Legal History Commons^™

International Law In Domestic Courts: A Conflict Of Laws Approach, Karen Knop, Ralf Michaels, Annelise Riles

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

The relationship between international law and domestic law is rarely understood as a conflict of laws. Understanding it in this way opens up a parallel with the field of conflict of laws: the field for which the relationship between legal systems, especially the role of another system's jurisdiction, laws, and judgments vis-à-vis the domestic legal system, are exactly the bread-and-butter issues. We argue for such an approach to international law in domestic courts: an approach that we elaborate as "theory through technique."

In our view, conflicts should be seen broadly as the discipline that developed to deal with conflicts between …

A New Agenda For The Cultural Study Of Law: Taking On The Technicalities, Annelise Riles

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This article urges humanistic legal studies to take the technical dimensions of law as a central focus of inquiry. Using archival and ethnographic investigations into developments in American Conflict of Laws doctrines as an example, and building on insights in the anthropology of knowledge and in science and technology studies that focus on technical practices in scientific and engineering domains, it aims to show that the technologies of law - an ideology that law is a tool and an accompanying technical aesthetic of legal knowledge - are far more central and far more interesting dimensions of legal practice than humanists …

The Concept Of Function And The Basis Of Regulatory Interests Under Functional Choice-Of-Law Theory: The Significance Of Benefit And The Insignificance Of Intention, Gregory S. Alexander

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Recent literature and judicial opinions have recognized the need for control and consistency in choice of law. Although the formulation of choice-of-law theory in terms of the states' interests in the conflicting rules at issue has gained wide acceptance, the courts have been unable to agree upon criteria for determining when a state has a valid interest in dispute resolution. Moreover, courts frequently appear all too eager to use contemporary choice-of-law analysis to justify local regulation of multistate disputes despite insubstantial local relationships. The inconsistency and local bias both stem from the lack of a coherent theory for discerning the …