Law Commons^™

Decolonization As Dialectic Process In Law And Literature, Laura Nyantung Beny

Reviews

The Battle for International Law addresses the South-North contest over the content and structure of international law during the period of decolonization in the global South (1955-1975). Edited volumes are inherently risky because the quality and perspectives of the various chapters can vary widely, resulting in thematic incoherency. However, J. von Bernstorff and P. Dann have successfully assembled many excellent chapters on varied topics by a diverse range of authors. Each chapter contributes significantly to the editors’ overall goal “to provide an intellectual history of the transformation of international law in the 1950s to 1970s and to offer a better …

The Theory And Practice At The Intersection Between Human Rights And Humanitarian Law, Monica Hakimi

Reviews

The United States is more than fifteen years into a fight against terrorism that shows no sign of abating and, with the change in administration, appears to be intensifying. Other Western democracies that have historically been uneasy about U.S. counterterrorism policies have, in recent years, shifted toward those policies. And armed nonstate groups continue to commit large-scale acts of violence in multiple distinct theaters. The legal issues that these situations present are not entirely new, but neither are they going away. Recent publications, like the three works under review, thus provide useful opportunities to reflect on and refine our thinking …

Review Of Sovereign Defaults Before International Courts And Tribunals, John A. E. Pottow, Emily Iversen

Reviews

This book review probes Michael Waibel’s new book, Sovereign Defaults Before International Courts and Tribunals. Waibel's project is ambitious, exploring international attempts to address sovereign defaults over the past century and a half. Through painstaking and comprehensive historical analysis, Waibel shows how we've been here before -- a sober reminder for those thinking Argentina is simply part of a new fad in financial default. With the UN now turning its attention to sovereign debt issues, this study is especially timely. Although somewhat disappointing in the lightness of its normative content, the book should nevertheless prove helpful to those considering the …

Review Of Taming Globalization: International Law, The U.S. Constitution, And The New World Order, Kristina Daugirdas

Reviews

According to Julian Ku of Hofstra University School of Law and John Yoo of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, globalization poses a significant threat to the U.S. constitutional system of governance. In their recent book, Taming Globalization: International Law, the U.S. Constitution, and the New World Order, they seek to reassure readers that this threat can be deflected. If their prescriptions are followed, Ku and Yoo argue, the United States can avoid constitutional problems while continuing to reap the benefits of international cooperation. Ku and Yoo insist that they are neither trying to stop globalization …

Review Of Human Rights: Between Idealism And Realism, Steven R. Ratner

Reviews

For centuries, moral philosophers have regarded ethics and justice in the international plane as part of their domain. The move from the personal to the societal or national to the global seems effortless. In recent years, philosophers in ethics have devoted considerable attention to the ethical significance of nationality and patriotism, asking whether an impartial morality permits better treatment of an individual’s co-nationals; while those in politics have revisited issues of international justice through, for instance, works on human rights and just war theory. These two bodies of work both address what constitutes a just world and what role the …

Review Of Rethinking Refugee Law, By N. Nathwani. , James C. Hathaway

Reviews

It is a wonderful thing when a work of scholarship is published just as policymakers are struggling with the issues that it seeks to address.

Review Of Human Rights In Global Politics, Christine M. Chinkin

Reviews

The fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1998, coming in the decade after the resurgence of Western-style liberal democracies, has generated much writing and activity over the current status and future development of international human rights law, practice, and discourse. International lawyers tend to take for granted the canon of rights that, in the wake of the Universal Declaration, have been enshrined within the body of international instruments that have been adopted within regional and global arenas. In the 1990s, these lawyers largely turned their attention away from standard setting and to issues of effectiveness. Considerable …

Review Of International Law And Some Current Illusions And Other Essays, By J. B. Moore, Henry M. Bates

Reviews

Professor Bates writes: "Most timely ... is the publication of this volume of papers by the most distinguished and the most widely experienced American scholar in the field of international law....

"Judge Moore is a firm believer in the so-called 'equality of nations' and contends that an association based upon any other theory merely invites trouble. Nor does he believe that force can be safely relied upon to preserve international peace....

"The book is of very great value. Every page of it compels thinking and reflection; moreover it is good reading even for the uninitiated...."

Permanent Court Of International Justice, Edwin D. Dickinson

Reviews

"The author of this volume of collected papers and addresses is well known as the Bemis Professor of International Law in Harvard Law School, sometime member of the Legal Section of the Secretariat of the League of Nations, and the most efficient advocate of the new Permanent Court of International Justice in America. His enterprise as an advocate is sufficiently attested by the fourteen brilliant papers reproduced in this volume and the nine other titles of similar nature listed in the bibliography, all of them produced during the last three years....

"The exceptional timeliness of the book and the quality …

International Law, Edwin D. Dickinson

Reviews

Professor Dickson reviews "International Law," by C. G. Fenwick, noting that there are many such books available on the topic: monographs, casebooks, digests, collections of documents etc. He finds some of the material worthy of passing criticism and notes that "The chapters vary somewhat in quality and quantity." But Dickinson also praises "the fine tone of impartiality which makes it possible to present matters both recent and controverted in the restrained and temperate manner of the true scientist."

The Equality Of States, A Study In The History Of Law, Edwin D. Dickinson

Reviews

"This is a reprint in book form of three essays recently published by Dr. Goebel in the Columbia Law Review. The author attempts, as he himself has expressed it, 'to indicate that the historical background of the doctrine of equality of states in international law is of considerable importance not only for the purpose of fixing the origin of the doctrine as a coherent principle of law, but also because it indicates how necessary and inevitable the notion has been from the very inception of international relationships in Europe.'"

A Guide To Diplomatic Practice, Edwin D. Dickinson

Reviews

"Sir Ernest Satow's Guide to Diplomatic Practice was first published in 1917. It was the first systematic treatise on the practice and procedure of diplomacy to be printed in the English language, covering a field already occupied in other languages....

"...[T]he author compiles a wealth of data accumulated in research and long experience in what may perhaps be described as the professional diplomatist's book of forms and precedents... It is chiefly a digest of diplomatic data intended to afford practical guidance in the routine of diplomatic organization, precedence and ceremonial, procedure, immunities, international congresses and conferences, the making of treaties …