Law Commons^™

Liberty, Equality, Diversity: States, Cultures And International Law, Ana Filipa Vrdoljak

Ana Filipa Vrdoljak

This chapter explores how culture is addressed by contemporary international law, with particular reference to human rights law norms. The first part covering freedom focuses on the rise of the modern state and its conscious reimagining of ties with its citizens through the promotion of tolerance and a secular, national identity. The shift is explored through the prisms of the freedom of religion, the right to participate in (national) cultural life, and the limitations on freedom of expression including prohibition of hate speech and domestic blasphemy laws. The second part on equality centres on the relationship between the state, the …

Kiobel, Extraterritoriality, And The "Global War On Terrorism", Craig Martin

Craig Martin

For the purpose of exploring the issues of extraterritoriality raised in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., this project sought to examine how the federal courts have considered extraterritoriality in cases arising in the so-called “global war on terror” (GWOT). The inquiry leads to some new and arguably important observations about extraterritoriality in the GWOT policies and related jurisprudence. The plaintiffs in Kiobel claimed, under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), that the defendant corporations were liable for complicity in Nigeria’s conduct of indefinite detention, torture, and extrajudicial killing. The U.S. Supreme Court departed from the issue of corporate liability under …

Science And Compliance In The Arctic: A Constructivist Approach To The Un Commission On The Limits Of The Continental Shelf, Sari M. Graben, Peter Harrison

Sari M Graben

The United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf is expected to play an essential role in delineating the rights of the Arctic states to sea bed resources in the Arctic Ocean. Positivist theories of international law generally source Arctic state compliance to the binding effect of Article 76 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. However, positivist explanations fail to answer why the Arctic states, which are authorized to establish their own limits, would accept the sovereignty costs associated with the Commission’s legal and scientific interpretations. In order to better understand how the Commission …

Canadian Courts And Uniform Interpretation - An Empirical Reality Check, Joshua D H Karton, Samantha Wynne

Joshua Karton

The uniform interpretation of uniform law instruments is justifiably a preoccupation of the international uniform law community. However, despite the issue’s importance to the success of legal harmonisation efforts, remarkably little is known about how national courts actually interpret international uniform laws. The literature remains almost entirely anecdotal; no systematic study has been made of the courts of even one state or region to determine whether, as a group, they do or do not interpret international uniform law instruments with an eye to the international legal context.

This article describes an empirical study of Canadian courts’ interpretations of five representative …

Global Poverty And The Right To Development In International Law, Patrick Macklem

Patrick Macklem

This Article advances an account of the right to development as a legal instrument that holds the international legal order accountable for its role in the production and reproduction of global poverty. It first distinguishes moral conceptions of human rights, as instruments that protect universal features of humanity, from legal conceptions, which tie their existence to their specification in international instruments promulgated in compliance with international legal norms governing the creation of legal rights and obligations. Despite textual ambiguities in the various instruments in which it finds expression, the right to development vests in individuals and communities who have yet …

International Law, The Civilizing Mission And The Ambivalence Of Development In Africa: Conceptual Underpinnings, Amin George Forji

Amin George Forji

International law, past and present has had to constantly wrestle with striking a balancing act between legality and imperialism. Following the Agrarian and Industrial revolutions, European1 economies increasingly witnessed profound boosts in productivity and net output beginning from the 17th century. By the start of the 19th century when explorations and discoveries were the currency of the day, European powers increasingly saw the acquisition of Africa as crucial to satisfy its economic imperatives namely: reinforcing home industries and instituting a market for finished products. While professing liberal moralism, European encroachment into Africa became suddenly exemplified with a turn from informal …

Climate Change, Forests, And International Law: Redd's Descent Into Irrelevance, Annecoos Wiersema

Annecoos Wiersema

Forestry activities account for over 17% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Since 2005, parties to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change have been negotiating a mechanism known as REDD – Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation – to provide an incentive for developing countries to reduce carbon emissions and limit deforestation at the same time. Many believe this mechanism will not only mitigate climate change but will also provide biodiversity and forests with the hard international law regime that has so far been missing. These commentators assume REDD will develop into this kind of hard international law regime. They …

Enforcing International Law: States, Ios, And Courts As Shaming Reference Groups, Roslyn Fuller, Sandeep Gopalan

Roslyn Fuller

We seek to answer the question as to whether international law imposes meaningful constraints on state behaviour. Unabated drone strikes by the dominant superpower in foreign territories, an ineffective United Nations, and persistent disregard for international law obligations, as evidenced by states killing their own citizens, all suggest that the sceptics have won the debate about whether international law is law and whether it affects state behaviour. We argue that such a conclusion would be in error because it grossly underestimates the complex ways in which IL affects state behaviour. We argue that scholars who claim that the lack of …

The Law Of The Sea In The Strait Of Hormuz: Contending Legal Regimes At The Cusp Of Conflict, James Kraska

James Kraska

This article resolves long-standing confusion over the legal regime that applies to passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran and the United States profoundly disagree about the applicable international law in the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow stretch of water through which travels 17 million barrels of oil per day—20 percent of the world total. The strait connects the Arabian Sea to the Persian Gulf, and is ground zero in the clash between the two states. Each year 12,000 vessels, half of them oil tankers greater than 150,000 gross tons, converge in dense traffic patterns in Iranian territorial seas en …

Rise Of The Intercontinentalexchange And Implications Of Its Merger With Nyse Euronext, Latoya C. Brown

Latoya C. Brown, Esq.

This paper examines the impending merger between the IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) and NYSE Euronext against the backdrop of the current structure of the global financial services industry. The paper concludes that the merger embodies what the financial services industry is becoming and captures the model that will allow exchanges to remain competitive in today’s marketplace: mega-exchanges with broader asset classes and electronic platforms. As technology and globalization threaten their vitality, exchanges will need to continue reinventing and adapting. Increasingly over the last decade they have done so by merging and by moving, at least a part of, their operations on screen. …

The Eu’S Ets And Global Aviation: Why “Local Rules” Still Matter In A Globalized World And Why They Might Matter Even More In The Future, Michael Buenger

Michael Buenger

Over the last 60 years, the globe’s most powerful states and blocs of states (hereinafter “states”) have put considerable effort into coordinating international activities through the use of formal treaties and the acceptance of broad concepts of customary law. Yet in recent years entirely new forms of international lawmaking have emerged as evidenced by the rise of supernational institutions like the EU, non-state actors, and the unilateral extension of municipal law to shape global behavior. The EU’s unilateral extension of the ETS to global aviation is an example of this later development. Because of their economic size and political acumen, …