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International Law And Domestic Legal Systems: Incorporation, Transformation, And Persuasion (Introduction), Dinah L. Shelton
International Law And Domestic Legal Systems: Incorporation, Transformation, And Persuasion (Introduction), Dinah L. Shelton
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This book discusses developments in international law and their relationship to national legal systems. The introduction of the book notes that countries who received their independence from authoritarian regimes are more receptive to international law. A country may adopt either a monist approach to international law, where it considers international law part of its domestic law, or a dualist approach, in which a country separates its national law from international law. The introduction then proceeds to identify sources of international law, including treaties and countries’ methods of complying, customary international law, and declarations. The introduction concludes by noting the increasing …
The Alien Tort Statute And The Law Of Nations, Bradford R. Clark, Anthony J. Bellia Jr.
The Alien Tort Statute And The Law Of Nations, Bradford R. Clark, Anthony J. Bellia Jr.
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
Courts and scholars have struggled to identify the original meaning of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). As enacted in 1789, the ATS provided "[t]hat the district courts... shall... have cognizance... of all causes where an alien sues for a tort only in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." The statute was rarely invoked for almost two centuries until, in the 1980s, lower federal courts began reading the statute expansively to allow foreign citizens to sue other foreign citizens for violations of modern customary international law that occurred outside the United States. In 2004 …
The Legal Status Of Normative Pronouncements Of Human Rights Treaty Bodies, Dinah L. Shelton
The Legal Status Of Normative Pronouncements Of Human Rights Treaty Bodies, Dinah L. Shelton
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This essay examines international human rights treaties and the statements that tribunals and other organizations make about them. Next, the essay discusses the general non-binding nature of treaties and describes use of General Comments and other interpretive statements. The essay concludes that increasing unofficial commentary on human rights organs’ decisions and increased compliance will encourage more states to comply and make it “increasingly difficult for a single state to hold out.”
What Is International Economic Law?, Steve Charnovitz
What Is International Economic Law?, Steve Charnovitz
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This article attempts to define international economic law and its role in the international legal regime. After describing various options for the definition of international economic law, the article discusses the history of policy developments that led to the creation of international economic law as a field of legal scholarship. The article then discusses the role that various academics have played in the development of scholarship in this area and notes that international economic law garnered high popularity in the early 1980s because of a treatise written by Pieter VerLoren van Themaat. The article concludes by considering the relationship of …