International Law Commons^™

Climate Change And The Challenges To Democracy, Marcello Di Paola, Dale Jamieson

University of Miami Law Review

This Article explores the uneasy interaction between climate change and democracy, particularly liberal democracy. Its central claim is that climate change and other problems of the Anthropocene—this new epoch into which no earthly entity, process, or system escapes the reach and influence of human activity—expose and exacerbate existing vulnerabilities in democratic theory and practice, particularly in their currently dominant liberal form; and that both democracies’ failures and their most promising attempts at managing these problems expose democracies to significant legitimacy challenges.

Limiting The National Right To Exclude, Katrina M. Wyman

University of Miami Law Review

This essay argues that the robust right to exclude that nation states currently enjoy will be harder to justify in an era of climate change. Similar to landowners, nation states have virtual monopolies over portions of the earth. However, the right of landowners to control who enters their land is considerably more constrained than the right of nation states to control who enters their territory. Climate change will alter the areas of the earth suitable for human habitation and the broad right of nation states to exclude will be more difficult to justify in this new environment.

The Climate For Human Rights, Rebecca M. Bratspies

University of Miami Law Review

Climate change is the defining challenge of the 21st century. The United States government is currently ignoring the problem, but wishful thinking alone will not keep global mean temperature rise below 2ºC. This Article proposes a way forward. It advises environmental decision-makers to use human rights norms to guide them as they make decisions under United States law. By reframing their discretion through a human rights lens, decision-makers can use their existing authority to respond to the super-wicked problem of climate change

Climate Change And Human Trafficking After The Paris Agreement, Michael B. Gerrard

University of Miami Law Review

At least 21 million people globally are victims of human trafficking, typically involving either sexual exploitation or forced labor. This form of modern-day slavery tends to increase after natural disasters or conflicts where large numbers of people are displaced from their homes and become highly vulnerable. In the decades to come, climate change will very likely lead to a large increase in the number of people who are displaced and thus vulnerable to trafficking. The Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 established objectives to limit global temperature increases, but the voluntary pledges made by nearly every country fall far short of ...

A King Who Devours His People: Jiang Zemin And The Falun Gong Crackddown: A Bibliography, Michael J. Greenlee

Michael Greenlee

In July 1999, the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began an official crackdown against the qigong cultivation group known as Falun Gong. Intended to quickly contain and eliminate what the PRC considers an evil or heretical cult (xiejiao), the suppression has instead created the longest sustained and, since the Tiananmen Square protests of June 1989, most widely known human rights protest conducted in the PRC. The Falun Gong has received worldwide recognition and support while the crackdown continues to provoke harsh criticism against the PRC as new allegations of human ...

Global Governance Of Climate Change: The Paris Agreement As A New Component Of The Un Climate Regime, David Wirth

David A. Wirth

The Paris Agreement, which was adopted in December 2015 and entered into force less than a year later, is the newest instrument to be adopted in the United Nations-sponsored global climate regime. The Paris Agreement takes its place under the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change and next to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and 2012 Doha Amendment. After describing the historical evolution of the UN climate regime employing the tools of international law, this Article explores the structural, institutional, and legal relationships between the new Paris Agreement and the prior development and content of UN-sponsored efforts on climate protection under ...

A Continent Divided: Nationalism And The European Union, Vlad Perju

Vlad Perju

No abstract provided.

Globalization, Inequality & International Economic Law, Frank J. Garcia

Frank J. Garcia

International law in general, and international economic law in particular, to the extent that either has focused on the issue of inequality, has done so in terms of inequality between states. Largely overlooked has been the topic of inequality within states and how international law has influenced that reality. From the perspective of international economic law, the inequality issue is closely entwined with the topics of colonialism and post-colonialism, the proper meaning of development, and globalization. While international economic law has undoubtedly contributed to the rise of inequality, it is now vital that the subject of international economic law be ...

A Comparison Of Constitutionalism In France And The United States, Martin A. Rogoff

Maine Law Review

In the American legal system, the Constitution is the fundamental legal document. All law, and in fact any exercise of public power in any form, is evaluated for validity by constitutional standards. The Constitution deals with such crucially important matters as the structure and operation of government and the fundamental rights of the governed. The Constitution is also the most important symbol of American national life and the perceived repository of the most cherished values of the American people. In France, in marked contrast, a comprehensive code of private law, the Code civil, has for a long time occupied a ...

Global Intersections: Critical Race Feminist Human Rights And Inter/National Black Women, Hope Lewis

Maine Law Review

In this brief essay, I illustrate how Critical Race Feminist analysis could reconceptualize the human rights problems facing “Inter/national Black women” --in this case, Black women who migrate between the United States and Jamaica. This focus on Jamaican American migrants is very personal as well as political; I was raised by Jamaican American women. However, I have begun to focus on such women in my research not only in a search for “home” but also because there are important lessons to be learned from those who are the least visible in the legal literature. I draw the framework for ...

Shattered Jade, Broken Shoe: Foreign Economic Development And The Sexual Exploitation Of Women In China, Elizabeth Spahn

Maine Law Review

Predicting the ways in which feminisms might develop in the next century is unfortunately well beyond my own capabilities. In the next decade or two, however, one thing I believe we might want to think about are the relationships between feminisms and global free market capitalisms. The question I am asking, simply stated, is the extent to which economic development (free-market global capitalism) advances, is neutral toward, or harms women. One traditional American way of viewing the global free market is to tout economic development as a panacea for the problems facing the world's poorest and most violated group ...

Book Review: La Muerte Del Verdugo: Reflexiones Interdisciplinarias Sobre El Cadáver De Los Criminales De Masa, Vincent Druliolle

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Review of La Muerte del Verdugo. Reflexiones Interdisciplinarias Sobre el Cadáver de los Criminales de Masa, ed. Séviane Garibian (Buenos Aires: Miño y Dávila editores, 2016)

Being Seen Like A State: How Americans (And Britons) Built The Constitutional Infrastructure Of A Developing Nation, Daniel Hulsebosch

New York University Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

This Article develops the argument that the Federal Constitution of 1787 was conceptualized, drafted, and put into operation not only for American citizens but also for foreign audiences. In a world without supranational governing institutions, a constitution—at least, the Federal Constitution—might serve to promote peaceable international relations based on reciprocal trade and open credit. That at least was the Enlightenment-inflected hope. Did it work? If early Americans engaged in constitution-making in large part to demonstrate their capacity for self-government, selfdiscipline, and commercial openness to foreign audiences, did anyone notice? Or was it all, regardless of diplomatic purposes and ...

From Imperial To International Law: Protecting Foreign Expectations In The Early United States, Daniel Hulsebosch

New York University Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

This Essay argues that several principles associated with modern international investment law and dispute resolution arose in the wake of the American Revolution, as the revolutionaries and Britons sought to restructure trade relations, previously regulated by imperial law, under new treaties and the law of nations. They negotiated such problems as the currency in which international debts would be paid; the ability of foreign creditors pursue domestic collection remedies; whether creditors had to exhaust those remedies before their nation could resort to international arbitration; and the form of state-state arbitration of private disputes. The specific setting of these negotiations—the ...

Rendition In Extraordinary Times, Margaret L. Satterthwaite, Alexandra M. Zetes

New York University Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers

The practice of rendition—the involuntary transfer of an individual across borders without recourse to extradition or deportation proceedings—is not new. Indeed, the practice of snatching a defendant for trial—“rendition to justice”—has been used by governments for more than a century. Although rendition has been controversial in human rights circles, it has been celebrated by many as crucial in the fight against impunity for grave crimes. Former U.S. President George W. Bush was criticized for the “novel” practice of “extraordinary rendition”—the transfer of suspects to locations known for the systematic use of torture, including secret ...

Neutrality: A Tool Or A Limit For Preventing Mass Atrocitiy Crimes And Genocide? The Case Of Switzerland, Giulia Persoz

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The present article aims to confront the Swiss practice regarding the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities in Swiss foreign policy and its particularities shaping its international relations. Neutrality, a core part of Switzerland's identity on both the internal political level and the international level, will be at the center of our analysis. Indeed, how can a country engage in prevention activities while keeping its neutral status? How does neutrality influence these activities throughout times? What foreseeable impact could neutrality have on them? To answer these questions, the article will be divided as follow: the first part will be ...

Rational Basis Is The Only Rational Solution: Resolving Foreign Commerce Clause Confusion, Justin Senior

Florida Law Review

Congress enacted the PROTECT Act in 2003 to curtail the sexual abuse of children by U.S. citizens abroad. While the Act has not received much attention from scholars or courts, defendants in court consistently challenge its constitutionality. Congress maintains that it has the Foreign Commerce Clause power to prohibit the illicit sex activity in question. However, the Foreign Commerce Clause, unlike its Interstate and Indian Commerce Clause brethren, has received very little attention. The Supreme Court has rarely—and not at all recently—discussed the Foreign Commerce Clause; and its lack of guidance in this arena has led to ...

From Incentive To Commodity To Asset: How International Law Is Reconceptualizing Intellectual Property, Rochelle Dreyfuss, Susy Frankel

Susy Frankel

Domestic patent, copyright and trademark regimes are traditionally justified on an incentive rationale. While international intellectual property agreements are nominally aimed at harnessing global markets to expand incentives, this article argues that as these agreements come into force, a subtle, but significant, reconceptualization is taking place. Free trade agreements treat intellectual property rights as commodities; bilateral investment treaties convert them into assets. Using examples involving the “working requirement” in patent law and pending disputes challenging Australia’s limits on the use of trademarks on tobacco products, we show that as these moves progressively detach intellectual property from its incentives basis ...

Law Beyond The State And The Renewal Of Legal Spaces, Bamdad Shams

Bamdad Shams

Serving Pets In Poverty: A New Frontier For The Animal Welfare Movement, Amanda Arrington, Michael Markarian

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

No abstract provided.