Law Commons^™

What’S Law Got To Do With It? How The Degree Of Legalization Affects The Durability Of Post-Conflict Autonomy Agreements, Felix Schulte, Gene Carolan

Articles

Research has identified several factors that impact the sustainability of post-conflict territorial autonomy arrangements (TAA), including previous levels of violence, economic development in a given territory, or the strategic importance thereof. We argue that a hitherto neglected variable lies in the legal form of the autonomy agreement – that is, the degree to which it has been ‘legalized’ by the language and processes prescribed in the agreement. Based on a qualitative evaluation, we assess the legalization degree of 236 TAA signed between 1990 and 2019. Survival analyses and Cox regression models show that a higher degree of legalization has a …

Kadhi's Courts And Kenya's Constitution: An International Human Rights Perspective, Joseph M. Isanga

Joseph Isanga

This article examines Kenya's international human rights obligations and finds that there is support for religious courts, provided relevant human rights guarantees are ensured. Kenya's Kadhi's courts have existed in the constitution since independence from the British. So why do some religious groups now oppose them or their enhancement under Kenya's Constitution? Opponents of Kadhi's courts advance, inter aha, the following arguments. First, Kadhi's courts provisions favour one religion and divide Kenyans along religious lines. Second, they introduce Sharia law. Third, the historical reasons for their existence have been overtaken by events. Fourth, non-Muslims shouldn't be taxed to fund a …

Ethnic Power Sharing: Three Big Problems, Donald L. Horowitz

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Holocaust And Mass Atrocity: The Continuing Challenge For Decision, Winston P. Nagan, Aitza M. Haddad

Winston P Nagan

This article begins with an appraisal of a report published by the United States Institute for Peace and authored by the former Secretary of State, Albright, and former Secretary of Defense, Cohen. This Report generated a great deal of interest and reaction from scholars across the globe. The article will introduce the broad outline of this Report and provide a summary of the principal criticisms that it has generated. This sets the stage for approaching the problem that is sensitive to the issue that this phenomenon be explore with a view to developing usable insights and data as well as …

The Holocaust And Mass Atrocity: The Continuing Challenge For Decision, Winston P. Nagan, Aitza M. Haddad

Winston P Nagan

Review of the Albright-Cohen Report for the U.S. Institute of Peace and its critics. The article suggests intellectual strategies for sharpening and advancing the fundamental ideas and conclusions in the Albright-Cohen study. The article provides a review from novel perspectives of the Holocaust and stresses a better understanding of the role of emotion and sentiment in promoting or constraining genocidal outcomes.

Resetting U.S.-Turkish Relations: Charting A New Way Forward, Aaron Stein

Journal of Strategic Security

After nearly nine decades of benign neglect, Turkey has set about reestablishing its influence in the Middle East. Although most observers agree that the United States and Turkey share a number of overlapping goals in the Middle East, Turkey's recent rapprochement with Iran has drawn the ire of the United States. In tandem, Turkey's relations with Israel, Washington's closest ally in the region, have deteriorated rapidly following Israel's war in Gaza and the events aboard the Mavi Marmara. These coinciding events have further complicated U.S.-Turkish relations and have led a number of pundits in Washington to openly question Turkey's ideological …

The Holocaust And Mass Atrocity: The Continuing Challenge For Decision, Winston P. Nagan, Aitza M. Haddad

Winston P Nagan

Review of the Albright-Cohen Report for the U.S. Institute of Peace and its critics. The article suggests intellectual strategies for sharpening and advancing the fundamental ideas and conclusions in the Albright-Cohen study. The article provides a review from novel perspectives of the Holocaust and stresses a better understanding of the role of emotion and sentiment in promoting or constraining genocidal outcomes.

Social Cohesion And Islamic Radicalization: Implications From The Uighur Insurgency, Tong Zhao

Journal of Strategic Security

This article starts with a critical review of the current literature on the Islamic radicalization and Uighur insurgency in Xinjiang, pointing out that existing literature focuses too narrowly on certain aspects of the Uighur insurgency, and is insufficient to explain the causal mechanism of the insurgency and Islamic radicalization. Built upon historical evidence, this article uses sociological analysis to explore the structural changes in the Uighur community over the past decades, and demonstrates the importance and effectiveness of social cohesion theory in identifying the key causal variables which underlie and determine the course of Uighur insurgency and Islamic radicalization. The …

Reducing The Impact Of Ethnic Tensions On Economic Growth – Economic Or Political Institutions?, Atin Basu Choudhary, Jim Bang, Michael Reksulak

Atin Basu Choudhary

We use a standard growth regression model and show that ethnic tensions reduce per capita growth rates. We also find evidence that “good” economic and political institutions improve per capita growth rates. More importantly, good economic institutions mitigate the effect of ethnic tensions on per capita growth while good political institutions do not. Consequently, it is foremost capitalist freedom that promotes peace and development.

Identitarian Violence And Identitarian Politics: Elections And Governance In Iraq, Haider Ala Hamoudi

Articles

This Essay, originally published in a 2010 issue of the Harvard International Law Journal (Online), maintains that it is a mistake to ask whether or not the United States was wise to have "allowed" elections in Iraq as early as it did following its overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime in 2003. Such a question presumes an absence of domestic agency that was certainly not the case in Iraq, and is probably not the case in any modern society under occupation. Domestic demands coming from domestic forces seeking to shore up their own power base almost necessitated the outcome of …

Multilayered Governance, Pluralism, And Moral Conflict, Thomas Cottier

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The quest for multilayered governance faces the problem of endemic tensions and disagreements in international relations and doubts as to whether nations truly share common values upon which an international society can be solidly built. Values, however, are equally controversial within the nation-state. We find similar tensions within domestic and regional layers of governance. In any system of governance, diverging and competing values are inevitable. There are differences in degree, but not in principle, when comparing traits of domestic and international governance. Legal experience in the fields of human rights and international trade regulation indicates that under such conditions, procedures …

Al-Qaeda In The Lands Of The Islamic Maghreb, Gregory A. Smith

Journal of Strategic Security

This paper is organized into four chapters that focus on the terrorist group Al Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The four chapters examine different facets of the collective environment that have allowed AQIM to succeed and even thrive at times. The first chapter begins with Algeria’s war of independence with the French. The second chapter focuses on the nomadic Tuareg people. It seeks to show how the Tuaregs were deprived by French occupiers and how European colonization cost the Tuaregs access to vital trade routes used for centuries. The third chapter will very briefly examine Algeria’s …

Deliberative Democracy In Severely Fractured Societies, Adeno Addis

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The world is full of boundaries. Whatever their nature, boundaries provide the conditions for communal or individual identity and agency, and they make collective action possible. That very capacity to define and contain, however, allows boundaries to "close off possibilities of being that might otherwise flourish." Paradoxically, boundaries "both foster and inhibit freedom." This article explores how one particular boundary-ethnicity- has served both as an important source of identity and a cause of deep fracture in societies that this article calls "severely fractured." The purpose of the article is to explore what institutional structures and processes might be appropriate to …

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 …

Ethnic Groups And International Law: A Status Report On International Legal Personality At The Beginning Of The New Century, Steven M. Schneebaum

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

International Law and Ethnic Conflict edited by David Wippman. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998. 368pp.

Beyond Rights: Legal Process And Ethnic Conflicts, Elena Baylis

Articles

Unresolved ethnic conflicts threaten the stability and the very existence of multi-ethnic states. Ethnically divided states have struggled to build safeguards against such disputes into their political and legal systems by establishing federal political structures, designing elections to encourage participation, and entering complex power-sharing arrangements, but such measures cannot be expected to prevent all conflict. Human rights and minority rights guarantees likewise have proven unable to accommodate all relevant groups and interests. Accordingly, multi-ethnic states facing persistent ethnic conflicts need to develop effective dispute resolution systems for resolving those conflicts as they arise. This presents an important question: what kinds …

Reconstructing A Divided Society: Development Of Self-Government And Judicial Reform In Kosovo, Sasha Baglay

LLM Theses

For the past decade the Kosovo has been a subject of conflict. Since June 1999 the Province is undergoing the reconstruction of civil society under the direction of the United Nations in the form of the United Nations Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK). This thesis analyzes the prospects of developing democratic government in a post-conflict Kosovo. On a larger scale, the Kosovo study serves the basis for the analysis of the techniques available for the international community to build democracy in ethnically divided societies. The argument of this thesis rests on the premise that in ethnically divided societies traditional democratic …

Indeterminate Claims: New Challenges To Self-Determination Doctrine In Yugoslavia, Timothy W. Waters

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Serbia has two autonomous provinces, with nearly identical constitutional and political claims: heavily Albanian Kosovo and ethnically diverse but Serb-majority Vojvodina. One is headed towards some form of internationally recognized independence; the other almost certainly is not, even though calls for its autonomy have been mounting. What makes the difference?

This article examines what the reasons for these different outcomes show about the changing content of self-determination in an environment of persistent ethnic claims. The defining characteristic of self-determination today is its indeterminacy, which allows policymakers to pursue a broader range of policies than was possible in the era of …