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International Law

University of Michigan Law School

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Full-Text Articles in Law

State Bystander Responsibility, Monica Hakimi Jan 2010

State Bystander Responsibility, Monica Hakimi

Articles

International human rights law requires states to protect people from abuses committed by third parties. Decision-makers widely agree that states have such obligations, but no framework exists for identifying when states have them or what they require. The practice is to varying degrees splintered, inconsistent, and conceptually confused. This article presents a generalized framework to fill that void. The article argues that whether a state must protect someone from third-party harm depends on the state's relationship with the third party and on the kind of harm caused. A duty-holding state must take reasonable measures to restrain the abuser. That framework …


Partially Odious Debts?, Omri Ben-Shahar, Mitu Gulati Jan 2007

Partially Odious Debts?, Omri Ben-Shahar, Mitu Gulati

Articles

The despotic ruler of a poor nation borrows extensively from foreign creditors. He spends some of those funds on building statues of himself, others on buying arms for his brutal secret police, and he places the remainder in his personal bank accounts in Switzerland. The longer the despot stays in power, the poorer the nation becomes. Although the secret police are able to keep prodemocracy protests subdued by force for many years, eventually there is a popular revolt. The despot flees the scene with a few billion dollars of his illgotten gains. The populist regime that replaces the despot now …


Making International Refugee Law Relevant Again: A Proposal For Collectivized And Solution-Oriented Protection, James C. Hathaway, R. Alexander Neve Jan 1997

Making International Refugee Law Relevant Again: A Proposal For Collectivized And Solution-Oriented Protection, James C. Hathaway, R. Alexander Neve

Articles

International refugee law is in crisis. Even as armed conflict and human rights abuse continue to force individuals and groups to flee their home countries, many governments are withdrawing from the legal duty to provide refugees with the protection they require. While governments proclaim a willingness to assist refugees as a matter of political discretion or humanitarian goodwill, they appear committed to a pattern of defensive strategies designed to avoid international legal responsibility toward involuntary migrants. Some see this shift away from a legal paradigm of refugee protection as a source for enhanced operational flexibility in the face of changed …


International Extradition, Henry W. Rogers Jan 1888

International Extradition, Henry W. Rogers

Articles

It is a well-established principle of law that criminal prosecutions are local and not transitory. A wrong-doer whose wrong consists in a civil injury, or arises out of a breach of contract, can ordinarily be required to answer for the wrong done wherever he may be found. But a different principle is applied to the case of one who has committed a crime. As one nation does not enforce the penal laws of another, and as the process of the courts of a state can confer no authority beyond its own territorial limits, punishment can be avoided by escaping from …