Law Commons^™

Pandemic Governance, Yanbai Andrea Wang, Justin Weinstein-Tull

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The COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented need for governance by a multiplicity of authorities. The nature of the pandemic—globally communicable, uncontrolled, and initially mysterious—required a coordinated response to a common problem. But the pandemic was superimposed atop our decentralized domestic and international governance structures, and the result was devastating: the United States has a death rate that is eighteenth highest in the world, and the pandemic has had dramatically unequal impacts across the country. COVID-19’s effects have been particularly destructive for communities of color, women, and intersectional populations.

This Article finds order in the chaos of the pandemic response by …

“Time Is A-Wasting”: Making The Case For Cedaw Ratification By The United States, Rangita De Silva De Alwis, Melanne Verveer

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Since President Carter signed the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (the “CEDAW” or the “Convention”) on July 17, 1980, the United States has failed to ratify the Convention time and again. As one of only a handful of countries that has not ratified the CEDAW, the United States is in the same company as Sudan, Somalia, Iran, Tonga, and Palau. When CEDAW ratification stalled yet again in 2002, then-Senator Joseph Biden lamented that “[t]ime is a-wasting.”

Writing in 2002, Harold Koh, former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, bemoaned America’s …

The Proof Is In The Process: Self-Reporting Under International Human Rights Treaties, Cosette D. Creamer, Beth A. Simmons

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Recent research has shown that state reporting to human rights monitoring bodies is associated with improvements in rights practices, calling into question earlier claims that self-reporting is inconsequential. Yet little work has been done to explore the theoretical mechanisms that plausibly account for this association. This Article systematically documents—across treaties, countries, and years—four mechanisms through which reporting can contribute to human rights improvements: elite socialization, learning and capacity building, domestic mobilization, and law development. These mechanisms have implications for the future of human rights treaty monitoring.

The Dynamism Of Treaties, Yanbai Andrea Wang

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How do treaties change over time? This Article joins a growing body of scholarship focusing not on formal change mechanisms but instead on informal change arising from a treaty’s implementation in practice. Informal implementation is often murky, poorly documented, and may be indistinguishable from noncompliance. Yet it is significant both doctrinally under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties—a set of rules for the formation and operation of treaties—and in its own right, when it does not meet the requirements to be doctrinally relevant. Based on a deep dive into the history of one of the oldest areas of …

Do Self-Reporting Regimes Matter? Evidence From The Convention Against Torture, Beth A. Simmons, Cosette D. Creamer

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International regulatory agreements depend largely on self-reporting for implementation, yet we know almost nothing about whether or how such mechanisms work. We theorize that self-reporting processes provide information for domestic constituencies, with the potential to create pressure for better compliance. Using original data on state reports submitted to the Committee Against Torture, we demonstrate the influence of this process on the pervasiveness of torture and inhumane treatment. We illustrate the power of self-reporting regimes to mobilize domestic politics through evidence of civil society participation in shadow reporting, media attention, and legislative activity around anti-torture law and practice. This is the …

The Dynamic Impact Of Periodic Review On Women’S Rights, Cosette D. Creamer, Beth A. Simmons

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Human rights treaty bodies have been frequently criticized as useless and the regime’s self-reporting procedure widely viewed as a whitewash. Yet very little research explores what, if any, influence this periodic review process has on governments’ implementation of and compliance with treaty obligations. We argue oversight committees may play an important role in improving rights on the ground by providing information for international and primarily domestic audiences. This paper examines the cumulative effects on women’s rights of self-reporting and oversight review, using original data on the history of state reporting to and review by the Committee on the Elimination of …

Polar Opposites: Assessing The State Of Environmental Law In The World’S Polar Regions, Mark Nevitt, Robert V. Percival

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Climate change is fundamentally transforming both the Arctic and Antarctic polar regions. Yet they differ dramatically in their governing legal regimes. For the past sixty years the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS), a traditional “hard law” international law treaty system, effectively de-militarized the Antarctic region and halted competing sovereignty claims. In contrast, the Arctic region lacks a unifying Arctic treaty and is governed by the newer “soft law” global environmental law model embodied in the Arctic Council’s collaborative work. Now climate change is challenging this model. It is transforming the geography of both polar regions, breaking away massive ice sheets in …

Making Laws, Breaking Silence: Case Studies From The Field, Rangita De Silva De Alwis

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The Sustainable Development Goals seek to change the history of the 21st century, addressing key challenges such as poverty, inequality, and violence against women and girls. The inalienable rights of gender equality and empowerment of women and girls addressed in Goal 5 are a pre-condition for this. Despite decades of struggle by women’s movements and reformist agendas, much still needs to be done to address de facto and de jure discrimination against women. At a time of enormous change for women, these essays from around the world are a critical analysis of the role of law in regulating and shaping …

The Elusive Promise Of Equal Opportunity And Women’S Empowerment Through Temporary Labor Migration Programs: Lessons In Systemic Discrimination From The United States, Sarah Paoletti

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Women comprise approximately half of all migrants across the world, and similarly account for nearly half of all of labor migration. But equality in numbers belies the systemic discrimination women confront in accessing employment opportunities through labor migration programs, as well as the experiences of women within those programs. Migration – and specifically labor migration – is not a gender-neutral phenomenon. The International Labor Organization (ILO) has expressed concern that as feminization of migration increases, women migrants will be increasingly vulnerable to “discrimination, exploitation and abuse… because of hardened attitudes towards migrants in general and because gender-based attitudes and perceptions …

The International Criminal Court In Africa: Impartiality, Politics, Complementarity And Brexit, Bartram Brown

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I have known and been inspired by Henry J. Richardson III and his scholarship for many years. A hallmark of his work has been his focus upon African-American interests in international law and also upon the rights and interests of African states. In acknowledgement of that intellectual debt, it is my honor to dedicate the following article to this festschrift celebrating his life and work.

Introduction: Legitimacy And International Courts, Harlan Grant Cohen, Andreas Follesdal, Nienke Grossman, Geir Ulfstein

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Legitimacy and International Courts examines the underpinnings of legitimacy, or the justification of the authority, of international courts and tribunals. It brings together an esteemed group of authors, noted for both their expertise in individual courts, tribunals, or other adjudicatory bodies, and their work on legitimacy, effectiveness, and governance more broadly, to consider the legitimacy of international courts from a comparative perspective. Authors explore what strengthens and weakens the legitimacy of various different international courts, while also considering broader theories of international court legitimacy. Some chapters highlight the sociological or normative legitimacy of specific courts or tribunals, while others address …

From Treaties To International Commitments: The Changing Landscape Of Foreign Relations Law, Jean Galbraith

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Sometimes the United States makes international commitments in the manner set forth in the Treaty Clause. But far more often it uses congressional-executive agreements, sole executive agreements, and soft law commitments. Foreign relations law scholars typically approach these other processes from the perspective of constitutional law, seeking to determine the extent to which they are constitutionally permissible. In contrast, this Article situates the myriad ways in which the United States enters into international commitments as the product not only of constitutional law, but also of international law and administrative law. Drawing on all three strands of law provides a rich …

Achieving Sex-Representative International Court Benches, Nienke Grossman

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Twenty-five years ago, in this Journal, Hilary Charlesworth, Christine Chinkin, and Shelley Wright argued that the structures of international law “privilege men.”1 As shown in Table 1, which summarizes data from a forthcoming article, on nine of twelve international courts of varied size, subject-matter jurisdiction, and global and regional membership, women made up 20 percent or less of the bench in mid 2015.2 On many of these courts, the percentage of women on the bench has stayed constant, vacillated, or even declined over time.3 Women made up a lower percentage of the bench in mid 2015 than in previous years …

International Law In The Obama Administration's Pivot To Asia: The China Seas Disputes, The Trans- Pacific Partnership, Rivalry With The Prc, And Status Quo Legal Norms In U.S. Foreign Policy, Jacques Delisle

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The Obama administration’s “pivot” or “rebalance” to Asia has shaped the Obama administration’s impact on international law. The pivot or rebalance has been primarily about regional security in East Asia (principally, the challenges of coping with a rising and more assertive China—particularly in the context of disputes over the South China Sea—and resulting concerns among regional states), and secondarily about U.S. economic relations with the region (including, as a centerpiece, the Trans-Pacific Partnership). In both areas, the Obama administration has made international law more significant as an element of U.S. foreign policy and has sought to present the U.S. as …

Presidential War Powers As An Interactive Dynamic: International Law, Domestic Law, And Practice-Based Legal Change, Curtis A. Bradley, Jean Galbraith

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There is a rich literature on the circumstances under which the United Nations Charter or specific Security Council resolutions authorize nations to use force abroad, and there is a rich literature on the circumstances under which the U.S. Constitution and statutory law allows the President to use force abroad. These are largely separate areas of scholarship, addressing what are generally perceived to be two distinct levels of legal doctrine. This Article, by contrast, considers these two levels of doctrine together as they relate to the United States. In doing so, it makes three main contributions. First, it demonstrates striking parallels …

Ending Security Council Resolutions, Jean Galbraith

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The Security Council resolution implementing the Iran deal spells out the terms of its own destruction. It contains a provision that allows any one of seven countries to terminate its key components. This provision – which this Comment terms a trigger termination – is both unusual and important. It is unusual because, up to now, the Security Council has almost always either not specified the conditions under which resolutions terminate or used time-based sunset clauses. It is important not only for the Iran deal, but also as a precedent and a model for the use of trigger terminations in the …

The Limits Of Judicial Mechanisms For Developing And Enforcing International Environmental Norms: Introductory Remarks, Nienke Grossman, Jacqueline Peel

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International courts and tribunals have played a key role in the development of principles and norms of international environmental law. Over the last two decades, such bodies have been asked to resolve a growing number of disputes that involve environmental issues. The types of issues considered by international courts and tribunals have also expanded in scope and complexity. For instance, disputes concerning environmental matters may involve claims of state responsibility, law of the sea questions, human rights issues, or trade and investment aspects.

East Asia, Investment, And International Law: Distinctive Or Convergent?, Beth A. Simmons

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International investment agreements (IIAs) are the primary legal instruments designed to protect and encourage foreign direct investment world-wide. This article argues that Asia has used IIAs just as much as have other regions of the world to attract foreign direct investment, but that Asia’s pattern of agreement provisions is somewhat distinctive. States in East and Southeast Asia have tended to enter into agreements that strike a balance somewhat more favorable to host states than to foreign firms, at least when compared to the rest of the world. This may be due to high growth in the region, which tends to …

Framing For A New Transnational Legal Order: The Case Of Human Trafficking, Paulette Lloyd, Beth A. Simmons

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How does transnational legal order emerge, develop and solidify? This chapter focuses on how and why actors come to define an issue as one requiring transnational legal intervention of a specific kind. Specifically, we focus on how and why states have increasingly constructed and acceded to international legal norms relating to human trafficking. Empirically, human trafficking has been on the international and transnational agenda for nearly a century. However, relatively recently – and fairly swiftly in the 2000s – governments have committed themselves to criminalize human trafficking in international as well as regional and domestic law. Our paper tries to …

Introduction To Intervention Under International Law, Mortimer N.S. Sellers

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The lawfulness or legitimacy of "external" intervention in the "internal" affairs of sovereign states is one of the most basic controversies in modern international law. The question arises in three separate but related forms: When is intervention lawful? When is intervention legitimate? And when should intervention occur? Discussion here will focus on the legal question, but legitimacy, morality, and brutal reality all form and sometimes trump the law. They dictate the parameters within which all legal determinations take place, including the legality of cross-border interventions. By "intervention" I mean any activity by one state or its agents that influences the …

Treaty Options: Towards A Behavioral Understanding Of Treaty Design, Jean Galbraith

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Rational choice theory is the dominant paradigm through which scholars of international law and international relations approach treaty design. In this Article, I suggest a different approach using a combination of empirical observations of state behavior and theoretical insights from behavioral economics. I focus on one aspect of multilateral treaty design: namely, treaty reservations and associated legal mechanisms which allow states to vary the degree of their formal commitments to treaties. I call these mechanisms “treaty options.” I argue that the framing of treaty options matters powerfully — and does so in ways inconsistent with rational choice theory, but consistent …

What Useful Role (If Any) Could Legal Positivism Play In The Study Or Advancement Of International Law?, Mortimer N.S. Sellers

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What useful role (if any) could legal positivism play in the study or advancement of international law? For most of those who remember this once fashionable term at all, "international legal positivism" is redolent of the early years of the twentieth century-of Lassa Oppenheim' at best, and at worst of his model, John Austin, who famously denied that international law is or ever could be genuine law at all, "properly so called." 2 "Positive" law in its central and most usual sense is law "set by a sovereign individual or a sovereign body ... to a person or persons in …

Are Institutions And Empiricism Enough? A Review Of Allen Buchanan, Human Rights, Legitimacy, And The Use Of Force, Matthew J. Lister

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Legal philosophers have given relatively little attention to international law in comparison to other topics, and philosophers working on international or global justice have not taken international law as a primary focus, either. Allen Buchanan’s recent work is arguably the most important exception to these trends. For over a decade he has devoted significant time and philosophical skill to questions central to international law, and has tied these concerns to related issues of global justice more generally. In what follows I review Buchanan’s new collection of essays, Human Rights, Legitimacy, and the Use of Force, paying special attention to …

The Legitimating Role Of Consent In International Law, Matthew J. Lister

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According to many traditional accounts, one important difference between international and domestic law is that international law depends on the consent of the relevant parties (states) in a way that domestic law does not. In recent years this traditional account has been attacked both by philosophers such as Allen Buchanan and by lawyers and legal scholars working on international law. It is now safe to say that the view that consent plays an important foundational role in international law is a contested one, perhaps even a minority position, among lawyers and philosophers. In this paper I defend a limited but …

Adoption Of The Responsibility To Protect, William W. Burke-White

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This book chapter traces the legal and political origins of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine from its early origins in the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty through the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document and up to January 2011. The chapter examines the legal meaning of the Responsibility to Protect, the obligations the Responsibility imposes on states and international institutions, and its implications in for the international legal and political systems. The chapter argues that while the Responsibility to Protect has developed with extraordinary speed, it is still a norm in development rather than a binding legal rule. Its …

Advantaging Aggressors: Justice & Deterrence In International Law, Paul H. Robinson, Adil Ahmad Haque

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Current international law imposes limitations on the use of force to defend against unlawful aggression that improperly advantage unlawful aggressors and disadvantage their victims. The Article gives examples of such rules, governing a variety of situations, showing how clearly unjust they can be. No domestic criminal law system would tolerate their use.

There are good practical reasons why international law should care that its rules are perceived as unjust. Given the lack of an effective international law enforcement mechanism, compliance depends to a large degree upon the moral authority with which international law speaks. Compliance is less likely when its …

Legitimacy And International Adjudicative Bodies, Nienke Grossman

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This article proposes a theory of legitimacy tailored to international courts and tribunals. In Part II of this paper, the article defines an "international adjudicative body" as a dispute resolution mechanism - also called a "court" or "tribunal" - which decides disputes between litigants, at least one of whom must be a state, and comments on this definitional choice. The analysis in this article is limited only to adjudicative bodies where states are involved as litigants because a different set of legitimacy-influencing factors may be present when only private parties are involved. Next, it lays out a theory of legitimacy …

Toward A Theory Of Persuasive Authority, Chad Flanders

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The debate about the citation of foreign authorities has become stale. One side says that citing foreign authorities means being beholden to foreign sovereigns. The other side responds that this is nonsense, as the authorities are being used only for their "persuasive value." But do we even have a good idea of what it means to be a persuasive authority? My essay is the first to focus entirely on the notion of persuasive authority and to make the first steps towards providing a general theory of it. I make two major contributions. First, I try to show that there is …

Intention, Torture, And The Concept Of State Crime, Aditi Bagchi

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Notwithstanding the universal prohibition against torture, and almost universal agreement that in order to qualify as torture, the act in question must be committed intentionally with an illicit purpose, the intentional element of torture remains ambiguous. I make the following claims about how we should interpret the intent requirement as applied to states. First, state intent should be understood objectively with reference to the apparent reasons for state action. The subjective motivation of particular state actors is not directly relevant. While we focus on subjective intent in the context of individual crime because of its relation to culpability and blameworthiness, …

Defending Imminence: From Battered Women To Iraq, Kimberly Kessler Ferzan

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The war against Iraq and nonconfrontational killings by battered women are two recent examples of a more general theoretical problem. The underlying question is when may a defender act in self-defense. While some nineteenth century common law cases vested the rights in the defender, arguing that it was unfair to force her to live in fear, contemporary domestic and international law cast the balance decidedly on the side of the aggressor, by forcing the defender to wait until the aggressor's attack is imminent. The Bush Administration and the battered woman simply ask whether the pendulum swung too far in the …