Judges Commons^™

Appraising The U.S. Supreme Court’S Philipp Decision, Vivian Grosswald Curran

Articles

This article assesses the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) after the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Germany v. Philipp. Philipp’s rejection of a genocide exception for a foreign state’s act of property expropriation comports with the absence of such an exception in the FSIA’s text. The article also suggests that the genocide exception as it had been developing was a detrimental development in FSIA interpretation, and was also harmful to international human rights law, inasmuch as it distorted the concept of genocide. The Philipp Court’s renewed focus on the international law of property, rather than of human rights, should …

Treaties As Law And The Rule Of Law: The Judicial Power To Compel Domestic Treaty Implementation, William M. Carter Jr.

Articles

The Supremacy Clause makes the Constitution, federal statutes, and ratified treaties part of the "supreme law of the land." Despite the textual and historical clarity of the Supremacy Clause, some courts and commentators have suggested that the "non-self-executing treaty doctrine" means that ratified treaties must await implementing legislation before they become domestic law. The non-self-executing treaty doctrine has in particular been used as a shield to claims under international human rights treaties.

This Article does not seek to provide another critique of the non-self-executing treaty doctrine in the abstract. Rather, I suggest that a determination that a treaty is non-self-executing …