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Full-Text Articles in Law
Reserving, Edward T. Swaine
Reserving, Edward T. Swaine
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
The law of treaty reservations - which enables states to ask that their multilateral obligations be tailored to their individual preferences - has been controversial for over fifty years, and is at present subject to pitched battles within (and between) the International Law Commission and numerous other international institutions. There is broad agreement that existing scheme under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties involves a sharp tradeoff between honoring the unalloyed consent of non-reserving states (that is, those agreeing to the treaty as originally negotiated, which may object to proposed reservations) and respecting the conditioned consent of reserving …
Poor Children: Child Witches And Child Soldiers In Sub-Saharan Africa, Naomi R. Cahn
Poor Children: Child Witches And Child Soldiers In Sub-Saharan Africa, Naomi R. Cahn
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This paper, written for a symposium on The Mind of a Child, examines two different aspects of the accountability of children: those children who are thrown away by their families because they are sorcerers, and those children who become soldiers and, through their involvement in armed conflict, inflict violence and death on others, including children. Like all other children, both sets of children are especially vulnerable because of their developmental (im)maturity. Indeed, as policy-makers struggle to develop strategies for responding to the needs of these children, the new neuroscientific literature provides yet another basis for arguing that children must be …
Taiwan's Wto Membership And Its International Implications, Steve Charnovitz
Taiwan's Wto Membership And Its International Implications, Steve Charnovitz
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
In contrast to other international organizations, the World Trade Organization does not require its members to be states. This constitutional feature has allowed Taiwan to join the WTO alongside China. As a result, the WTO is now the only major international organization in which Taiwan can participate as a full member. This article explores some implications of this unique situation for Taiwan, for the WTO, and for international law. The article contends that Taiwan's membership in the WTO is not itself a bilateral treaty with China and does not itself change the legal relationship between Taiwan and China. What Taiwan's …
Nongovernmental Organizations And International Law, Steve Charnovitz
Nongovernmental Organizations And International Law, Steve Charnovitz
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This article examines NGOs and their advocacy activities aimed at influencing international relations. The article addresses longstanding issues such as the legal status of NGOs, as well as new problems such as whether NGO lobbying in intergovernmental forums is democratically legitimate. In doing so, the article draws upon past scholarship to shed light on the guiding ideas in the contemporary debate regarding NGOs. Part I examines issues regarding the identity of NGOs and then catalogs the ways that state practice incorporates NGOs into authoritative decision making. Part II looks at the legal status of NGOs in international law. Part III …
Review Essay: 'Seeing Beyond The Limits Of International Law,' Jack L. Goldsmith And Eric A. Posner, 'The Limits Of International Law', Paul Schiff Berman
Review Essay: 'Seeing Beyond The Limits Of International Law,' Jack L. Goldsmith And Eric A. Posner, 'The Limits Of International Law', Paul Schiff Berman
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
In 'The Limits of International Law,' Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner use the simplifying assumptions of rational choice theory in an attempt to demonstrate that international law has no independent valence whatsoever. Rather, according to the authors, each state single-mindedly pursues its own rational interest and obeys international legal norms only to the extent that such norms serve those pre-existing interests. In this Review Essay, I argue that their vision of international law is deeply flawed. In particular, I take issue with the authors' assumption that states simply have pre-existing unitary interests that they then rationally pursue. First, I argue …
Dialectical Regulation, Territoriality, And Pluralism, Paul Schiff Berman
Dialectical Regulation, Territoriality, And Pluralism, Paul Schiff Berman
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
Scholarly and policy debates about territoriality and nation-state sovereignty are turning to the ways in which such concepts might be changing in an increasingly interconnected world of interlocking governance structures and systems of communication. Robert Ahdieh's provocative and generative essay, Dialectical Regulation, 38 Conn. L. Rev. 863 (2005-2006), attempts a model for understanding this new plural order. He argues that intersystemic regulation is now a significant legal reality, and analyzes the types of interactions we would expect to see among these multiple regulatory authorities. Ahdieh aims to define dialectical regulation, in which regulators exist in some kind of formal structural …
Restoring (And Risking) Interest In International Law, Edward T. Swaine
Restoring (And Risking) Interest In International Law, Edward T. Swaine
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
Jack Goldsmith of Harvard Law School and Eric Posner of the University of Chicago Law School articulate a comprehensive and engaging theory of state behaviors in their new book, “The Limits of International Law,” but with several internal flaws. Their book uses rational choice theory to explain how states act rationally to maximize their interests, and how, in doing so, states align themselves (sometimes) with international law. This book review argues that while Limits is a skilled and pioneering work that deserves to be taken seriously, it also suffers from tensions and over-generalizations that undermine its claims. As a result, …