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Full-Text Articles in Jurisprudence

The Principles Of International Law: Interpretivism And Its Judicial Consequences, Gianluigi Palombella Jan 2015

The Principles Of International Law: Interpretivism And Its Judicial Consequences, Gianluigi Palombella

Gianluigi Palombella

Principles are part of international law as much as of other legal orders. Nonetheless, beyond principles referred to the functioning of IL, or the sector related discipline in discrete fields, those fundamental principles identifying the raison d’etre, purpose and value of the legal international order, as a whole, remain much disputed, to say the least. In addressing such a problem, one that deeply affects interpretation and legal adjudication, this article acknowledges the limits and weakness of legal positivism in making sense of the inter- and supra-national legal order(s). It appraises also the novel from the late Ronald Dworkin, concerning …


An Other History Of Knowledge And Decision In Precautionary Approaches To Sustainability, Saptarishi Bandopadhyay Jul 2014

An Other History Of Knowledge And Decision In Precautionary Approaches To Sustainability, Saptarishi Bandopadhyay

Saptarishi Bandopadhyay

In this paper, I offer an alternative reading of precaution with the hope of recovering the capacity of this ethic to facilitate legal and political decisions. Despite being a popular instrument of international environmental governance, decision-makers continue to understand this principle as reflecting an immemorial and natural instinct for preserving the environment in cases of scientific uncertainty. Such a reading, however, ignores the history and moral basis underlying this principle and thereby renders it obvious, and automatically adaptable to the politics of Sustainable Development. By offering a thicker history of precautionary governance at exemplary moments of ecological crisis I trace …


Liberty, Equality, Diversity: States, Cultures And International Law, Ana Filipa Vrdoljak Nov 2013

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 …


Global Poverty And The Right To Development In International Law, Patrick Macklem May 2013

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 …


The (Re-) Constitution Of The Public, Gianluigi Palombella Jan 2012

The (Re-) Constitution Of The Public, Gianluigi Palombella

Gianluigi Palombella

This article deals with the prospect of public law in global governance. It analyses firstly the foundations of modern public law and considers what is left of them in the global setting. Are they still holding through States’ de-centering practices, detached from the legitimating grounds of the modern ‘idea of publicness’? What is called here the duality of public law (in its State-related political and juridical strands) fades and decouples in the sphere where inherently ‘global’ legalities originate of a deracinated type: the distinctively global ‘public’ only provides a ‘suspended public law’ and politically unsaturated. The Constitution of the Public …


Critical Theories Of Race And Racism In World Perspective, Angela P. Harris Dec 2011

Critical Theories Of Race And Racism In World Perspective, Angela P. Harris

Angela P Harris

This introduction to an edited collection on race and equality to be published by Ashgate Press surveys antidiscrimination law in a number of countries from a critical race theory perspective.


On The Language Of (Counter)Terrorism And The Legal Geography Of Terror, Nick J. Sciullo Dec 2011

On The Language Of (Counter)Terrorism And The Legal Geography Of Terror, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

In this paper, I will discuss the difficulties in defining a place for the global war on terror and the implications this lack of terrestrial bounds has for the law. I will then discuss the way language impacts not only the idea of terrorism, but also the politics of place. On our journey will be philosophers Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida, discussed extensively below, who help flesh out the important politics of language and place. Ultimately, I will urge for a deconstructive approach to the global war on terror, which I hope will encourage a more thoughtful consideration of the …


Legal Mechanization Of Corporate Social Responsibility Through Alien Tort Statute Litigation: A Response To Professor Branson With Some Supplemental Thoughts, Donald J. Kochan Jul 2011

Legal Mechanization Of Corporate Social Responsibility Through Alien Tort Statute Litigation: A Response To Professor Branson With Some Supplemental Thoughts, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

This Response argues that as ATS jurisprudence “matures” or becomes more sophisticated, the legitimate limits of the law regress. The further expansion within the corporate defendant pool – attempting to pin liability on parent, great grandparent corporations and up to the top – raises the stakes and complexity of ATS litigation. The corporate social responsibility discussion raises three principal issues about how a moral corporation lives its life: how a corporation chooses its self-interest versus the interests of others, when and how it should help others if control decisions may harm the shareholder owners, and how far the corporation must …


The Rule Of Law In Global Governance: Its Normative Construction, Function And Import, Gianluigi Palombella Jan 2011

The Rule Of Law In Global Governance: Its Normative Construction, Function And Import, Gianluigi Palombella

Gianluigi Palombella

What does the Rule of law contribute in the frame of global governance? While addressing metamorphoses of law and the multiple legalities in the global context, this paper shows that the rule of law can consistently be extended externally being cherished internally. It takes seriously the concurrence of different legalities in their diverse ‘formats’, and the challenge of the “global administrative law” theoretical and empirical model. At the meta-level of the relations among legalities, the Rule of law has an essential role to play: it affects interactions and interdependence,and can cause content-dependent assessments to develop, without supporting self-closure or monistic …


Una Aproximación Al Debate Democrático En Derecho Internacional, Ignacio De La Rasilla Del Moral Jan 2010

Una Aproximación Al Debate Democrático En Derecho Internacional, Ignacio De La Rasilla Del Moral

Ignacio de la Rasilla del Moral, Ph.D.

Taking as it starting point a critical introduction to the democratic debate in international law, the object of the present work is that of contributing to the critical development of an appropiate methodology for the exam of the normative pretension according to which the international legal order would be developing within itself a particular conception of the liberal State. Such a conception would be premised in the gradual emergence of an international legal obligation that would command the development within every sovereign state of institutions of democratic governance, thus marking the transition from the paradigm of equivalence of domestic political …


A No-Excuse Approach To Transitional Justice: Reparations As Tools Of Extraordinary Justice, David C. Gray Aug 2009

A No-Excuse Approach To Transitional Justice: Reparations As Tools Of Extraordinary Justice, David C. Gray

David C. Gray

It is sometimes the case that a debate goes off the rails so early that riders assume the rough country around them is the natural backdrop for their travels. That is certainly true in the debate over reparations in transitions to democracy. Reparations traditionally are understood as material or symbolic awards to victims of an abusive regime granted outside of a legal process. While some reparations claims succeed—such as those made by Americans of Japanese decent interned during World War II and those made by European Jews against Germany after World War II—most do not. The principal culprits in these …


Global Threads: Weaving The Rule Of Law And The Balance Of Legal Software, Gianluigi Palombella Jan 2009

Global Threads: Weaving The Rule Of Law And The Balance Of Legal Software, Gianluigi Palombella

Gianluigi Palombella

The article shows how the global legal sphere attempts to compensate the lack of a system (hardware) and faces the proliferation of legal normativities (software). The author elaborates on the role of the rule of law: after stressing the ambiguities and the contestability of its current uses in the confrontations between legal orders and regulatory regimes, it is explained that the persistence and promise of the rule of law in the global setting depend on the weaving of a set of meta-rules (a special kind of software) developed through various areas and sources of legalities in the international environment. Eventually, …


The Rule Of Law, Democracy, And International Law - Learning From The Us Experience, Gianluigi Palombella Dec 2007

The Rule Of Law, Democracy, And International Law - Learning From The Us Experience, Gianluigi Palombella

Gianluigi Palombella

The general issue addressed in this paper is the relation between the rule of law as a matter of national law, and as a matter of international law. Different institutional conceptions of this relationship give rise to different attitudes towards international law. Nonetheless, questions arise that cast doubt on age-old tenets of certain Western countries concerning the radical separability between the rule of law within the domestic system and in the international realm. The article will start considering some recent developments in the United States' treatment of alien detainees. Then it shall address the relation between domestic constitutions and international …


Rättens Ordning I Den Tid Som Återstår, Matilda Arvidsson Dec 2005

Rättens Ordning I Den Tid Som Återstår, Matilda Arvidsson

Dr Matilda Arvidsson

The article investigates the fundamental concept of 'time' within the framework of the laws of war, using the War on Terrorism as a starting point and the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq as an example. The article argues for an eschatological understanding of time during the War on Terrorism, framing a state of exception, and ultimately keeping law on hold in an enduring 'now' while messianic hopes for redemption are directed towards a new future to come after war.


Sovereignty And The American Courts At The Cocktail Party Of International Law: The Dangers Of Domestic Invocations Of Foreign And International Law, Donald J. Kochan Dec 2005

Sovereignty And The American Courts At The Cocktail Party Of International Law: The Dangers Of Domestic Invocations Of Foreign And International Law, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

With increasing frequency and heightened debate, United States courts have been citing foreign and “international” law as authority for domestic decisions. This trend is inappropriate, undemocratic, and dangerous. The trend touches on fundamental concepts of sovereignty, democracy, the judicial role, and overall issues of effective governance. There are multiple problems with the judiciary’s reliance on extraterritorial and extra-constitutional foreign or international sources to guide their decisions. Perhaps the most fundamental flaw is its interference with rule of law values. To borrow from Judge Harold Levanthal, the use of international sources in judicial decision-making might be described as “the equivalent of …


The Political Economy Of The Production Of Customary International Law: The Role Of Non-Governmental Organizations, Donald J. Kochan Dec 2003

The Political Economy Of The Production Of Customary International Law: The Role Of Non-Governmental Organizations, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Increasingly, United States courts are recognizing various treaties, as well as declarations, proclamations, conventions, resolutions, programmes, protocols, and similar forms of inter- or multi-national “legislation” as evidence of a body of “customary international law” enforceable in domestic courts, particularly in the area of tort liability. These “legislative” documents, which this Article refers to as customary international law outputs, are seen by some courts as evidence of jus cogens norms that bind not only nations and state actors, but also private individuals. The most obvious evidence of this trend is in the proliferation of lawsuits against corporations with ties to the …


Constitutional Structure As A Limitation On The Scope Of The "Law Of Nations" In The Alien Tort Claims Act, Donald J. Kochan Dec 1997

Constitutional Structure As A Limitation On The Scope Of The "Law Of Nations" In The Alien Tort Claims Act, Donald J. Kochan

Donald J. Kochan

Jurisdiction matters. Outside of the set of jurisdictional constraints, the judiciary is at sea; it poses a threat to the separation of powers and risks becoming a dangerous and domineering branch. Jurisdictional limitations serve a particularly important function when the judiciary is dealing with issues of international law. Since much of international law concerns foreign relations, the province of the executive and, in part, the legislature, the danger that the judiciary will act in a policy-making role or will frustrate the functions of the political branches is especially great. The Framers of the Constitution were particularly concerned with constructing a …