National Security Law Commons^™

Border Orientation In A Globalizing World, Beth A. Simmons, Michael R. Kenwick

All Faculty Scholarship

Border politics are a salient component of high international politics. States are increasingly building infrastructure to ‘secure’ their borders. We introduce the concept of border orientation to describe the extent to which the State is committed to the spatial display of capacities to control the terms of penetration of its national borders. Border orientation provides a lens through which to analyze resistance to globalization, growing populism, and the consequences of intensified border politics. We measure border orientation using novel, geo-spatial data on the built environment along the world’s borders and theorize that real and perceived pressures of globalization have resulted …

The Psychology Of Separation: Border Walls, Soft Power, And International Neighborliness, Diana C. Mutz, Beth A. Simmons

All Faculty Scholarship

This study assesses the impact of international border walls on evaluations of countries and on beliefs about bilateral relationships between states. Using a short video, we experimentally manipulate whether a border wall image appears in a broader description of the history and culture of a little-known country. In a third condition, we also indicate which bordering country built the wall. Demographically representative samples from the United States, Ireland, and Turkey responded similarly to these experimental treatments. Compared to a control group, border walls lowered evaluations of the bordering countries. They also signified hostile international relationships to third-party observers. Furthermore, the …

Pandemic Response As Border Politics, Michael R. Kenwick, Beth A. Simmons

All Faculty Scholarship

Pandemics are imbued with the politics of bordering. For centuries, border closures and restrictions on foreign travelers have been the most persistent and pervasive means by which states have responded to global health crises. The ubiquity of these policies is not driven by any clear scientific consensus about their utility in the face of myriad pandemic threats. Instead, we show they are influenced by public opinion and preexisting commitments to invest in the symbols and structures of state efforts to control their borders, a concept we call border orientation. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, border orientation was already generally …

Rejoining Treaties, Jean Galbraith

All Faculty Scholarship

Historical practice supports the conclusion that the President can unilaterally withdraw the United States from treaties which an earlier President joined with the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Senate, at least as long as this withdrawal is consistent with international law. This Article considers a further question that to date is deeply underexplored. This is: does the original Senate resolution of advice and consent to a treaty remain effective even after a President has withdrawn the United States from a treaty? I argue that the answer to this question is yes, except in certain limited circumstances. This answer …

Borders Rules, Beth A. Simmons

All Faculty Scholarship

International political borders have historically performed one overriding function: the delimitation of a state’s territorial jurisdiction, but today they are sites of intense security scrutiny and law enforcement. Traditionally they were created to secure peace through territorial independence of political units. Today borders face new pressures from heightened human mobility, economic interdependence (legal and illicit), and perceived challenges from a host of nonstate threats. Research has only begun to reveal what some of these changes mean for the governance of interstate borders. The problems surrounding international borders today go well-beyond traditional delineation and delimitation. These problems call for active forms …

The Dynamism Of Treaties, Yanbai Andrea Wang

All Faculty Scholarship

How do treaties change over time? This Article joins a growing body of scholarship focusing not on formal change mechanisms but instead on informal change arising from a treaty’s implementation in practice. Informal implementation is often murky, poorly documented, and may be indistinguishable from noncompliance. Yet it is significant both doctrinally under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties—a set of rules for the formation and operation of treaties—and in its own right, when it does not meet the requirements to be doctrinally relevant. Based on a deep dive into the history of one of the oldest areas of …

Presidential War Powers As An Interactive Dynamic: International Law, Domestic Law, And Practice-Based Legal Change, Curtis A. Bradley, Jean Galbraith

All Faculty Scholarship

There is a rich literature on the circumstances under which the United Nations Charter or specific Security Council resolutions authorize nations to use force abroad, and there is a rich literature on the circumstances under which the U.S. Constitution and statutory law allows the President to use force abroad. These are largely separate areas of scholarship, addressing what are generally perceived to be two distinct levels of legal doctrine. This Article, by contrast, considers these two levels of doctrine together as they relate to the United States. In doing so, it makes three main contributions. First, it demonstrates striking parallels …

Ratification, Reporting, And Rights: Quality Of Participation In The Convention Against Torture, Cossette D. Creamer, Beth A. Simmons

All Faculty Scholarship

The core international human rights treaty bodies play an important role in monitoring implementation of human rights standards through consideration of states parties’ reports. Yet very little research explores how seriously governments take their reporting obligations. This article examines the reporting record of parties to the Convention against Torture, finding that report submission is heavily conditioned by the practices of neighboring countries and by a government’s human rights commitment and institutional capacity. This article also introduces original data on the quality and responsiveness of reports, finding that more democratic—and particularly newly democratic—governments tend to render higher quality reports.

Introduction: Cyber And The Changing Face Of War, Claire Oakes Finkelstein, Kevin H. Govern

All Faculty Scholarship

Cyberweapons and cyberwarfare are one of the most dangerous innovations of recent years, and a significant threat to national security. Cyberweapons can imperil economic, political, and military systems by a single act, or by multifaceted orders of effect, with wide-ranging potential consequences. Cyberwarfare occupies an ambiguous status in the conventions of the laws of war. This book addresses Ethical and legal issues surrounding cyberwarfare by considering whether the Laws of Armed Conflict apply to cyberspace and the ethical position of cyberwarfare against the background of our generally recognized moral traditions in armed conflict. The book explores these moral and legal …

Cyber Espionage Or Cyber War?: International Law, Domestic Law, And Self-Protective Measures, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

Scholars have spent considerable effort determining how the law of war (particularly jus ad bellum and jus in bello) applies to cyber conflicts, epitomized by the Tallinn Manual on the International Law Applicable to Cyber Warfare. Many prominent cyber operations fall outside the law of war, including the surveillance programs that Edward Snowden has alleged were conducted by the National Security Agency, the distributed denial of service attacks launched against Estonia and Georgia in 2007 and 2008, the 2008 Stuxnet virus designed to hinder the Iranian nuclear program, and the unrestricted cyber warfare described in the 1999 book by …

Soft Law As Foreign Relations Law, Jean Galbraith, David Zaring

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The United States increasingly relies on “soft law” and, in particular, on cooperation with foreign regulators to make domestic policy. The implementation of soft law at home is typically understood to depend on administrative law, as it is American agencies that implement the deals they conclude with their foreign counterparts. But that understanding has led courts and scholars to raise questions about whether soft law made abroad can possibly meet the doctrinal requirements of the domestic discipline. This Article proposes a new doctrinal understanding of soft law implementation. It argues that, properly understood, soft law implementation lies at the intersection …

Advantaging Aggressors: Justice & Deterrence In International Law, Paul H. Robinson, Adil Ahmad Haque

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Current international law imposes limitations on the use of force to defend against unlawful aggression that improperly advantage unlawful aggressors and disadvantage their victims. The Article gives examples of such rules, governing a variety of situations, showing how clearly unjust they can be. No domestic criminal law system would tolerate their use.

There are good practical reasons why international law should care that its rules are perceived as unjust. Given the lack of an effective international law enforcement mechanism, compliance depends to a large degree upon the moral authority with which international law speaks. Compliance is less likely when its …

Human Rights And National Security: The Strategic Correlation, William W. Burke-White

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.