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Full-Text Articles in Law
Funding Global Governance, Kristina B. Daugirdas
Funding Global Governance, Kristina B. Daugirdas
Articles
Funding is an oft-overlooked but critically important determinant of what public institutions are able to accomplish. This article focuses on the growing role of earmarked voluntary contributions from member states in funding formal international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization. Heavy reliance on such funds can erode the multilateral governance of international organizations and poses particular risks for two kinds of undertakings: normative work, such as setting standards and identifying best practices; and evaluating the conduct of member states and holding those states accountable, including through public criticism, when they fall short. International organizations have …
Reputation And Accountability: Another Look At The United Nations’ Response To The Cholera Epidemic In Haiti, Kristina Daugirdas
Reputation And Accountability: Another Look At The United Nations’ Response To The Cholera Epidemic In Haiti, Kristina Daugirdas
Articles
The cholera outbreak in Haiti offers a useful case study of reputation as a disciplinarian of international organizations. On the one hand, UN officials and member states alike have emphasized the need to repair the organization’s damaged reputation. On the other hand, the UN secretariat declined to take certain steps that might have averted—or at least mitigated—that reputational damage in the first place. This contribution argues that the United Nations’ response to cholera in Haiti showcases some important limitations and complications of reputation as a disciplinarian. Reputation will function as a less effective disciplinarian of organizations in the context of …
The Jus Ad Bellum's Regulatory Form, Monica Hakimi
The Jus Ad Bellum's Regulatory Form, Monica Hakimi
Articles
This article argues that a form of legal regulation is embodied in decisions at the UN Security Council that condone but do not formally authorize specific military operations. Such decisions sometimes inflect or go beyond what the jus ad bellum permits through its general standards—that is, under the prohibition of cross-border force and small handful of exceptions. Recognizing that this form of regulation is both part of the law and different in kind from regulation through the general standards should change how we think about the jus ad bellum.
Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, Kristina Daugirdas, Julian Davis Mortenson
Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, Kristina Daugirdas, Julian Davis Mortenson
Articles
In this section: • United States Abstains on Security Council Resolution Criticizing Israeli Settlements • United States Sanctions Russian Individuals and Entities After Accusing Russian Government of Using Hacking to Interfere with U.S. Election Process; Congressional Committees and Intelligence and Law Enforcement Agencies Continue to Investigate President Trump’s Connections to Russian Officials • Second Circuit Overturns $655 Million Jury Verdict Against Palestine Liberation Organization and Palestinian Authority • New Legislation Seeks to Confirm Immunity of Artwork and Facilitate Cultural Exchange • United States Confronts China over Seizure of Unmanned Drone in the South China Sea • International Criminal Court Prosecutor …
The Work Of International Law, Monica Hakimi
The Work Of International Law, Monica Hakimi
Articles
This Article crystallizes and then critiques a prominent view about the role of international law in the global order. The view - what I call the "cooperation thesis" - is that international law serves to help global actors cooperate, specifically by: (1) curbing their disputes, and (2) promoting their shared goals. The cooperation thesis often appears as a positive account of international law; it purports to explain or describe what international law does. But it also has normative force; international law is widely depicted as dysfunctional when it does not satisfy the thesis. In particular, heated or intractable conflict is …
Defensive Force Against Non-State Actors: The State Of Play, Monica Hakimi
Defensive Force Against Non-State Actors: The State Of Play, Monica Hakimi
Articles
This article assesses the implications of the current Syria situation for the international law on the use of defensive force against non-State actors. The law in this area is highly unsettled, with multiple legal positions in play. After mapping the legal terrain, the article shows that the Syria situation accentuates three preexisting trends. First, the claim that international law absolutely prohibits the use of defensive force against non-State actors is increasingly difficult to sustain. States, on the whole, have supported the operation against the so-called Islamic State in Syria. Second, States still have not coalesced around a legal standard on …
Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, Kristina Daugirdas, Julian Davis Mortenson
Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, Kristina Daugirdas, Julian Davis Mortenson
Articles
In this section: • United States Condemns Russia’s Use of Force in Ukraine and Attempted Annexation of Crimea • In Wake of Espionage Revelations, United States Declines to Reach Comprehensive Intelligence Agreement with Germany • United States Defends United Nations’ Immunity in Haitian Cholera Case • French Bank Pleads Guilty to Criminal Violations of U.S. Sanctions Laws • D.C. Circuit Strikes down Administrative Order Requiring Divestment by Foreign-Owned Corporation • United States Adopts New Land Mine Policy • United States Claims That Russia Has Violated the INF Treaty
Toward A Legal Theory On The Responsibility To Protect, Monica Hakimi
Toward A Legal Theory On The Responsibility To Protect, Monica Hakimi
Articles
Over the past several decades, the central focus of international law has shifted from protecting only sovereign states to protecting individuals. Still, the worst imaginable human rights violations—genocides, ethnic cleansings, crimes against humanity, and systemic war crimes—occur with alarming frequency. And the international response is often slow or ineffectual. The most recent development for addressing this problem is the “responsibility to protect,” an idea that has received so much attention that it now goes simply by R2P. Almost all heads of state have endorsed R2P. The U.N. Secretary General has made R2P a top priority and issued multiple reports on …
Accountability And The Sri Lankan Civil War, Steven R. Ratner
Accountability And The Sri Lankan Civil War, Steven R. Ratner
Articles
Sri Lanka's civil war came to a bloody end in May 2009, with the defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) by Sri Lanka's armed forces on a small strip of land in the island's northeast. The conflict, the product of long-standing tensions between Sri Lanka's majority Sinhalese and minority Tamils over the latter's rights and place in society, had begun in the mid-1980s and ebbed and flowed for some twenty-five years, leading to seventy to eighty thousand deaths on both sides. Government repression of Tamil aspirations was matched with ruthless LTTE tactics, including suicide bombings of civilian …
Leveraging Asylum, James C. Hathaway
Leveraging Asylum, James C. Hathaway
Articles
I believe that the analysis underlying the leveraged right to asylum is conceptually flawed. As I will show, there is no duty of non-refoulement that binds all states as a matter of customary international law and it is not the case that all persons entitled to claim protection against refoulement of some kind are ipso facto entitled to refugee rights. These claims are unsound precisely because the critical bedrock of a real international legal obligation-namely, the consent of states evinced by either formal commitments or legally relevant actions -does not yet exist.
Implementing The Standby Letter For Credit Convention With The Law Of Wyoming, James J. White
Implementing The Standby Letter For Credit Convention With The Law Of Wyoming, James J. White
Articles
For the first time in American practice, we propose to implement a convention by a federal adoption of law previously enacted by the states – from Wyoming to New York – to implement the Convention on Independent Guarantees and Standby Letters of Credit (“Convention”).1
Secondary Human Rights Law, Monica Hakimi
Secondary Human Rights Law, Monica Hakimi
Articles
In recent years, the United States has appeared before four different treaty bodies to defend its human rights record. The process is part of the human rights enforcement structure: each of the major universal treaties has an expert body that reviews and comments on compliance reports that states must periodically submit. What's striking about the treaty bodies' dialogues with the United States is not that they criticized it or disagreed with it on the content of certain substantive rules. (That was all expected.) It's the extent to which the two sides talked past each other. Each presumed a different set …
The United Nations, The European Union, And The King Of Sweden: Economic Sanctions And Individual Rights In A Plural World Order, Daniel Halberstam, Eric Stein
The United Nations, The European Union, And The King Of Sweden: Economic Sanctions And Individual Rights In A Plural World Order, Daniel Halberstam, Eric Stein
Articles
In the last decade, economic sanctions have become a major instrumentality of the UN Security Council in the struggle against terrorism and lawless violence endangering peace. It is not surprising that innocents would be ensnarled, along with culprits, in the nets of the so-called "smart" or "targeted" sanctions, which are directed against named individuals and groups (as opposed to delinquent States). In such rare cases, as the individual concerned searches for a legal remedy, significant issues of fundamental human rights may arise at the levels of the international, regional, and national legal orders. This essay explores these issues. After examining …
The Human Rights Quagmire Of 'Human Trafficking', James C. Hathaway
The Human Rights Quagmire Of 'Human Trafficking', James C. Hathaway
Articles
Support for the international fight against "human trafficking" evolved quickly and comprehensively. The campaign launched by the UN General Assembly in December 19981 led to adoption just two years later of the Trafficking Protocol to the UN Convention against Organized Crime.2 U.S. President George W. Bush was among those particularly committed to the cause, calling for collective effort to eradicate the "special evil" of human trafficking, said by him to have become a "humanitarian crisis."3 One hundred and twenty-two countries have now ratified the Trafficking Protocol, agreeing in particular to criminalize trafficking and to cooperate in investigating and prosecuting allegations …
Why Refugee Law Still Matters, James C. Hathaway
Why Refugee Law Still Matters, James C. Hathaway
Articles
I am concerned that the singular importance of international refugee law is profoundly misunderstood. My more specific worry is that erroneous and competing claims by governments and the refugee advocacy community about the structure and purpose of refugee law threaten its continuing ability to play a truly unique human rights role at a time when no meaningful alternative is in sight.
The Right Of States To Repatriate Former Refugees, James C. Hathaway
The Right Of States To Repatriate Former Refugees, James C. Hathaway
Articles
Armed conflict often results in the large-scale exodus of refugees into politically and economically fragile neighboring states. The burdens on asylum countries can be extreme, and may only be partly offset by the arrival of international aid and protection resources. Moreover, difficulties inherent in the provision of asylum have been exacerbated in recent years by the increasing disinclination of the wealthier countries that fund the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and most other assistance agencies to meet the real costs of protection. In such circumstances, it is unsurprising that as conflicts wind down, host countries ordinarily seek to …
America's Apostasy, James C. Hathaway
America's Apostasy, James C. Hathaway
Articles
It has often struck me that the prominence of the Restatement of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States epitomizes the plight of international law in this country. The title of this standard reference on international law does not even refer to international law, but instead to foreign relations law. That is, it is meant to set out the standards by which we may legitimately judge the conduct of others. The clear, if unintended, message is that the Restatement is not really a codification of laws that bind us. And indeed, it is explicitly not just a codification, but …