Law Commons^™

Decolonizing The Corpus: A Queer Decolonial Re-Examination Of Gender In International Law's Origins, David Eichert

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article builds upon queer feminist and decolonial/TWAIL interventions into the history of international law, questioning the dominant discourses about gender and sexual victimhood in the laws of armed conflict. In Part One, I examine how early European international law writers (re)produced binary and hierarchical ideas about gender in influential legal texts, discursively creating a world in which wartime violence only featured men and women in strictly defined roles (a construction which continues to influence the practice of law today). In Part Two, I decenter these dominant discourses by looking outside Europe, questioning what a truly “international” law would look …

Rejecting Customary Regression: Unilateral Humanitarian Intervention & The Evolution Of Customary International Law, Elisabeth J. Brennen

Michigan Journal of International Law

Humanitarian intervention is perhaps one of the most important topics in international affairs. It raises questions of morality and militarism, becoming a platform for sharp debate in international law. This note discusses both the moral and legal questions presented by unilateral humanitarian intervention (“UHI”). It argues that UHI is antithetical to the progression of customary international law due to customary international law’s evolutive nature and the ongoing importance of decolonization. UHI is not only normatively undesirable, but the particular normative criticisms of the doctrine – that it is regressively imperialist and neo-colonial – render it fundamentally incompatible with customary international …

Differentiating The Corporation: Accountability And International Humanitarian Law, David Hughes

Michigan Journal of International Law

Corporations are significant global actors that are continuing to gain international legal status. Regulatory efforts have closely followed persistent claims that various forms of corporate activity are adversely affecting individual welfare and societal objectives. Such observations are perhaps most acute during instances of armed conflict. The history of corporate misdeeds occurring within or contributing to the perpetuation of warfare is now well-documented. However, the relationship between international humanitarian law—the legal field governing the conduct of war—and corporations receives less attention than other areas of international law where the treatment of business entities have made important advancements. This article considers the …

Increasing Case Traffic: Expanding The International Criminal Court's Focus On Human Trafficking Cases, Nadia Alhadi

Michigan Journal of International Law

Human trafficking falls within the jurisdictional competence of the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) as one of the article 7 crimes against humanity, whether committed in an atmosphere of conflict or in times of relative peace. Despite the ICC’s jurisdiction, as well as the globally pervasive nature of peacetime trafficking in particular, the ICC has not yet heard a human trafficking case.

Accountability at the international level, however, is crucial, and the ICC’s oversight has the potential to fill gaps in the current anti-trafficking regime. This note explores this potential, and then examines whether the text of the Rome Statute or …

The Legal Architecture Of United Nations Peacekeeping: A Case Study Of Unifil, Layan Charara

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Note explores the ways UNIFIL is a unique peacekeeping force that can still teach broader lessons about UN peacekeeping It is organized into four parts: Part I provides a contour of UN peacekeeping operations; Part II chronicles the history of UNIFIL; Part III analyzes the current legal regime with respect to UN peacekeeping; and Part IV surveys solutions offered in the past and recommends more apposite courses of action to strengthen the legal recourse available to peacekeepers and their families.

Moral Disarmament: Reviving A Legacy Of The Great War, James D. Fry, Saroj Nair

Michigan Journal of International Law

In short, this Article examines the concept of moral disarmament using a broad-spectrum definition of humanity rather than the traditional IHL perspective. Rather than referring to human rights that are impacted by armaments, this Article looks at methods through which human initiative can create a society that truly hungers for disarmament. In other words, this Article points out that the extent of change that society can bring about through education, intellectual cooperation, peace initiatives, international affairs awareness, and intercultural communication can be reflected in the economic growth, social growth, and development of states. The aim is to help the reader …

Justice In Syria: Individual Criminal Liability For Highest Officials In The Assad Regime, Seema Kassab

Michigan Journal of International Law

Seven years have passed since revolution broke out in Syria in March of 2011. During those six years, hundreds of thousands of Syrians lost their lives, millions of Syrians were internally displaced or left the country seeking refuge, and a beautiful and diverse country was hijacked and terrorized by civil war. Every day in Syria, people are detained, tortured, raped, and killed. Attacks on homes, hospitals, markets, and schools are common occurrences. At this stage of the conflict, there is little doubt that it is the most horrific and dire humanitarian crisis since World War II. The conflict began as …

Targeting The Targeted Killings Case - International Lawmaking In Domestic Contexts, Yahli Shereshevsky

Michigan Journal of International Law

The targeting of non-state armed groups members is perhaps the most debated legal issue in the law of contemporary armed conflicts between states and non-state actors. The 2006 Targeted Killings case of the Israeli Supreme Court (ISC) is a key reference point in this debate. Recently, without much scholarly or public attention, the government of Israel, in its report on the summer 2014 conflict in Gaza (the 2014 Gaza Conflict Report), dramatically diverged from the Targeted Killings case’s definition of legitimate targets in asymmetric conflicts. The Targeted Killings case held a conduct or functional membership-based approach to targeting. This approach …

Ambivalent Enforcement: International Humanitarian Law At Human Rights Tribunals, Shana Tabak

Michigan Journal of International Law

In addition to exploring the limitations of the Inter-American System’s jurisdictional capacity to adjudicate issues of IHL, this Article examines Inter-American jurisprudence in light of recent scholarly conversations regarding the relevance of the principle of lex specialis, which seeks to guide tribunals when two bodies of law may apply simultaneously, by providing for the prioritization of a specialized body of law over a general one. This concept, first articulated by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Nuclear Weapons case, has proven to be the source of much scholarly consternation. As a means of addressing problems arising from …

All Other Breaches: State Practice And The Geneva Conventions’ Nebulous Class Of Less Discussed Prohibitions, Jesse Medlong

Michigan Journal of International Law

With respect to the protections afforded by the Geneva Conventions, a great deal of ink has been spilled in recent years over the two-tiered system of tribunals employed by the United States in its prosecution of enemy combatants in the “war on terror.” Less discussed, though, is the wholly separate two-tiered system for sorting violators of the Geneva Conventions that emerges from the very text of those agreements. This stratification is a function of the Conventions’ distinction between those who commit “grave breaches” and those who merely commit “acts contrary to the provisions of the present convention” or “all other …

Targeting And The Concept Of Intent, Jens David Ohlin

Michigan Journal of International Law

International law generally prohibits military forces from intentionally targeting civilians; this is the principle of distinction. In contrast, unintended collateral damage is permissible unless the anticipated civilian deaths outweigh the expected military advantage of the strike; this is the principle of proportionality. These cardinal targeting rules of international humanitarian law are generally assumed by military lawyers to be relatively well-settled. However, recent international tribunals applying this law in a string of little-noticed decisions have completely upended this understanding. Armed with criminal law principles from their own domestic systems — often civil law jurisdictions — prosecutors, judges and even scholars have …

An Emerging Norm - Determining The Meaning And Legal Status Of The Responsibility To Protect, Jonah Eaton

Michigan Journal of International Law

The responsibility to protect, from its recent nativity in the 2001 report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), is the latest round in an old debate pitting the principle of nonintervention in the internal affairs of states against allowing such intervention to prevent gross and systematic violations of human rights. Advocates for the concept see it as an important new commitment by the international community, injecting new meaning into the tragically threadbare promise to never again allow mass atrocities to occur unchallenged. ICISS offered the concept of responsibility to protect as a new way to confront …

Gas Smalls Awful: U.N. Forces, Riot-Control Agents, And The Chemical Weapons Convention, James D. Fry

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article takes a comprehensive look at the use of riot-control agents (RCAs) by U.N. forces and the legal issues that arise as a result. This Article is the first to look at these legal issues from a practical perspective, not merely a theoretical one, because prior publications have questioned what would happen if U.N. forces used these weapons, whereas this Article analyzes forty instances of actual use. This Article is designed to spark debate within the areas of peacekeeping law, collective security law, the responsibility of international organizations, and arms control law relating to RCAs, and provides compelling legal …

Challenging Monohumanism: An Argument For Changing The Way We Think About Intercountry Adoption, Shani King

Michigan Journal of International Law

In Part I, this Article provides a brief history of ICA. In Part II, using a post-colonialist theoretical framework, the work of legal scholars from the past twenty years on the subject of ICA is explored. This analysis exposes the centrality of MonoHumanism to our discourse on ICA. In Part III, this Article illustrates how our discourse regarding intercountry adoption contributes to our violating the rights of children (and families) as they are defined in the CRC. Lastly, in Part IV, this Article explores how this argument fits into the current and somewhat polarized debate on ICA and how the …

From Dyad To Triad: Reconceptualizing The Lawyer-Client Relationship For Litigation In Regional Human Rights Commissions, Melissa E. Crow

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article analyzes the standing requirements for NGO petitions to the Inter-American and African Commissions and explores the ways which they may undermine the legitimacy and effectiveness of each of these for a, especially in the context of litigation on behalf of groups. The author evaluates various proposals for addressing these problems based on princeiples of class action and client-centered lawyering and concludes that they are inadequate.

Is Unilateral Humanitarian Intervention Compatible With The U.N. Charter?, Petr Valek

Michigan Journal of International Law

The main topic of this Note is the compatibility of unilateral humanitarian intervention with Article 2(4) of the U.N. Charter (the Charter). Through its interpretation, the author will attempt to discover whether the Grotian idea of unilateral humanitarian intervention can survive in the environment of contemporary international law without its "just war appendix." This Note will separate this idea from its "just war justification" and approach the question of the compatibility of such intervention with the Charter as a legal positivist. In the interpretation of Article 2(4) of the Charter, this Note will try to avoid moral principles. Instead, it …

Is Poetry A War Crime? Reckoning For Radovan Karadzic The Poet-Warrior, Jay Surdukowski

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Note will suggest that the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) can use Karadzic's texts and affectations to warrior poetry in the pretrial brief and in admitted evidence, if and when Karadzic ultimately appears for trial. The violent nationalism of radio broadcasts, political journals, speeches, interviews, and manifestos have been fair game for the Office of the Prosecutor to make their cases in the last decade in both the Yugoslavia and Rwanda Tribunals. Why should poetry, perhaps the most powerful maker of myth and in the Yugoslavia context, a great mover …

Refugee Protection In International Law: Unhcr's Global Consultations On International Protection, Taylor H. Garrett

Michigan Journal of International Law

Review of Refugee Protection in International Law: UNHCR's Global Consultations on International Protection (Erika Feller, Volker Türk & Frances Nicholson eds.)

The Responsibility To Protect: A Beaver Without A Dam?, Jeremy I. Levitt

Michigan Journal of International Law

Review of International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect and The Responsibility to Protect: Research, Bibliography, Background (Supp. Vol. to the Responsibility to Portect by Thomas G. Weiss & Don Hubert

Wto Compassion Or Superiority Complex?: What To Make Of The Wto Waiver For "Conflict Diamonds", Joost Pauwelyn

Michigan Journal of International Law

In May 2003, the WTO granted a waiver for trade restrictions imposed on WTO members not participating in the Kimberley Certification Scheme combating so-called "conflict diamonds." This Article examines the implications of this waiver decision. It argues that GATT/TBT provisions may already excuse the trade restrictions at issue, especially now that the UN Security Council has explicitly supported them. The waiver, therefore, risks sending out the wrong signals, confirming a WTO "superiority complex." At the same time, by excluding restrictions between Kimberley participants from its scope, the waiver implies that WTO members considered the Kimberley scheme to be a non-WTO …

Footprints Of Death: Cluster Bombs As Indiscriminate Weapons Under International Humanitarian Law, Virgil Wiebe

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article applies these principles of discrimination to the real, rather than idealized, use and characteristics of cluster bombs. Briefly stated, these principles call upon parties to an armed conflict to distinguish between civilians and combatants and to weigh the military advantages of a particular weapon or type of attack against the harm it will do to civilians and civilian objects. This Article also considers briefly the global problem of cluster munitions and examines fundamental components of the discrimination principle as they apply to cluster bombs. As three specific case studies, it analyzes the use of cluster bombs by breakaway …

The International Legal Implications Of "Non-Lethal" Weapons, David P. Fidler

Michigan Journal of International Law

In this Article, the author attempts a comprehensive international legal analysis of "non-lethal" weapons to raise awareness about how many international legal issues they create and about the complexity of analyzing the international legality of the development and use of these weapons. In short, the emergence of "non-lethal" weapons does not rescue international law from its crisis in connection with controlling war. Indeed, in some respects, the coming of "non-lethal" weapons threatens to deepen that crisis in new and disturbing ways.

Force Without Law: Seeking A Legal Justification For The September 1996 U.S. Military Intervention In Iraq, Gavin A. Symes

Michigan Journal of International Law

This note concludes that none of the various legal arguments offered in support of the September 1996 military intervention against Iraq adequately justifies U.S. actions under international law and that in fact international law was never a real concern in planning, implementing, or even justifying the intervention. Part I relates the general history of the "Kurdish problem" and the particulars of the incident under scrutiny. This Part then goes on to describe the aftermath of the intervention and its failure to achieve any of the stated goals of the United States. Part II addresses the general validity under international law …

The Fractured Soul Of The Dayton Peace Agreement: A Legal Analysis, Fionnuala Ni Aolain

Michigan Journal of International Law

This essay examines the substantial bilateral relationships between the domestic and international legal systems that have had enormous effects on the perception and efficacy of the local legal order. In particular, it charts the effect of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia on local legal culture and the potential for greater liaison and support between local and international legal entities. This essay also notes the extent to which overlapping and confused mandates by a myriad of international organizations, many of which exercise legal functions, have been unresponsive to or dismissive of localized capacity.

Reappraising Policy Objections To Humanitarian Intervention, Dino Kritsiotis

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article's purpose is not to search for particular conclusions as to the substantive merit or the present legal status of the right of humanitarian intervention as defined and in view of this seeming tension between recent practice and established principle. Its governing concern, rather, lies with: fundamental principles of analysis and method; the formal sources of public international law consulted in the examination of the validity of humanitarian intervention; how normative determinations are reached in the first place; and the techniques which are adopted in navigating our course to these ends.

The State And The Post-Cold War Refugee Regime: New Models, New Questions, Julie Mertus

Michigan Journal of International Law

The thesis of this essay is that within the refugee regime the move away from states and adherence to states are two sides of the same coin. To some degree the new refugee regime reflects the trend away from both the state and strict notions of sovereignty. Nonetheless, the new regime also exposes the staying power of the statist paradigm. In many respects, the role of states has indeed been altered, but states have retained their role as important and often essential actors. While other observers have commented on specific geographic or thematic changes in the refugee regime, this essay …

Slow Down: New Interventionism, Yubo Song

Michigan Journal of International Law

Review of The New Interventionism 1991-1994: United Nations Experience in Cambodia, Former Yugoslavia and Somalia (James Mayall ed.)

Jurisprudence Of The Committee On The Rights Of The Child: A Guide For Research And Analysis, Cynthia Price Cohen, Susan Kilbourne

Michigan Journal of International Law

The purpose of this article and the attached tables is to give child rights advocates and scholars: 1) a bird's-eye view of the Convention and its implementation mechanism; 2) an introduction to the jurisprudence that is being developed as governments begin to put the Convention into effect; and 3) a guide to assist in research and analysis of the developing jurisprudence of the Committee on the Rights of the Child.

The Complexities Of Humanitarian Intervention: A New World Order Challenge, Richard Falk

Michigan Journal of International Law

The interplay between juridical support for norms of non-intervention and the actualities of interventionary diplomacy is an integral feature of a world of sovereign, yet unequal, states pursuing diverse goals. Pointing in one direction is the juridical stress on sovereignty, reinforced by spatial notions of territorial supremacy within fixed boundaries, which provides the doctrinal underpinnings of non-interventionism. Pointing in the other direction is the effort to project power and influence beyond territorial sovereignty, virtually a definition of what distinguishes a great power from an ordinary state, which creates the geopolitical pressures that result in intervention in the internal and external …

Collective Humanitarian Intervention, Fernando R. Tesón

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article discusses collective intervention authorized by the Security Council, with a special emphasis on the concept of exclusive domestic jurisdiction. Part I first examines the different meanings of the notoriously ambiguous word "intervention." Because the legitimacy of collective intervention will depend in part on whether or not the matter falls within the domestic jurisdiction of the target state, Part II will then discuss contemporary views of domestic jurisdiction. Finally, Parts III and IV discuss collective humanitarian intervention under the principles of the U.N. Charter and examine the practice of the Security Council since the end of the Cold War. …