Law Commons^™

Incentivizing And Protecting Informants Prior To Mass Atrocities Such As Genocide: An Alternative To Post Hoc Courts And Tribunals, Eric Talbot Jensen

Faculty Scholarship

International institutions are almost exclusively reactive to violations of international law. There are very few systemic methods of proactively trying to prevent egregious violations such as genocide; rather, international law seems to take punishing violators as its sole approach. In modern times, most of the punishment and post-event enforcement has come through international courts and tribunals. These courts and tribunals are astoundingly expensive and notoriously inefficient. More importantly, the threat of prosecution does not appear to act as an effective deterrent in preventing criminal acts. This is unacceptable. With hundreds of thousands of lives at stake, the international community must …

Legitimacy As An Assessment Of Existing Legal Standards: The Case Of The 2003 Iraq War, Charlotte Ku

Faculty Scholarship

The Iraq war was a multiple assault on the foundations and rules of the existing UN-centered world order. It called into question the adequacy of the existing institutions for articulating global norms and enforcing compliance with the demands of the international community. It highlighted also the unwillingness of some key countries to wait until definitive proof before acting to meet the danger of the world's most destructive weapons falling into the hands of the world's most dangerous regimes. It was simultaneously a test of the UN's willingness and ability to deal with brutal dictatorships and a searching scrutiny of the …

The Definition And Jurisdiction Of The Crime Of Aggression And The International Criminal Court, Buhm-Suk Baek

Cornell Law School J.D. Student Research Papers

The United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court that was held in Rome to establish the International Criminal Court in 1998 finally adopted the Rome Statute with the participation of 160 countries. The Rome Statute of the ICC entered into force on 1 July 2002 and has been ratified by 100 States. What was considered not so long ago merely a dream of a few people has become a reality after the strenuous efforts of the UN over 50 years. However, one central issue still remains unresolved in the Rome Status. It is …

Torture As A Problem In Ordinary Legal Interpretation, Alan Hyde

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

American legal discourse on torture takes for granted some, usually all, of the following propositions, that make discussion of torture more difficult than it should be. Torture is assumed to present unusually difficult problems of definition, full of vague concepts, fine lines, gray areas, murky moral dilemmas, "dirty hands." This vagueness is thought to be even more of a problem for the attendant concept of "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment." The legal sources of either prohibition are assumed to be dubious under American law. Prohibiting torture is, perhaps for these reasons, thought to require moral justification not necessarily required of …

Biometrics, Certified Software Solutions, And The Japanese Consumption Tax: A Proposal For The Tax Commission, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

Significant change is anticipated in the Japanese Consumption Tax. The Japanese Tax Commission is recommending that the rate should double, multiple rates should be employed, and the "bookkeeping method" of accounting should be abandoned in favor of the European "invoice method."

The Tax Commission faces a tax policy dilemma. The aging population drives the need for a tax increase (making the Consumption Tax an obvious target for revenue enhancement) at exactly the same time the population is shrinking in overall size, thereby reducing the number of working-consumers who can pay the higher tax.

These are dramatic changes for the Japanese …

Charting Developments Concerning Punitive Damages: Is The Tide Changing?, John Y. Gotanda

Working Paper Series

This essay discusses a number of developments outside of the United States concerning punitive damages, which may ultimately signal a change in the way other countries view American awards of such damages.

To date, courts in many countries have refused to recognize and enforce American punitive damages awards on the ground that they violate the host country’s public policy. In most civil law countries, such as France and Germany, penal damages can only be ordered in criminal proceedings; a civil award of such damages has been viewed as contrary to ordre public. In common law countries, while punitive damages generally …

What The Swiss Miss (Review Of Friedrich Durrenmatt, Selected Writings), Kenneth Anderson

Popular Media

The Swiss playwright and novelist Friedrich Durrenmatt (1921-90) is remembered among English-language audiences primarily as the author of the 1956 play, The Visit of the Old Lady. He is, however, a leading playwright and novelist, primarily of detective fiction, of Europe and the German language in the post-war period. This review from the Wall Street Journal examines the full body of his work in a three volume selection of his writings published by the University of Chicago. One important consideration is Durrenmatt's place as a German language writer, yet Swiss, rather than German, following the horrors of the Second World …

Water Forum 2006, Susan Kelly

Publications

No abstract provided.

Georgia Journal Of International And Comparative Law Editorial And Managing Boards 2006-2007, Georgia Journal Of International And Comparative Law

Materials from All Student Organizations

No abstract provided.

Liability And Responsibility Of The State Of Registration Or The Flag State In Respect Of Sea-Going Vessels, Aircraft And Spacecraft Registered By National Registration Authorities, Sompong Sucharitkul

Publications

The topic selected for this report forms part of a broader picture: "the Liability of Registration authorities," which embraces a wider scope of enquiry, principally covering an infinite variety of international regulations within comparable national legal orders. Civil liability may require consideration of legal questions for which practical solution may only be found beyond the confines of internal law, in the choice of applicable law as part of private international law, or ultimately in the direct or indirect application of a rule of public international law, as recognized by States and incorporated in negotiated provisions of a Treaty.

Globalization And Genocidalism: Fictional Discourse Without Borders (For Fun And Profit), Aleksandar Jokić, Tiphaine Dickson

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this essay we explore the relationship between globalization and genocidalism. “Globalization” is understood as “freedom and ability of individuals and firms to initiate voluntary economic transactions with residents of other countries,” while “genocidalism” is defined as “(i) the purposeful neglect to attribute responsibility for genocide in cases when overwhelming evidence exists, and as (ii) the energetic attributions of “genocide” in less then clear cases without considering available and convincing opposing evidence and argumentation.”

The hypothesis that we defend here as explanatory of globalization’s “surprising” failure to live up to its often repeated theoretical promise that it is not a …

Book Review | Dan Sarooshi, International Organizations And Their Exercise Of Sovereign Powers (2005) & Margaret P. Karns & Karen A. Mingst, International Organizations: The Politics And Processes Of Global Governance (2004), Christopher G. Bradley

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This book review considers two books on international organizations: (1) Margaret P. Karns & Karen A. Mingst, International Organizations: The Politics and Processes of Global Governance, and (2) Dan Sarooshi, International Organizations and Their Exercise of Sovereign Powers.

The review notes several features that set the Karns & Mingst book apart from other treatments of international organizations. First is a thoroughgoing commitment to an integrated view of international organizations. The book insists (and demonstrates) that knowledge of politics, theory, and history are all indispensable to a rich understanding of the problems and processes of global governance. Second, Karns …

Doomed Internationalist, Kenneth Anderson

Popular Media

Introduction. The neoconservative influence on American foreign policy has not had an enthusiastic response outside the United States. Its failure to bring peace and democracy to Iraq has now resulted in a spate of critiques in America itself, even from within the policy establishment. The highest-level defection has been that of Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History and the Last Man (1992), the paean to the triumph of capitalism that became a canonical neoconservative text of the 1990's, articulating the transition from the Clinton administration to that of George W. Bush. In his new book, After the Neocons, …

The U.S. View Of The Convention On The Rights Of The Child - Time For Reconsideration, Jonathan Todres, Howard Davidson

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

Federalism And Private International Law: Implementing The Hague Choice Of Court Convention In The United States, Stephen B. Burbank

All Faculty Scholarship

Federalism is important in the United States. It is also important that the United States be able to participate effectively in a global economy and that those charged with the conduct of the country's foreign affairs be able to make, and that the country abide by, international agreements that are designed to facilitate transnational commercial activity. The Hague Choice of Court Convention is one such agreement, the modest fruits of more than a decade of work in an international lawmaking effort that was initiated by the United States. However modest the fruits of the enterprise, the rest of the world …

Damages In Lieu Of Performance Because Of Breach Of Contract, John Y. Gotanda

Working Paper Series

In contract disputes between transnational contracting parties, damages are often awarded to compensate a claimant for loss, injury or detriment resulting from a respondent’s failure to perform the agreement. In fact, damages may be the principal means of substituting for performance or they may complement other remedies, such as recision or specific performance.

Damages for breach of contract typically serve to protect one of three interests of a claimant: (1) performance interest (also known as expectation interest); (2) reliance interest; or (3) restitution interest. The primary goal of damages in most jurisdictions is to fulfil a claimant’s performance interest by …

The Military Commissions Act, Coerced Confessions, And The Role Of The Courts, Peter Margulies

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Future Of International Law Is Domestic (Or, The European Way Of Law), William W. Burke-White, Anne-Marie Slaughter

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Law Of International Commercial Arbitration In Singapore, Warren B. Chik

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The Singapore dispute resolution landscape entered the new millennium with the reconstruction of the dual carriageway for arbitration. In 2002, the old road to arbitral resolution of disputes ( i.e. , the old Arbitration Act and the old International Arbitration Act ) were reconstructed and what emerged were two updated legislations: the Arbitration Act and the International Arbitration Act . At about the same time, the Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) also diversified with the introduction of a new set of Domestic Arbitration Rules.

Can Appropriation Riders Speed Our Exit From Iraq?, Charles Tiefer

All Faculty Scholarship

To explore the implications of riders - provisions added to appropriation bills that "ride" on the underlying bill - on the United States' continued military force in Iraq, the author draws three hypotheticals, each focusing on the debate surrounding the policy and political disputes raised by the use of such riders. A "withdrawal" rider, which would authorize funding only if there exists a plan to withdraw American ground troops by a set deadline, remains the most important - and controversial - rider. Riders may also significantly affect wartime policies, like those that limit the President's use of reservists in combat …

Review Essay: The Limits Of Their World, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

I take a recent monograph on international law, Jack Goldsmith & Eric Posner's "Limits of International Law," as case study in a more general inquiry into the limitations of rational choice and game theoretic accounts of international law. I argue that international law is irreducibly normative in character, and that the task before us is to ensure that it gives expression to the right norms, not to pretend that it gives expression to no norms at all.

Slides: Beyond Kyoto: Climate Change And International Law, Fabio Feldmann

Climate Change and the Future of the American West: Exploring the Legal and Policy Dimensions (Summer Conference, June 7-9)

Presenter: Fabio Feldmann, Executive Secretary, São Paulo Forum on Global Climate Changes and Biodiversity, Brazil.

55 slides.

Contains references.

Slides: Uk Climate Policy, James Reilly

Climate Change and the Future of the American West: Exploring the Legal and Policy Dimensions (Summer Conference, June 7-9)

Presenter: James Reilly, Senior Energy & Environment Advisor, British Embassy, Washington DC.

28 slides.

Contains references.

Slides: In The Nick Of Time: Pathways To A Post-2012 Climate Treaty Framework, Annie Petsonk

Climate Change and the Future of the American West: Exploring the Legal and Policy Dimensions (Summer Conference, June 7-9)

Presenter: Annie Petsonk, Environmental Defense, Washington, DC.

22 slides.

Agenda: Climate Change And The Future Of The American West: Exploring The Legal And Policy Dimensions, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center

Climate Change and the Future of the American West: Exploring the Legal and Policy Dimensions (Summer Conference, June 7-9)

Sponsors: The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation; BP America; Holland & Hart; Patrick, Miller & Krope, P.C.; The Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation, Rocky Mountain Natural Resource Center of the National Wildlife Federation, Western Water Assessment.

Exploring the legal and political dimensions that climate change will bring to the American West will be the focus of the CU-Boulder Natural Resources Law Center's 27th Annual Summer Conference.

Titled "Climate Change and the Future of the American West: Exploring the Legal and Policy Dimensions," the conference will be held June 7-9 at the Fleming Law Building on the University of Colorado at …

Rules Are Made To Be Broken: How The Process Of Expedited Removal Fails Asylum Seekers, Michele R. Pistone, John J. Hoeffner Esq.

Working Paper Series

Immigration inspectors are authorized to deport persons who arrive at U.S. ports without valid travel documents. This process, which usually occurs within 48 hours and does not allow for judicial review, is called expedited removal. This article begins by summarizing the findings of the few studies allowed access to the process. The authors extrapolate from the studies to demonstrate that thousands of genuine asylum seekers have erroneously been deported via expedited removal. The greatest cause of erroneous deportation is a failure by the agency responsible for the process, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), to follow its own rules. The heart …

The Iraqi High Criminal Court: Controversy And Contributions, Michael A. Newton

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The Iraqi High Criminal Court established to prosecute Saddam Hussein and other leading Ba’athists is one of the most visible of the current efforts to establish criminal accountability for violations of international norms. Juxtaposed against other tribunals, the High Criminal Court has provoked worldwide debate over its processes and its prospects for returning societal stability founded on respect for human rights and the rule of law to Iraq. This article explores in detail the legal basis for the formation of the High Criminal Court under the law of occupation. It addresses the relationship between the Iraqi model of prosecuting crimes …

International Law And Rehnquist-Era Reversals, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

In the last years of Chief Justice Rehnquist's tenure, the Supreme Court held that due process bars criminal prosecution of same-sex intimacy and that it is cruel and unusual to execute mentally retarded persons or juveniles. Each of the later decisions not only overruled precedents set earlier in Rehnquist's tenure, but also consulted international law as an aid to construing the U.S. Constitution. Analyzing that phenomenon, the article first discusses the underlying cases, then traces the role that international law played in Atkins, Lawrence, and Simmons. It next examines backlash to consultation, and demonstrates that critics tended to overlook the …

Carousel Fraud In The Eu: A Digital Vat Solution, Richard Thompson Ainsworth

Faculty Scholarship

Recent reports from the UK's Office for National Statistics estimate (as of May 11, 2006) that Missing Trader Intra-community Fraud (MTIC) may exceed 10 billion pounds this year.

Carousel fraud, a variant of MTIC where the same goods are sold over and over again, exploits the lingering non-certified, non-digital attributes of the EU VAT. The UK believes that carousel fraud cost the Exchequer between 1.12 and 1.9 billion pounds in the 2004-05 financial year. This article proposes that carousel fraud be eliminated in the EU through selective insertion of Digital VAT functionality into the present system. In other words, it …

Active Water Resource Management: Tools For Better Water Management, John D'Antonio

Publications

No abstract provided.