Law Commons^™

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 …

Presidential Control Over International Law, Curtis A. Bradley, Jack L. Goldsmith

Faculty Scholarship

Presidents have come to dominate the making, interpretation, and termination of international law for the United States. Often without specific congressional concurrence, and sometimes even when it is likely that Congress would disagree, the President has developed the authority to:

(a) make a vast array of international obligations for the United States, through both written agreements and the development of customary international law;

(b) make increasingly consequential political commitments for the United States on practically any topic;

(c) interpret these obligations and commitments; and

(d) terminate or withdraw from these obligations and commitments.

While others have examined pieces of this …

From Treaties To International Commitments: The Changing Landscape Of Foreign Relations Law, Jean Galbraith

All Faculty Scholarship

Sometimes the United States makes international commitments in the manner set forth in the Treaty Clause. But far more often it uses congressional-executive agreements, sole executive agreements, and soft law commitments. Foreign relations law scholars typically approach these other processes from the perspective of constitutional law, seeking to determine the extent to which they are constitutionally permissible. In contrast, this Article situates the myriad ways in which the United States enters into international commitments as the product not only of constitutional law, but also of international law and administrative law. Drawing on all three strands of law provides a rich …

Can Greece Be Expelled From The Eurozone? Toward A Default Rule On Expulsion From International Organizations, Joseph Blocher, Mitu Gulati, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

The ongoing European crisis has raised uncomfortable questions about the conditions under which treaty-based unions of nations like the EU or the EMU can legally expel a member—Greece being the most obvious candidate. The EU, for example, has rules governing the voluntary withdrawal of members, but says nothing about whether a member can be expelled. As a matter of international law, what does the silence mean? Put differently: What is the default rule regarding expulsions when a treaty says nothing about forced withdrawals? Is there an absolute bar on expulsion, as some have suggested? Conversely, is there an implicit right …

The Abiding Exceptionalism Of Foreign Relations Doctrine, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In their article The Normalization of Foreign Relations Law, Professors Ganesh Sitaraman and Ingrid Wuerth argue that “[foreign affairs] exceptionalism . . . is now exceptional,” and that this is a good thing. I agree with much of the authors’ normative argument for “normalization” of foreign affairs doctrine (as they define the term). But the authors overstate the extent to which such normalization has already occurred. There have indeed been some recent Supreme Court decisions that seem to lack the exceptional deference to the Executive that had characterized judicial decisionmaking in the foreign affairs area in previous years. But foreign …

Treaty Termination And Historical Gloss, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

The termination of U.S. treaties provides an especially rich example of how governmental practices can provide a “gloss” on the Constitution’s separation of powers. The authority to terminate treaties is not addressed specifically in the constitutional text and instead has been worked out over time through political-branch practice. This practice, moreover, has developed largely without judicial review. Despite these features, Congress and the President—and the lawyers who advise them—have generally treated this issue as a matter of constitutional law rather than merely political happenstance. Importantly, the example of treaty termination illustrates not only how historical practice can inform constitutional understandings …

Pricing Compliance: When Formal Remedies Displace Reputational Sanctions, Rachel Brewster

Faculty Scholarship

The conventional wisdom in international law is that dispute resolution institutions sharpen the reputational costs to states. This article challenges this understanding by examining how the inclusion of dispute resolution tribunals and remedy regimes can alter reputational analysis by shifting the audience¹s understanding of how mandatory a treaty's substantive obligations are. Drawing on the distinction between prices and sanctions, this article contests the assumption that the introduction of a remedy regime in international agreements will regularly increase compliance with the treaty¹s substantive terms. Instead, some remedy regimes may 'price' deviations from the treaty¹s terms and thereby facilitate breaches of the …

Finding International Law: Rethinking The Doctrine Of Sources, Harlan G. Cohen

Scholarly Works

The doctrine of sources has served international law well over the past century, providing structure and coherence during a time when international law was expanding rapidly and dramatically. But the doctrine's explanatory power is increasingly being challenged. Current doctrine tells us that treaties are international law; empirical evidence, however, suggest that treaties are poor predictors of state practice. The expansion of the international community, the rise of human rights, developments in international legal theory, and the international system's need to adapt to changing circumstances, have all also put pressure on the reified role of "treaty" in identifying rules of international …

The Domestic Origins Of International Agreements, Rachel Brewster

Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines how international agreements are substitutes for statutes. The statutory law-making system and international agreement negotiations are separate, but sometimes rival, processes for setting national-level policy. International agreements have several advantages over domestic statutes. Under United States law, international agreements can entrench policies that might otherwise be subject to change; they can transfer agenda-setting power from the Congress to the President; and they can delegate authority to international organizations. Each of these effects can lead domestic interest groups to seek international negotiations rather than domestic legislation. Little difference exists between the politics of international and domestic law: Interest …

Globalization And The Design Of International Institutions, Cary Coglianese

All Faculty Scholarship

In an increasingly globalized world, international rules and organizations have grown ever more crucial to the resolution of major economic and social concerns. How can leaders design international institutions that will effectively solve global regulatory problems? This paper confronts this question by presenting three major types of global problems, distinguishing six main categories of institutional forms that can be used to address these problems, and showing how the effectiveness of international institutions depends on achieving “form-problem” fit. Complicating that fit will be the tendency of nation states to prefer institutional forms that do little to constrain their sovereignty. Yet the …

The “Self-Executing” Character Of The Refugee Protocol’S Nonrefoulement Obligation, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

When the United States ratified the 1967 U.N. Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees (Protocol), it undertook not to "expel or return (refouler) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened" on specified grounds. On May 24, 1992, President Bush issued an executive order, known as the Kennebunkport Order, authorizing the United States Coast Guard to interdict vessels on the high seas suspected of containing Haitians destined for U.S. shores and to return such persons to Haiti without regard to whether their lives or freedom would …

Treaties And Executive Agreements: Historical Development And Constitutional Interpretation, Wencelas J. Wagner

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The recent proposal to amend the Constitution known as the Bricker Amendment concerns a most vital matter for the nation: its relations with foreign states.

In order to estimate the merits and demerits of the Bricker Amendment it is necessary to get acquainted with the historical development and the constitutional interpretation in the field of international arrangements of the United States. The present observations aim at the presentation of this matter down to the Bricker Amendment. The Amendment itself and the discussion it aroused should be treated in a separate article.