Law Commons^™

Foreign Law And The U.S. Constitution, Kenneth Anderson

Popular Media

The use of foreign law and unratified international treaty law by U.S. courts in U.S. constitutional adjudication has emerged as a major debate among justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, with Justice Anthony Kennedy writing for a majority approving the practice in the March 2005 decision of Roper v. Simmons, and Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer undertaking an unusual public discussion of the practice in January 2005 at American University law school. This article examines the arguments made by Justices Kennedy, Scalia, and Breyer for and against the practice, setting them in the broader context of constitutional theory. It …

International Space Law In Transformation: Some Observations, Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Abu Ghraib, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

This article posits a theoretical framework within which to analyze various aspects of post-September 11 detention policy - including the widespread prisoner abuse that has been documented in the leaks and official releases that began with publication of photos made at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Examined are the actions of civilian executive officials charged with setting policy, of judicial officers who evaluated it, and military personnel who implemented it. Abuse has been attributed to failures of training or planning. The article concentrates on a different failure, the failure of law to keep lawlessness in check. On September 11, law's map …

Environmental Justice: A Universal Discourse, Dean Rivkin

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Lagrand And Avena Establish A Right, But Is There A Remedy? Brief Comments On The Legal Effect Of Lagrand And Avena In The U.S., Malvina Halberstam

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Milosevic Trial - Live: An Iconical Analysis Of International Law's Claim Of Legitimate Authority, Maya Steinitz

Faculty Scholarship

It has been argued that international law has recently "come of age", that it is a fully-fledged legal system like any other. It has also been argued that in order for a normative system to qualify as "law" it must, at the least, claim to possess legitimate authority and to be supreme to other normative systems. This article examines one highly visible development in international law - the criminal war trials - from a sociological perspective, trying to discern whether and how international law claims legitimate authority and supremacy. Specifically, it focuses on a deeply symbolic example of international criminal …

Reply Declaration On Issues Of International Law, Laws Of War, Corporate Liability In International Law In Agent Orange Ats Litigation, Kenneth Anderson

Congressional and Other Testimony

This reply declaration elaborates the November 2, 2004 declaration on behalf of corporate defendants by Kenneth Anderson in the Agent Orange product liability ATS case heard before Judge Jack B. Weinstein. I have posted the declaration and this reply declaration to SSRN because of frequent requests for them from academics and because the declaration has been cited in scholarship.The reply declaration addresses the use of Agent Orange in the Vietnam War and the claim that its use in that period violated the laws of armed conflict. It discusses treaty and customary law of poison and poisoned weapons, issues of proportionality …

Squaring The Circle? Reconciling Sovereignty And Global Governance Through Global Government Networks (Review Of Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order), Kenneth Anderson

Book Reviews

This book review summarizes and critiques A New World Order, offering both an internal critique of the argument's consistency as well as an outside critique of the argument from the standpoint of the value of democratic sovereignty. The review locates Slaughter's argument within the debate over international relations realism and idealism, and further locates it within a continuum of seven idealized positions in the debate between global governance and sovereignty, with pure sovereignty at one extreme and world government at the other, with the most relevant positions of democratic sovereignty and liberal internationalism located in the middle. The article concludes …

National Identity And Liberalism In International Law: Three Models, Justin Desautels-Stein

Publications

No abstract provided.

(Reviewing Charif M. Bassiouni, Introduction To International Criminal Law (2003)), Mark A. Drumbl

Scholarly Articles

None available.

The United Nations As A Source Of International Legal Authority, G. L. Rose

Faculty of Law - Papers (Archive)

What are the connections between the United Nations and The Samuel Griffith Society? One is that Australian constitutional lawyers are now examining the relationship between international law and constitutional law. Justice Kirby of the High Court of Australia first argued for the relevance of international law in construing the federal constitutional requirement of "just terms" in compensation for compulsorily acquired property (s. 51(xxxi)). In Newcrest Mining v. Commonwealth in 1997, he stated that in cases of ambiguity in the federal Constitution, "international law is a legitimate and important influence on the development of the common law and constitutional law, especially …

Towards An Asean Counter-Terrorism Treaty, G. L. Rose, D. Nestorovska

Faculty of Law - Papers (Archive)

The benefits for Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members of a regional treaty to combat terrorism include improved coordination in mutual legal assistance and harmonisation of best practice legal approaches. The conceptual framework for a common definition of terrorism is set out in this paper. Precedent regional and multilateral treaties are analysed into legal formulae and their components, such as obligations to indict or to extradite, to provide mutual legal assistance, and to build regional implementation capacity, are assessed as potential models for inclusion in an ASEAN regional treaty. The paper concludes by considering ASEAN progress in adopting cooperative …

Resolving Treaty Conflicts, Christopher J. Borgen

Faculty Publications

The viability of international law rests largely on the viability of treaties as a source of law. In the second half of the twentieth century, the international state system was supported by the development of treaties. States focused the majority of their regime-building efforts on three sets of concerns: restraining interstate conflict, securing human rights, and managing the economic system. States used treaties as the primary tool in the construction of these international institutions and in the codification of these norms. Moreover, treaties shift issues from the political arena into a juridical, rule-based, forum.

The very success of treaties as …

Ambiguity, Sovereignty And Identity In Ireland: Peace And Transition, James J. Friedberg

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Big Brother Or Eye In The Sky? Legal Aspects Of Space-Based Geo-Lnformation For Disaster Management, Frans Von Der Dunk

Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program: Faculty Publications

Amongst the methods of gathering geo-information inter alia for disaster management purposes, the use of satellites is a particularly interesting one in view of their global coverage. In this area a number of recent interesting developments have taken place, such as the establishment of a Charter on Space and Major Disasters, and the rapidly evolving plans for GMES and GEOSS. These developments raise a number of legal issues, related to state responsibility, state liability, and the respective roles of intergovernmental organizations and commercial and/or private entities in this regard. These issues cannot be easily solved, since the international legal environment …

A Terrible Purity: International Law, Morality, Religion, Exclusion, Tawia Baidoe Ansah

Faculty Publications

This article's point of departure is the US's war against Iraq, which was begun in 2003 under various rationales - political, legal, and moral. As the legal and political justifications fell away or were cast into question, the moral became the primary reason for going to war. The justifications were, however, construed in religious language. For many, this "return" of religion within US foreign policy seemed particular to the Bush Administration. Others have argued that the turn to religion in time of war is nothing new. Nevertheless, the war and its justifications made me wonder about the nature of public …

Ending Impunity The Case For War Crimes Trials In Liberia, Charles Chernor Jalloh, Alhagi Marong

Faculty Publications

This paper argues that Liberia owes a duty under international law to investigate and prosecute the heinous crimes, including torture, rape and extra-judicial killings of innocent civilians, committed in that country by the various warring parties in the course of 14 years of brutal conflict. The authors evaluate the options for prosecution, starting with the possible use of Liberian courts. They argue that even if willing, the national courts are unable to render credible justice that protects the due process rights of the accused given the collapse of legal institutions and the paucity of financial, human and material resources in …

Minority Rights, Minority Wrongs, Elena Baylis

Articles

Many of the new democracies established in the last twenty years are severely ethnically divided, with numerous minority groups, languages, and religions. As part of the process of democratization, there has also been an explosion of “national human rights institutions,” that is, independent government agencies whose purpose is to promote enforcement of human rights. But despite the significance of minority concerns to the stability and success of these new democracies, and despite the relevance of minority rights to the mandates of national human rights institutions, a surprisingly limited number of national human rights institutions have directed programs and resources to …

Indigenous Peoples' Rights To Water Under International Norms, David H. Getches

Publications

In this article, Dean Getches examines the nature of international law as it relates to indigenous water rights and evaluates the kinds of claims that native peoples might assert when they are deprived of access to water. Around the world, indigenous peoples have experienced depletion or pollution of their traditional water sources caused by the uses made by dominant, non-native societies. As a result, native peoples' ability to perform water-dependent vocations like farming and fishing, and to perpetuate cultures and spiritual practices requiring water is limited. While a few countries recognize water rights of indigenous peoples in their domestic laws, …

Energy, Environment & Sustainable Development, Lakshman D. Guruswamy

Publications

No abstract provided.

In Search Of A Theory For Constitutional Comparativism, Roger P. Alford

Journal Articles

Constitutional comparativism - the notion that international and foreign material should be used to interpret the U.S. Constitution - is gaining currency. Yet proponents of this practice rarely offer a firm theoretical justification for the practice. This Article contends that constitutional comparativism should be examined from the perspective of constitutional theory. The use of comparative and international material must be deemed appropriate or inappropriate based on a particular judge's interpretive mode of constitutional analysis. The Article presents four classic constitutional theories - originalism, natural law, majoritarianism, and pragmatism - and addresses the propriety of constitutional comparativism under each theory. This …

The Oas And Constitutionalism: Lessons From Recent West African Experience, Stephen J. Schnably

Articles

No abstract provided.

Book Review, S. James Anaya

Publications

No abstract provided.

Divergent Discourses About International Law, Indigenous Peoples, And Rights Over Lands And Natural Resources: Toward A Realist Trend, S. James Anaya

Publications

In this article renowned scholar S. James Anaya analyzes the divergent assessments of international law's treatment of indigenous peoples' demands to lands and natural resources. The author explores several strains of arguments that have been advanced within this debate, including state-centered arguments and human rights-based arguments. The author also examines the shortcomings of recurring interpretive approaches to international law that consider indigenous peoples' rights to land and resources. From this analysis the author identifies a more promising approach within the human rights framework--which he describes as a realist approach--that focuses on the confluence of values, power, and change. The author …

Conflict Of Laws, Globalization, And Cosmopolitan Pluralism, Paul Schiff Berman

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This essay is a contribution to a symposium at the January 2005 annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Conflict of Laws. More than ten years ago, German theorist Gunther Teubner called for the creation of an "intersystemic conflicts law," derived not just from collisions between the distinct nation-states of private international law, but from what he described as "conflicts between autonomous social subsystems." Since then, the web of intersystemic lawmaking Teubner described has only grown more complex. The collision of these multiple legal and quasi-legal normative systems requires, as Teubner suggested, a broader approach to …

The Status Of Detainees From The Iraq And Afghanistan Conflicts, Srividhya Ragavan, Michael S. Mireles

Faculty Scholarship

The paper is premised on the idea that the future course of international law will be impacted by the United States' ability to adhere to international treaties to which it is a signatory. Hence, the current administration bears a responsibility to avoid unwisely stretching, distorting, or avoiding the principles of international law for short-term gain in a manner that jeopardizes long-term sustainable policy. The United States should be wary of creating a dangerous precedent - not only for the world, but for itself. If the United States shirks from or misinterprets international legal principles, it leaves the forum open for …

Redressing Colonial Genocide: The Hereros' Cause Of Action Against Germany, Rachel J. Anderson

Scholarly Works

In February 2003, the Herero People's Reparations Corporation filed a complaint against Germany in the District Court of the District of Columbia alleging violations of international law, crimes against humanity, genocide, slavery, and forced labor before, during, and after the German-Herero War (1904-07). The German government, modern scholars, and other commentators have long taken the position that genocides committed by colonial governments in the nineteenth century did not violate international law at that time. Arguments for this position rely, inter alia, on the belief that all forms of genocide were first criminalized and made punishable by the 1948 U.N. Convention …

Medellin V. Dretke: Federalism And International Law, Curtis A. Bradley, Lori Fisler Damrosch, Martin Flaherty

Faculty Scholarship

This is an edited version of a debate held at Columbia Law School on February 21, 2005.

Emote Control: The Substitution Of Symbol For Substance In Foreign Policy And International Law, Jules Lobel, George Loewenstein

Articles

Historical perspectives, as well as recent work in psychology, converge on the conclusion that human behavior is the product of two or more qualitatively different neural processes that operate according to different principles and often clash with one another. We describe a specific 'dual process' perspective that distinguishes between deliberative and emote control of behavior. We use this framework to shed light on a wide range of legal issues involving foreign policy, terrorism, and international law that are difficult to make sense of in terms of the traditional rational choice perspective. We argue that in these areas, the powerful influence …

The Labor Dimension Of The Emerging Free Trade Area Of The Americas, Steve Charnovitz

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

This study explores a potential labor dimension for the FTAA. The study is divided into four parts: Part 1 provides context by reviewing the history of Inter-American economic cooperation, especially on labor and trade. Part 2 examines how labor has been addressed in the major free trade agreements of the Americas. Part 3 looks at the normative basis for international labor cooperation. Part 4 makes specific recommendations for addressing labor issues in the FTAA. The ideas in Part 4 seek to stimulate practical, concerted action to address labor and employment problems of regional economic integration. My recommendations for the FTAA …