights In International Human Rights Law, Katherine A. Wagner
Michigan Journal of International Law
From Kenya to Afghanistan, Ukraine, the United States, Mexico, and Iran, no region or form of government has been immune from the unsettling effects of a contested election. The story is familiar, and, these days, hardly surprising: a state holds elections, losing candidates and their supporters claim fraud, people take to the streets, diplomats and heads of state equivocate, and everyone waits for the observers' reports. It is the last chapter of this story-the resolution-that remains unfamiliar and still holds the potential to surprise. The increasing focus on and importance of the resolution of contested elections, that resolution's link to …
Identity, Effectiveness, And Newness In Transjudicialism's Coming Of Age, Mark Toufayan
Identity, Effectiveness, And Newness In Transjudicialism's Coming Of Age, Mark Toufayan
Michigan Journal of International Law
This Article attempts to expose and problematize the ideological connections and normative commitments between these theoretical explanations of effectiveness and the pragmatic process-oriented proposals made in the 1990s when the United Nations was searching for ways to renew the discipline of international human rights law while avoiding the dual risks of politicization and Third World normative fragmentation. The liberal theory of effective supranational adjudication was the culmination of decade-long efforts by American liberal internationalists to provide a theoretical basis for and programmatic proposals towards achieving a more "effective" international human rights regime. Their theory aims at structuring the interface between …
International Responsibility And The Admission Of States To The United Nations, Thomas D. Grant
International Responsibility And The Admission Of States To The United Nations, Thomas D. Grant
Michigan Journal of International Law
The present Article considers what identifiable substantive obligations might be relevant to admission; whether admission as practiced has resulted in a breach of obligation; and whether any such breach might impose international responsibility on the international actors involved in the decision to admit new States. The Article further considers what future reparative obligations such responsibility might entail.
Secondary Human Rights Law, Monica Hakimi
Secondary Human Rights Law, Monica Hakimi
Articles
In recent years, the United States has appeared before four different treaty bodies to defend its human rights record. The process is part of the human rights enforcement structure: each of the major universal treaties has an expert body that reviews and comments on compliance reports that states must periodically submit. What's striking about the treaty bodies' dialogues with the United States is not that they criticized it or disagreed with it on the content of certain substantive rules. (That was all expected.) It's the extent to which the two sides talked past each other. Each presumed a different set …
A Guide To International And Foreign Legal Research Online, Jennifer L. Selby
A Guide To International And Foreign Legal Research Online, Jennifer L. Selby
Law Librarian Scholarship
Today, legal researchers in foreign and international law can enhance their search capabilities with web-based resources. However, a few caveats about doing foreign and international legal research on the web include: 1) not all material is available through the web, and the web is not always the fastest way to obtain materials; and 2) the web can be a good source of current and recent information, however, often older legal materials are not found on the web.
The Concept Of Accountability In World Politics And The Use Of Force, Robert O. Keohane
The Concept Of Accountability In World Politics And The Use Of Force, Robert O. Keohane
Michigan Journal of International Law
This paper proceeds as follows. In Part I, the author discuss a pluralistic theory of accountability. He begins by defining accountability in a standard fashion, emphasizing two conditions: the availability of information to accountability-holders, and their ability to sanction power-wielders. The author then proceeds to discuss a pluralistic conception of accountability systems. Part II then develops a typology of eight accountability mechanisms, all of which are found in democratic societies, but not all of which are democratic per se. Part III builds on the Jacobson-Ku discussion of the current practices, relative to accountability, of the Security Council and asks …
The Charter Of The United Nations: A Commentary Of Bruno Simma's Commentary, Alain Pellet
The Charter Of The United Nations: A Commentary Of Bruno Simma's Commentary, Alain Pellet
Michigan Journal of International Law
Review of The Charter of the United Nations: A Commentary (Bruno Simma, Hermann Mosler, Albrecht Randelzhofer, Christian Tomuschat, Rüdiger Wolfrum, Andreas Paulus, Eleni Chaitobu eds.)
Two Centuries Of Participation: Ngos And International Governance, Steve Charnovitz
Two Centuries Of Participation: Ngos And International Governance, Steve Charnovitz
Michigan Journal of International Law
This article explores the past and present role of NGOs in international governance. Part One reviews the history of NGO involvement, focusing on the period between 1775 and 1949. It shows how NGO activism helped to engender international organizations. Part Two examines some key issues that arise from the expanding involvement of NGOs. It catalogs the pros and cons of an active NGO role, discusses various functions that NGOs fulfill, and lists ten techniques of NGO participation. Part Two also considers a hypothesis that NGO involvement is cyclical.
"Green Helmets": A Conceptual Framework For Security Council Authority In Environmental Emergencies, Linda A. Malone
"Green Helmets": A Conceptual Framework For Security Council Authority In Environmental Emergencies, Linda A. Malone
Michigan Journal of International Law
Although 1995 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the birth of the United Nations, the year also marks the fifth anniversary of a newly revitalized Security Council. In this period of five years, scholarly debate on the Security Council has shifted from what it might do if it could act to what substantive limits, if any, exist on the Security Council's authority to act under the Charter. The legitimacy of the Security Council's authority under the Charter arises both in its initial determination of when it can act and in its determination of the appropriate scope of its actions once it …
The Right To Self-Defense Once The Security Council Takes Action, Malvina Halberstam
The Right To Self-Defense Once The Security Council Takes Action, Malvina Halberstam
Michigan Journal of International Law
This article discusses the views of these commentators in the light of the language, history, and policies underlying Article 51. It concludes that the Charter was not intended to and should not be interpreted to deny a state the right of self-defense, even if the Security Council has taken measures to deal with the problem; if states are to cede their right to self-defense once the Security Council has taken measures, that should be made explicit.
The Place Of Law In Collective Security, Martti Koskenniemi
The Place Of Law In Collective Security, Martti Koskenniemi
Michigan Journal of International Law
In this article the author wants to examine the place of law in our thinking about and sometimes participation in decision-making regarding international security. After the end of the Cold War, and particularly since the United Nations' reaction to Iraq's occupation of Kuwait in 1990-91, an academic debate concerning the possibility of collective security has arisen anew. The intention is not to take a definite view in that controversy. Instead, the author shall suggest that this debate has been framed so as to obscure the role of normative considerations, including law, in the production or construction of collective security. A …
What's The Security Council For?, Jose E. Alvarez
What's The Security Council For?, Jose E. Alvarez
Michigan Journal of International Law
Students of the literature on the Security Council will recognize in these articles and essays, selected by the Journal's editors for this symposium issue, many representative strands in that ever-burgeoning literature. Although the Journal's editors accepted these articles and essays on an individual basis and no author was afforded the opportunity to read or react to others' contributions, the results are a fascinating counterpoint of views nonetheless. At times, it seems as if the contributors are reacting to each other's work.
The "Privatization" Of Security Council Enforcement Action: A Threat To Multilateralism, John Quigley
The "Privatization" Of Security Council Enforcement Action: A Threat To Multilateralism, John Quigley
Michigan Journal of International Law
In-the post-Cold War period, the United Nations Security Council has emerged from a side show of international politics to center stage. It has acted to repel aggression, to promote humanitarian efforts, and to enforce democracy. This flowering of activity holds the potential for achieving concerted international action to remedy situations involving great human misery.
Legal Restraints On Security Council Military Enforcement Action, Judith G. Gardam
Legal Restraints On Security Council Military Enforcement Action, Judith G. Gardam
Michigan Journal of International Law
This article considers an issue that, given its importance for the protection of combatants and civilians in armed conflict, has not attracted the attention it warrants: namely, the extent to which legal restraints derived from the ius in bello and the ius ad bellum apply to the Security Council when it is taking military enforcement action under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. Although a position not free from controversy, the recent practice of the Security Council in "authorizing" States to use force to restore international peace and security is treated as military enforcement action under Chapter VII of …
Caught Between Traditions: The Security Council In Philosophical Conundrum, David P. Fidler
Caught Between Traditions: The Security Council In Philosophical Conundrum, David P. Fidler
Michigan Journal of International Law
In Part I of this article, I provide a discussion about the use of traditions of thought in international relations. Part II begins by briefly examining the fundamental purpose of the Security Council – the maintenance of international peace, and security. I then analyze the philosophical origins of the idea of maintaining international peace and security through an international organization to demonstrate how liberal thought on international relations came to incorporate this idea. In this analysis, I will demonstrate that liberal thought on the appropriateness of relying on international organizations to maintain peace and security is not unified and that …
Setting A New Agenda For U.N. Human Rights Activities, Hurst Hannum
Setting A New Agenda For U.N. Human Rights Activities, Hurst Hannum
Michigan Journal of International Law
Review of The United Nations and Human Rights: A Critical Appraisal (Philip Alston ed.)