Law Commons^™

Toward A Functional Approach To Sovereign Equality, Peter B. Rutledge

Scholarly Works

Under the principle of sovereign equality of nations, nation states are entitled to equal dignity (evidenced by conventions like their voting rights in the United Nations), have the identical capacity to contract (evidenced by their ability to enter into treaties), and are not subject to a superior sovereign (evidenced by the lack of a global leviathan). This principle also has had an important effect in the field of international civil litigation, in areas such as judicial jurisdiction or sovereign immunity. As that principle has weakened over the twentieth century, risks of aggravation to comity have risen, resulting in the development …

Towards A Communicative Theory Of International Law, Timothy L. Meyer

Scholarly Works

Does international law's effectiveness require a clear distinction between law and non-law? This essay, which reviews Jean d'Aspremont's Formalism and the Sources of International Law, argues the answer is no. Ambiguity about the legal nature of international instruments has important benefits. Clarity in the law may encourage states to do the minimum necessary to comply, while some uncertainty about what the law requires may induce states to take extra efforts to ensure they are in compliance. Ambiguity in the law also promotes dynamic change, an important feature in rapidly developing areas of the law such as international environmental law and …

Newsletter, Fall 2012, Vol. 7, Issue 1, The Dean Rusk International Law Center

Newsletters

Studies in Europe Spur Interest in International Law; Lectures; Justice Joan E. Donoghue of the International Court of Justice Gives 108th Sibley Lecture to Packed Courtroom; Hot Topics Debated at Energy Security Conference; International Perspectives on the Future of Intellectual Property Law; Junior International Law Scholars Association Meets at the Rusk Center; Visiting Professors & Scholars; Symposium Offers Useful Tips for Starting a Career in International Law; Brazilian Judicial Delegation Trains at Georgia Law; Interview with Justice Fernando Cerqueira Norberto; Global Internship Program; Georgia Law at Oxford; Kay Vaughn Joins Rusk Center Staff; Georgia Law Grad Finds Niche in Cultural …

Trips And Bits: An Essay On Compulsory Licenses, Expropriation, And International Arbitration, Peter B. Rutledge

Scholarly Works

This essay examines the potential for arbitration to resolve disputes between private companies and developing countries over the propriety of compulsory licenses. At bottom, my thesis is that arbitration supplies the medium through which to mediate the tension between the profit-seeking goals of private multinational companies and the development goals of foreign nations, especially in the developing world. The compulsory license debate raises a clash of fundamental interests between the patent holder, the patent holder’s state, and the host state. Arbitration can play an important role in balancing those interests, albeit a highly unusual one. Arbitration provides an essential forum …

Codifying Custom, Timothy L. Meyer

Scholarly Works

Codifying decentralized forms of law, such as the common law and customary law, has been a cornerstone of the positivist turn in legal theory since at least the nineteenth century. Commentators laud codification’s purported virtues, including systematizing, centralizing, and clarifying the law. These attributes are thought to increase the general welfare of those subject to legal rules, and therefore to justify and explain codification. The codification literature, however, overlooks codification’s distributive consequences. In so doing, the literature misses the primary motive for codification: to define legal rules in a way that advantages individual codifying institutions, regardless of how codification affects …

Book Review, International Organizations: Politics, Law, Practice (2010), Timothy L. Meyer

Scholarly Works

This essay reviews Ian Hurd’s International Organizations: Politics, Law, Practice. International law and international relations scholars are increasingly interested in the variation in the structures and powers of international organizations, as well as how that variation affects state decisions to comply with international law. Hurd’s book offers a nuanced overview of the relationship between the legal powers of international organizations and the political contexts in which they operate. The book uses eight case studies, including the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the International Court of Justice, and the International Labor Organization, to assess how different political environments and institutional …

The Consequences Of A "War" Paradigm For Counterterrorism: What Impact On Basic Rights And Values?, Laurie R. Blank

Georgia Law Review

Policy makers have used the rhetoric of "war"
throughout the past century to describe a major
governmental or societal effort to combat an evil that
threatens society, national security or other communal

good. It is both a rhetorical tool and a resource
mobilization, and above all a coalescing of authority to
meet the challenge, whether poverty, drugs or-most
recently-terrorism. Soon after 9/11 made al Qaeda a
household word, the Bush Administration characterized
U.S. efforts to defeat al Qaeda as the "War on Terror."
Here, however, the terminology of "war" goes far beyond
rhetoric, resource re-allocation and centralizing of
authority. When …

Supranational Diversity: Why Federal Courts Should Have Diversity Jurisdiction Over Cases Involving Supranational Organizations Like The European Union, John T. Dixon

Georgia Law Review

The federal diversity statute grants alienage jurisdiction
to "foreign citizens" and "foreign statutes," allowing them

to bring state-law claims against U.S. citizens in federal
'court. When the European Community (EC), an
intergovernmental organization of European states, sued
an American corporation for state-law violations, for the
first time a federal court had to determine whether the EC
qualified as a foreign state. The EC argued that it was
essentially a foreign state for the purposes of alienage
jurisdiction. Relying on the definition of foreign state in
the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 (FSIA),
which the diversity statute references, the court …

From Fragmentation To Constitutionalization, Harlan G. Cohen

Scholarly Works

This short essay, prepared for a panel on “The Impact of a Wider Dissemination of Human Rights Norms: Fragmentation or Unity?,” explores the connection between two popular, but seemingly contradictory discourses in international law: fragmentation and constitutionalization. After disentangling and categorizing the various types of fragmentation international law may be experiencing, the essay focuses in on one form in particular, the “fragmentation of the legal community.” This most radical version of fragmentation, the essay argues, has spurred a number of responses, many of which suggest the beginnings of a constitutional conflicts regime for international law. The essay ends by suggesting …

Finding International Law, Part Ii: Our Fragmenting Legal Community, Harlan G. Cohen

Scholarly Works

Is there an “International Community?” This Article suggests that there is not, that the oft-discussed fragmentation of international law reveals that there are in fact multiple overlapping and competing international law communities, each with differing views on law and legitimacy.

This Article reaches this conclusion by taking a fresh look not only at the sources of fragmentation, but at the sources of international law itself. Building on earlier work rethinking international law’s sources and drawing insights from legal philosophy, compliance theory, and international relations, this Article takes a closer look at three areas that have challenged traditional interpretations of international …

Politics And Prosecutions, From Katherine Fite To Fatou Bensouda, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

Based on the Katherine B. Fite Lecture delivered at the 5th Annual International Humanitarian Law Dialogs in Chautauqua, New York, this essay examines the role that politics has played in the evolution of international criminal justice. It first establishes the frame of the lecture series and its relation to IntLawGrrls blog, a cosponsor of the IHL Dialogs. It then discusses the career of the series' namesake, Katherine B. Fite, a State Department lawyer who helped draft the Charter of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and who was, in her own words, a "political observer" of the proceedings. The essay …

The Role Of The World Court Today, Joan E. Donoghue

Georgia Law Review

The International Court of Justice (ICJ, also known as the
World Court) is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations
(UN). I have served as a member of the Court for the past two
years. During that time, I have had the opportunity to speak
about the Court and about international law to a variety of
audiences throughout the United States. It is a particular
privilege to deliver the Sibley Lecture here at the University of
Georgia School of Law, an institution that is known for its
commitment to the study of international law and international
relations.
The ICJ …

Global Public Goods, Governance Risk, And International Energy, Timothy L. Meyer

Scholarly Works

Scholars and commentators have long argued that issue linkages provide a way to increase cooperation on global public goods by increasing participation in global institutions, building consensus, and deterring free-riding. In this symposium article, I argue that the emphasis on the potential of issue linkages to facilitate cooperation in these ways has caused commentators to underestimate how common features of international legal institutions designed to accomplish these aims can actually undermine those institutions’ ability to facilitate cooperation. I focus on two features of institutional design that are intended to encourage participation in public goods institutions but can create the risk …