International Law Commons^™

Is Climate Change A Threat To International Peace And Security?, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

This article argues that climate change’s destabilizing impacts require us to look at existing international governance tools at our disposal with fresh eyes. As such, Council climate action cannot and should not be dismissed out-of-hand. As conflicts rise, migration explodes, and nations are extinguished, how long can the Council remain on the climate sidelines? Hence, my call for a re-conceptualized “Council 3.0” to meet the climate security challenges this century.

This article proceeds as follows. In Part II, I describe and analyze the current state of climate science and the climate-security threats facing the world. This includes an analysis of …

Private Funding Of The United Nations, Consequence And Future Of The World Intergovernmental Organization, Kossi H. Hator

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The continuous financial crisis of the United Nations has been one of the of the major issues in the world’s international organization history. For more than forty years, the UN has been continually crippled by unceasing financial difficulties. Repetitive cash-flow emergency, difficulties in collecting member states’ contributions and to pay its debts have become major concerns. Moreover, the necessity to carry on its mission, and to promote peacekeeping and other social programs have been compromised. No matter what the case may be, the future and fate of the organization lays in the hands of the richest and powerful state members, …

The Failure Of International Law In Palestine, Svetlana Sumina, Steven Gilmore

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming

Why We Must Oppose The Full Decriminalization Of Prostitution, Taina Bien-Aime

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Legal Status Of Drones Under Loac And International Law, Vivek Sehrawat

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs

No abstract provided.

Book Review: The Birth Of Nations. By Phillip C. Jessup. New York And London: Columbia University Press, 1974., Sandy Mccormack

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Function Of The International Court Of Justice In The World Community, Ernest A. Gross

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Function Of The International Court Of Justice In The World Community, James Fawcett

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

The Legal Control Of The Use Of Force And The Definition Of Aggression, Donald C. Piper

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

From Commitment To Compliance: Enforceability Of Remedial Orders Of African Human Rights Bodies, Roger-Claude Liwanga

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

Over the last seven decades, there has been a global proliferation of international and regional human rights tribunals. But with no coercive power to enforce their judgments, these international tribunals rely either on the good faith of the State parties or on the political process for the implementation of their remedial orders. This nonjudicial approach to enforcement has showed its limits, as most State parties are noncompliant with international judgments to the detriment of human rights victims. This article recommends a new approach involving the judicialization of the post-adjudicative stage of international proceedings as an avenue to increase the enforceability …

Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite: The United Nations Declaration Of The Rights Of Indigenous Peoples Fails To Protect Hopi Katsinam From The Auction Block In France, Samantha K. Nikic

Brooklyn Journal of International Law

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) compels member states to take action in order to protect the rights of the world’s 370 million indigenous peoples, including the right to their cultural property. Notwithstanding the UNDRIP’s robust set of protections, its status as a nonbinding piece of international law remains its ultimate and most fatal flaw. France was an enthusiastic supporter of the UNDRIP at ratification, but has effectively abandoned their position. French auction houses and courts have allowed for sales of Native American sacred property to proceed despite the objections of the Hopi Tribe. In …

Frames And Consensus Formation In International Relations: The Case Of Trafficking In Persons, Volha Charnysh, Paulette Lloyd, Beth A. Simmons

All Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the process of consensus formation by the international community regarding how to confront the problem of trafficking in persons. We analyze the corpus of United Nations General Assembly Third Committee resolutions to show that: (1) consensus around the issue of how to confront trafficking in persons has increased over time; and (2) the formation of this consensus depends upon how the issue is framed. We test our argument by examining the characteristics of resolutions’ sponsors and discursive framing concepts such as crime, human rights, and the strength of enforcement language. We conclude that the consensus-formation process in …

Panel I: United States Attitudes On The Role Of The United Nations Regarding The Maintenance And The Restoration Of Peace, William R. Clontz

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Panel I: United States Attitudes On The Role Of The United Nations Regarding The Maintenance And The Restoration Of Peace, Larry D. Johnson

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Panel I: United States Attitudes On The Role Of The United Nations Regarding The Maintenance And The Restoration Of Peace, Richard B. Bilder

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

Unesco Documents And Procedure: The Need To Account For Political Conflict When Designating World Heritage Sites, Allan Galis

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

A Regime In Need Of A Balance: The Un Counter-Terrorism Regime Between Security And Human Rights, Isaac Kfir

Isaac Kfir

Since 9/11, the UN’s counter-terrorism regime has developed two distinct approaches on combating international terrorism. The Security Council follows a traditional security doctrine that focuses on how to best protect states from the threat posed by international terrorists. This is largely due to the centrality of the state in Security Council thinking and attitudes. The General Assembly and the various UN human rights organs, influenced by the human security doctrine, have taken a more holistic, human rights-based approach to the threat of international terrorism. This paper offers a review of how the dichotomy above affects the application of UN policy …

The Ethics Of ‘Responsibility While Protecting’: Brazil, The Responsibility To Protect, And Guidelines For Humanitarian Intervention, James Pattison

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In the aftermath of the NATO intervention in Libya, the responsibility to protect (RtoP) doctrine has received considerable blowback. Various states, most notably some of the ‘BRICS’ states (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), claimed that NATO exceeded its mandate given to it by United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1973 (by allegedly focusing on regime change rather than on the protection of civilians), was inappropriate in its target selection, violated the arms embargo by transferring arms to rebels, and generally caused too much harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure.1 It was also suggested that the UK, US, and …

November Roundtable: The Palestine Bid For Statehood At The Un, Introduction, Claudia Fuentes Julio

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“Statehood versus “Facts on the Ground””. By Richard Falk. Aljazeera, September 20, 2011.

We Live In A Country Of Unhcr: The Un Surrogate State And Refugee Policy In The Middle East, Michael Kagan

Scholarly Works

Many gaps in the protection of refugees can be connected to a de facto transfer of responsibility for managing refugee policy from sovereign states to United Nations agencies. This phenomenon can be seen in dozens of countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, where the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) or the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) manage refugee camps, register newly arrived asylum-seekers, carry out refugee status determination, and administer education, health, livelihood and other social welfare programs.

In carrying out these functions, the UN acts to a great …

Innovation Cooperation: Energy Biosciences And Law, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

This Article analyzes the development and dissemination of environmentally sound technologies that can address climate change. Climate change poses catastrophic health and security risks on a global scale. Universities, individual innovators, private firms, civil society, governments, and the United Nations can unite in the common goal to address climate change. This Article recommends means by which legal, scientific, engineering, and a host of other public and private actors can bring environmentally sound innovation into widespread use to achieve sustainable development. In particular, universities can facilitate this collaboration by fostering global innovation and diffusion networks.

Internet Access Rights: A Brief History And Intellectual Origins, Jonathon Penney

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

If there is anything we have learned from recent protest movements around the world, and the heavy-handed government efforts to block, censor, suspend, and manipulate Internet connectivity, it is that access to the Internet, and its content, is anything but certain, especially when governments feel threatened. Despite these hard truths, the notion that people have a "right" to Internet access gained high-profile international recognition last year. In a report to the United Nations General Assembly in early 2011, Frank La Rue, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, held that Internet access should be recognized as a "human right". …

Collaborative Community-Based Natural Resource Management, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

This article analyzes the importance of increasing civil society actor access to and influence in international legal and policy negotiations, drawing from academic scholarship on governance, conservation and environmental sustainability, natural resource management, observations of civil society actors, and the authors’ experiences as participants in international environmental negotiations.

Emerging Law Addressing Climate Change And Water, Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

Prof. Elizabeth Burleson

The World Economic Forum recognizes that while restrictions on energy affect water systems and vice versa, energy and water policy are rarely coordinated. The International Panel on Climate Change predicts that wet places will become wetter and dry places will become dryer. Transboundary water, energy and climate coordination can occur through international consensus building.

The Myth Of Membership: Reforming The U.N. Human Rights Council, Sonia Cardenas

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The purportedly new-and-improved Human Rights Council is, by most accounts, failing to live up to its promise. Critics accuse the Council of following in the footsteps of its predecessor the U.N. Human Rights Commission because it permits rights abusers among its ranks and it focuses overwhelmingly on Israel. The dominant assumption, articulated by the United States, is that this is a problem of membership; more stringent criteria would result in a less biased body. This, however, is wishful thinking. Changing the rules of membership would only substitute one set of biases for another. A productive dialogue about reforming the Human …

Odious Debts Or Odious Regimes?, Patrick Bolton, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

Current odious debt doctrine– using the term “doctrine” loosely, since it has never formally been adopted by a court or international decision maker– dates back to a 1927 treatise by a wandering Russian academic named Alexander Sack. Sack suggested that debt obligations are odious and therefore unenforceable if 1) they were incurred without the consent of the populace; 2) they did not benefit the populace; and 3) the lender knew or should have known about the absence of consent and benefit. The tripartite Sack definition, which quickly became the foundation of odious debt analysis, contemplates a debt-by-debt approach to questionable …

The Un: A Situation Report, Benjamin Zawacki

ExpressO

The UN: A Situation Report is a review of two recent books on the past, present, and future of the UN; in short, of its relevance in a changing and uni-polar world at the end of Kofi Annan’s two terms as Secretary-General. The books’ focus is both on the organization’s successes and failures, and its efforts at self-reform in the face of near-constant criticism. They are reviewed as individually divergent in quality but as a formidable “situation report” when read in tandem. Paul Kennedy’s The Parliament of Man, save for its first of three parts, is generally criticized for its …

Of Politics And Policy: Can The U.S. Maintain Its Credibility Abroad While Ignoring The Needs Of Its Children At Home?—Revisiting The U.N. Convention On The Rights Of The Child As A Transnational Framework For Local Governing, Cleveland Ferguson

ExpressO

The article uses the lens of the Convention on the Rights of the Child as a framework for developing solutions. It compares the world’s approach of using the underpinnings of the Convention to create the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This process represents a positive evolution in international human rights law. Use of the MDGs has met with some success. As a result, the article compares the U.S. go-it-alone approach with that of the collaborative model of the MDGs. Pointing out that child law is primarily state law, the article then discusses the ways in which local governments (cities, counties, and …

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

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Perils Of "Consensus": Hans Kelsen And The Legal Philosophy Of The United Nations, J. Peter Pham

ExpressO

Recently the United States and a number of its traditional allies have clashed over a variety of foreign policy issues that are profoundly juridical: the authority for war and peace, the International Criminal Court, etc. The source of these recent tensions is to be located at a level deeper than that of narrow national interests and specific policies. Rather, they arise from significant differences concerning the nature of "consensus" and, ultimately, legal philosophy. While the United Nations and many other international organizations derive their legal visions from the philosophy of law of Hans Kelsen (1881-1973), one of the most important …