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Full-Text Articles in International Relations
The International Legal Order And The Rule Of Law, Vivian Grosswald Curran
The International Legal Order And The Rule Of Law, Vivian Grosswald Curran
Articles
This article addresses whether international law today is capable of instituting the rule of law. It offers a renewed look at the internationalists who brought us modern international law, such as Lauterpacht, Cassin and Lemkin. They tenaciously worked at placing the individual’s right to life and to human dignity front and center in international law while also preserving peace among states. Their struggle began in earnest first in the interwar years after the “war to end all wars” (1918 – 1939), and then again in 1945 after yet another, still worse, world war had occurred, devastating Europe, but leaving the …
“Time Is A-Wasting”: Making The Case For Cedaw Ratification By The United States, Rangita De Silva De Alwis, Melanne Verveer
“Time Is A-Wasting”: Making The Case For Cedaw Ratification By The United States, Rangita De Silva De Alwis, Melanne Verveer
All Faculty Scholarship
Since President Carter signed the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (the “CEDAW” or the “Convention”) on July 17, 1980, the United States has failed to ratify the Convention time and again. As one of only a handful of countries that has not ratified the CEDAW, the United States is in the same company as Sudan, Somalia, Iran, Tonga, and Palau. When CEDAW ratification stalled yet again in 2002, then-Senator Joseph Biden lamented that “[t]ime is a-wasting.”
Writing in 2002, Harold Koh, former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, bemoaned America’s …
The Proof Is In The Process: Self-Reporting Under International Human Rights Treaties, Cosette D. Creamer, Beth A. Simmons
The Proof Is In The Process: Self-Reporting Under International Human Rights Treaties, Cosette D. Creamer, Beth A. Simmons
All Faculty Scholarship
Recent research has shown that state reporting to human rights monitoring bodies is associated with improvements in rights practices, calling into question earlier claims that self-reporting is inconsequential. Yet little work has been done to explore the theoretical mechanisms that plausibly account for this association. This Article systematically documents—across treaties, countries, and years—four mechanisms through which reporting can contribute to human rights improvements: elite socialization, learning and capacity building, domestic mobilization, and law development. These mechanisms have implications for the future of human rights treaty monitoring.
Book Review: Not Enough: Human Rights In An Unequal World, Harlan G. Cohen
Book Review: Not Enough: Human Rights In An Unequal World, Harlan G. Cohen
Scholarly Works
Review of the book Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World. By Samuel Moyn. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press 2018. Pp. ix, 220. Index.
Do Self-Reporting Regimes Matter? Evidence From The Convention Against Torture, Beth A. Simmons, Cosette D. Creamer
Do Self-Reporting Regimes Matter? Evidence From The Convention Against Torture, Beth A. Simmons, Cosette D. Creamer
All Faculty Scholarship
International regulatory agreements depend largely on self-reporting for implementation, yet we know almost nothing about whether or how such mechanisms work. We theorize that self-reporting processes provide information for domestic constituencies, with the potential to create pressure for better compliance. Using original data on state reports submitted to the Committee Against Torture, we demonstrate the influence of this process on the pervasiveness of torture and inhumane treatment. We illustrate the power of self-reporting regimes to mobilize domestic politics through evidence of civil society participation in shadow reporting, media attention, and legislative activity around anti-torture law and practice. This is the …
Framing For A New Transnational Legal Order: The Case Of Human Trafficking, Paulette Lloyd, Beth A. Simmons
Framing For A New Transnational Legal Order: The Case Of Human Trafficking, Paulette Lloyd, Beth A. Simmons
All Faculty Scholarship
How does transnational legal order emerge, develop and solidify? This chapter focuses on how and why actors come to define an issue as one requiring transnational legal intervention of a specific kind. Specifically, we focus on how and why states have increasingly constructed and acceded to international legal norms relating to human trafficking. Empirically, human trafficking has been on the international and transnational agenda for nearly a century. However, relatively recently – and fairly swiftly in the 2000s – governments have committed themselves to criminalize human trafficking in international as well as regional and domestic law. Our paper tries to …
Advantaging Aggressors: Justice & Deterrence In International Law, Paul H. Robinson, Adil Ahmad Haque
Advantaging Aggressors: Justice & Deterrence In International Law, Paul H. Robinson, Adil Ahmad Haque
All Faculty Scholarship
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 …
Adoption Of The Responsibility To Protect, William W. Burke-White
Adoption Of The Responsibility To Protect, William W. Burke-White
All Faculty Scholarship
This book chapter traces the legal and political origins of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine from its early origins in the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty through the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document and up to January 2011. The chapter examines the legal meaning of the Responsibility to Protect, the obligations the Responsibility imposes on states and international institutions, and its implications in for the international legal and political systems. The chapter argues that while the Responsibility to Protect has developed with extraordinary speed, it is still a norm in development rather than a binding legal rule. Its …
Notes In Defense Of The Iraq Constitution, Haider Ala Hamoudi
Notes In Defense Of The Iraq Constitution, Haider Ala Hamoudi
Articles
This paper is a defense of sorts of the Iraqi constitution, arguing that the language used in it was wisely designed to allow some level of flexibility, such that highly divided political forces could find incremental solutions to the deep rooted sources of division that have plagued Iraqi society since its inception. That Iraq has found itself in such dreadful political circumstances since constitutional ratification is therefore not a function of the open ended constitutional bargain, but rather of the failure of Iraqi legal and political elites to make use of the space that the constitution provided them to develop …
The European Court’S Political Power Across Time And Space, Karen Alter
The European Court’S Political Power Across Time And Space, Karen Alter
Faculty Working Papers
This article extracts from Alter's larger body of work insights on how the political and social context shapes the ECJ's political power and influence. Part I considers how the political context facilitated the constitutionalization of the European legal system. Part II considers how the political context helps determine where and when the current ECJ influences European politics. Part III draws lessons from the ECJ's experience, speculating on how the European context in specific allowed the ECJ to become such an exceptional international court. Part IV lays out a research agenda to investigate the larger question of how social support shapes …
Benign Hegemony? Kosovo And Article 2(4) Of The U.N. Charter, Jules Lobel
Benign Hegemony? Kosovo And Article 2(4) Of The U.N. Charter, Jules Lobel
Articles
The 1999 U.S.-led, NATO-assisted air strike against Yugoslavia has been extolled by some as leading to the creation of a new rule of international law permitting nations to undertake forceful humanitarian intervention where the Security Council cannot act. This view posits the United States as a benevolent hegemon militarily intervening in certain circumstances in defense of such universal values as the protection of human rights. This article challenges that view. NATO's Kosovo intervention does not represent a benign hegemony introducing a new rule of international law. Rather, the United States, freed from Cold War competition with a rival superpower, is …