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Northwestern Pritzker School of Law

Conflict of Laws

International relations and national security

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Law

The Penalties For Piracy: An Empirical Study Of National Prosecution Of International Crime, Eugene Kontorovich Jan 2012

The Penalties For Piracy: An Empirical Study Of National Prosecution Of International Crime, Eugene Kontorovich

Faculty Working Papers

This Article examines the sentences imposed by courts around the world in prosecutions of Somali pirates captured on the high seas. Somali piracy has become perhaps the highest-volume area of international criminal law by national courts. As with other international crimes, international law is silent on the subject of penalties. The large number of parallel prosecutions of offenders from a single international "situation" offers an empirical window into the interactions between international and national law in municipal courts; into factors affecting punishment for international crimes and the hierarchy of international offenses; and of course into potential concerns with the current …


Partisan Conflicts Over Presidential Authority, Jide Okechuku Nzelibe Jan 2011

Partisan Conflicts Over Presidential Authority, Jide Okechuku Nzelibe

Faculty Working Papers

A prevailing view in the legal and political science literature assumes that power holders seek to expand or contract their constitutional authority based on incentives that are intrinsic to the logic of the institutional offices they occupy. For instance, it is generally assumed that Presidents are empire builders who will almost always prefer maximum flexibility in shaping their policy objectives, whereas members of Congress may sometimes shirk their institutional prerogatives because of electoral incentives or collective action problems. A similar institutional logic underpins the view that federal courts will often seek to expand their interpretive authority in constitutional controversies at …


Israel's Air Strike Upon The Iraqi Nuclear Reactor, Anthony D'Amato Jan 2010

Israel's Air Strike Upon The Iraqi Nuclear Reactor, Anthony D'Amato

Faculty Working Papers

The destructive potential of nuclear weapons is so enormous as to call into question any and all received rules of international law regarding the trans-boundary use of force. Many of the old rationales for these rules no longer apply. At the same time, the shared values underlying the rules apply more emphatically than ever, for the stake is global survival. I have tried to suggest some of the questions that must be asked about as apparently "simple" an incident as the Israeli attack on the nuclear reactor in Iraq.


The Moral And Legal Basis For Sanctions, Anthony D'Amato Jan 2010

The Moral And Legal Basis For Sanctions, Anthony D'Amato

Faculty Working Papers

In order to analyze the moral and legal basis for sanctions in international relations, we have to begin at a stage where there is no centralized government in place. We first need to get a picture of the range of possible sanctions. Next, we need to see what role sanctions play in the international system. Finally, we turn to the intertwined moral and legal considerations that make well-designed sanctions efficacious in today's world. The fundamental objective of sanctions in interstate relations is to make it expensive for a target state to refrain from doing what the sanctioning state wants it …