Digital Commons Network^™

Avoid Or Compensate? Liability For Incidental Injury To Civilians Inflicted During Armed Conflict, Yael Ronen

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Under international law, civilians suffering injuries that are incidental to a lawful attack on a military objective are left to bear the cost of their losses. In recent years there have been calls for a change in policy that would entitle victims of military attacks to compensation, even if their losses are incidental and non-fault-based. This Article explores the notion of such a quasi-strict liability rule, which is likely to disrupt the existing balance of powers and interests under the laws of armed conflict. Following an exploration of the conceptual basis for such an obligation, the Article examines the effect …

The Terrorism Bar To Asylum In Australia, Canada, The United Kingdom, And The United States: Transporting Best Practices, Won Kidane

Fordham International Law Journal

This Article assesses the wisdom of the substantive laws enacted in the wake of 9/11 and the procedures set up to combat this enemy. This Article is divided into four parts. Part I evaluates the doctrinal debate relating to the definition of terror, terrorism and terrorists. More particularly, it attemps to demonstrate the difficulty in identify the "terrorist" that needs to be excluded, and how that definition affects the immigration laws. Part II sets the stage for a comparative analysis by briefly surverying the terrorism-related immigration laws and procedures of each jurisdiction to this study. Part III provides a detailed …

A Tiny Problem With Huge Implications - Nanotech Agents As Enablers Or Substitutes For Banned Chemical Weapons: Is A New Treaty Needed?, Evan J. Wallach

Fordham International Law Journal

The underlying thesis of this Article is that while smaller-sized particles and separate nano-sized carriers of known agents are clearly covered by the CWC, nanomimics are not as squarely within the relevant provisions. The bulk of this Article deals with that question. Despite the invitation to woolgather, this Article is limited to the tightest possible analytical approach. Part I begins with definitions of chemical and biological agents within existing treaties, and of nanoproducts, including those existing beyond presently-known technical capabilities, but which are at least reasonably conceivable (“nanobots”). Part II provides an overview of treaty law that is potentially applicable …

Legal And Policy Factors Governing The Imposition Of Conditions On Access To And Jurisdiction Over Foreign-Flag Vessels In U.S. Ports, John T. Oliver

South Carolina Journal of International Law and Business

No abstract provided.

Self-Defense, The Law Of Armed Conflict And Port Security, George K. Walker

South Carolina Journal of International Law and Business

No abstract provided.

United Nations Security Council Reform: Collected Proposals And Possible Consequences, Brian Cox

South Carolina Journal of International Law and Business

No abstract provided.

The United Nations Responses To The Sexual Abuse And Exploitation Of Women And Girls By Peacekeepers During Peacekeeping Missions, Muna Ndulo

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

International Security And International Law In The Northwest Passage, James Kraska

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Concern over the loss of sea ice has renewed discussions over the legal status of the Arctic and subarctic transcontinental maritime route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, referred to as the "Northwest Passage." Over the past thirty years, Canada has maintained that the waters of the Passage are some combination of internal waters or territorial seas. Applying the rules of international law, as reflected in the 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea Convention, suggests that the Passage is a strait used for international navigation. Expressing concerns over maritime safety and security, recognition of northern sovereignty, and protection of …

Hearts And Minds And Laws: Legal Compliance And Diplomatic Persuasion, Christopher J. Borgen

Faculty Publications

This Essay considers the role of international legal argument in the war on terror and, in particular, in the attempts to justify the use of military force. Part I looks at challenges posed by the evolution of military conflict and how this affects diplomacy. In particular, I argue that a reputation for honoring one's treaty commitments and for legality, more generally, is an important part of fostering cooperation and undercutting the support of our adversaries. Part II focuses on how the Bush Administration moved between hostility to international law and attempts to rewrite the rules of international law concerning the …

Private Military Companies & International Law: Building New Ladders Of Legal Accountability & Responsibility, Jackson Nyamuya Maogoto, Benedict Sheehy

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

The Private Military Company ("PMC") is a relatively new and growing phenomenon. An urgent and ongoing problem facing courts and policy makers is the accountability of PMCs. This article proposes new approaches to developing accountability by examining the potential of two well-established doctrines: command responsibility and state responsibility.

Coping With Combat Claims: An Analysis Of The Foreign Claims Act's Combat Exclusion, Jordan Walerstein

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

The purpose of this Note is to show that, although the FCA has positively impacted U.S. military operations, the so-called "combat exclusion" severely hampers its effectiveness. Therefore, Congress should eliminate the distinction between combat and noncombat claims and adopt a unified, permanent claims system to adjudicate all claims made by civilians against U.S. military forces operating overseas. Part II of this Note explores the origins of the "combat exclusion" in international law, and Part III traces the history of civilian compensation through World War I and World War II. Part IV surveys U.S. military use of the FCA and ad …

Reconstructing The Responsibility To Protect In The Wake Of Cyclones And Separatism, Jarrod Wong

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

This Article reconceptualizes the doctrine of the responsibility to protect (R2P). R2P provides that when a government fails to protect its citizens from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing or crimes against humanity (“mass atrocities”), that responsibility shifts to the international community acting through the United Nations.

The U.N.'s apparent failure to include natural disasters in the catalogue of harms potentially justifying R2P intervention generated considerable controversy following Myanmar's refusal of foreign aid following the devastation wrought by Cyclone Nargis. Those seeking to limit the scope of R2P considered it inapplicable in the case of Myanmar, reading the U.N.'s focus on …

Obstacles On The Road To Gender Justice: The International Criminal Tribunal For Rwanda As Object Lesson , Beth Van Schaak

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

The Crisis Of International Law, Rafael Domingo

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article delves into the reasons for the current crisis in the traditional international law system, considering how the system developed through the centuries in order to respond to the needs and circumstances of past historical epochs, as well as how the system is no longer capable of meeting the unique developments and needs of life in the Third Millennium. The Article considers the fundamental problems of a state-based system of international law that--rather than focusing on the prime actor and focus of the law, the human person, and his inherent dignity--concentrates on and gives enormous power to the artificial …

Balancing Necessity And Individual Rights In The Fight Against Transnational Terrorism: 'Targeted Killings' And International Law, Karinne Lantz

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article explores the restraints international human rights law and international humanitarian law place on a State’s use of lethal force against suspected terrorists. Although the law restricts the ability to target suspected terrorists, it is argued that these limits should be respected in order to protect innocent civilians from undue harm. Under IHRL, it is argued that the right to life as a peremptory norm restricts extra-territorial targeted attacks of suspected terrorists. Accordingly, such action should only be considered lawful when it is necessary to protect the State’s population from a known threat and lesser force would not suffice. …

Obstacles On The Road To Gender Justice: The International Criminal Tribunal For Rwanda As Object Lesson, Beth Van Schaack

Faculty Publications

Although the substantive law concerned with gender violence is now well established, and the principle of legality can no longer serve as a barrier to prosecutions for gender violence, significant obstacles remain to ensuring a robust system of gender justice in international criminal law in the face of continued violations. These obstacles are less visible than defects in positive law because they emerge in the practice of international criminal law at crucial yet shrouded stages of the penal process: investigation, charging, pre-trial plea negotiations, trial preparation, theprovision of protective measures, and appeals. Most importantly, strong positive law is irrelevant where …

After Sosa: The Future Of Customary International Law In The United States, William S. Dodge

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Exceptional Engagement: Protocol I And A World United Against Terrorism, Michael A. Newton

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

This article challenges the prevailing view that U.S. "exceptionalism" provides the strongest narrative for the U.S. rejection of Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The United States chose not to adopt the Protocol in the face of intensive international criticism because of its policy conclusions that the text contained overly expansive provisions resulting from politicized pressure to accord protection to terrorists who elected to conduct hostile military operations outside the established legal framework. The United States concluded that the commingling of the regime criminalizing terrorist acts with the jus in bello rules of humanitarian law would be untenable …

The Law Of Armed Conflict And Detention Operations In Afghanistan, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

In reflecting on the arc of US and coalition detention operations in Afghanistan, three key issues related to the law of armed conflict stand out: one substantive, one procedural and one policy. The substantive matter – what are the minimum baseline treatment standards required as a matter of international law? – has clarified significantly during the course of operations there, largely as a result of the US Supreme Court's holding in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. The procedural matter – what adjudicative processes does international law require for determining who may be detained? – eludes consensus and has become more controversial …

The Future Of The Grave Breaches Regime: Segregate, Assimilate Or Abandon, James G. Stewart

All Faculty Publications

Grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions are one type of war crime. In this Article, I argue that the grave breaches regime has three possible futures. In the first, the regime remains segregated from other categories of war crimes in deference to the historical development of these crimes. This future, however, is one that will see a relatively dramatic decline in the use of grave breaches in practice, primarily because other offences cover the same acts more efficiently. In the second possible future, the grave breaches are entirely abandoned, but this eventuality seems both improbable and undesirable. Even though judicial …

Guantánamo, Habeas Corpus, And Standards Of Proof: Viewing The Law Through Multiple Lenses, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court held in Boumediene v. Bush that Guantánamo detainees have a constitutional right to habeas corpus review of their detention, but it left to district courts in the first instance responsibility for working through the appropriate standard of proof and related evidentiary principles imposed on the government to justify continued detention. This article argues that embedded in seemingly straightforward judicial standard-setting with respect to proof and evidence are significant policy questions about competing risks and their distribution. How one approaches these questions depends on the lens through which one views the problem: through that of a courtroom concerned …

United States Detention Operations In Afghanistan And The Law Of Armed Conflict, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

Looking back on US and coalition detention operations in Afghanistan to date, three key issues stand out: one substantive, one procedural and one policy. The substantive matter – what are the minimum baseline treatment standards required as a matter of international law? – has clarified significantly during the course of operations there, largely as a result of the US Supreme Court’s holding in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. The procedural matter – what adjudicative processes does international law require for determining who may be detained? – eludes consensus and has become more controversial the longer the Afghan conflict continues. And the …

Translating Unocal: The Expanding Web Of Liability For Business Entities Implicated In International Crimes, Anita Ramasastry, Robert C. Thompson, Mark B. Taylor

Articles

The Ninth Circuit ruled that a corporation could be held liable under the federal Alien Tort Claims Act for its complicity in a violation of international criminal law occurring outside the U.S. (Doe I v. Unocal Corp., 395 F.3d 932 (9th Cir. 2002)). Since then, litigants have filed increasing numbers of such cases. These cases raise two questions: (1) Is the United States the only country that provides judicial accountability for business entities involved in international crimes abroad? and (2) How are other countries "translating" the basic kinds of accountability that Unocal recognized into their own legal systems? This Article …

Human Rights And Military Decisions: Counterinsurgency And Trends In The Law Of International Armed Conflict, Dan E. Stigall, Christopher L. Blakesley, Chris Jenks

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

The past several decades have seen a Copernican shift in the paradigm of armed conflict, which the traditional Law of International Armed Conflict (LOIAC) canon has not fully matched. Standing out in stark relief against the backdrop of relative inactivity in LOIAC, is the surfeit of activity in the field of international human rights law, which has become a dramatic new force in the ancient realm of international law. Human rights law, heretofore not formally part of the traditional juridico-military calculus, has gained ever increasing salience in that calculus. Indeed, human rights law has ramified in such a manner that …

Developments In The Prosecution Of Gender-Based Crimes - The Special Court For Sierra Leone Experience , Hon. Theresa Doherty

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Investigation And Prosecution Of Sexual And Gender-Based Crimes Before The International Criminal Court, Diane Lupig

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Conceptualizing Aggression, Noah Weisbord

Faculty Publications

The special working group tasked by the International Criminal Court’s Assembly of States Parties to define the supreme international crime, the crime of aggression, has produced a breakthrough draft definition.

This paper analyzes the key concepts that make up the emerging definition of the crime of aggression by developing and applying a future-oriented methodology that brings together scenario planning and grounded theory. It proposes modifications and interpretations of the constituent concepts of the crime of aggression intended to make the definition sociologically relevant today and in the foreseeable future.

Security Detention, Terrorism, And The Prevention Imperative, John Mcloughlin, Gregory P. Noone, Diana C. Noone

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Ending Impunity For The Crime Of Aggression, Benjamin B. Ferencz

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Ambiguities In Articles 5(2), 121 And 123 Of The Rome Statute, Roger S. Clark

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.