Law Commons^™

Book Review: Limits Of Law, Prerogatives Of Power: Interventionism After Kosovo, By Michael J. Glennon, Charles Tiefer

All Faculty Scholarship

The author reviews Michael Glennon's Limits of Law, Prerogatives of Power: Interventionism After Kosovo, discussing Glennon's approach to NATO's 1999 bombing to stop the Milosevic regime's ethnic cleansing of Kosovo in the face of the UN Charter's absolute ban on states using force except in self-defense. Finding Glennon's study at once provocative and readable, the author emphasizes the strength of Glennon's core point - the inability for the Kosovo campaign to be reconciled with the UN charter - but points to the dangers of using one instance (Kosovo) to prove bad law.

American Exceptionalism And The International Law Of Self-Defense, Mary Ellen O'Connell

Journal Articles

Following the September 11th attacks in the United States (U.S.), one could make a case for America's use of force in Afghanistan as a lawful exercise of the right of self-defense. But the proposals to invade Iraq following September 11th cannot be so defended. Those proposals did not concern defending the basic security of the U.S. in the sense that basic security defense is currently understood in the international community. They concerned, rather, defense of a more expansive concept of security, a concept wherein the U.S. need not tolerate antagonistic regimes with the potential to harm U.S. interests. The invasion …

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

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Use Of Force And Constitutionalism, Lori Fisler Damrosch

Faculty Scholarship

Are constitutional democracies more inclined than other kinds of regimes to observe the international law of the United Nations Charter on use of force? Are they relatively more vulnerable to unlawful behavior by others? How can constitutional democracies ensure fidelity to their underlying constitutional principles when they engage in multinational military operations for preservation or restoration of international peace? These and related questions at the intersection of the international and national legal orders merit careful attention as political structures around the world undergo post-Cold War transformation.

Regulating The Use Of Force In The 21st Century: The Continuing Importance Of State Autonomy, Mary Ellen O'Connell

Journal Articles

The most important, and certainly the most ambitious, modification of international law in this century has been the outlawing of the use of force to settle international disputes. The definitive prohibition on the use of force came with the adoption of the United Nations Charter and, in particular, Charter article 2(4).

For a short while, from 1991 until 1994, it appeared that a majority of Security Council members had re-interpreted the Charter's order of priorities. To some, it seemed that the Council had placed such values as human rights, self-determination, and even democracy above the value of peace through respect …

The Issue Of The Legal Validity Of Using Economic Sanctions To Enforce Human Rights, Thomas Hailu

LLM Theses and Essays

The international legal regime as it pertains to human rights is neither as established nor as definitive as it appears. It suffers from many disadvantages, the first and most important of which is the fact that the international legal regime has never been capable of effectively enforcing its rules or instituting appropriate remedies for its breaches. Some states have attempted to make up for this inability on behalf of international law by undertaking an enforcement mechanism either unilaterally or multilaterally; economic sanctions are often regarded as valuable tools of enforcement to be used against countries which are allegedly engaged in …

Terrorism, Territorial Sovereignty, And The Forcible Apprehension Of International Criminals Abroad, Jimmy Gurule

Journal Articles

Examines current international law governing use of force extraterritorially; in light of the Alvarez-Machain case in which a Mexican national suspected of murder was forcibly extradited to stand trial in the US.

War, Law & Liberal Thought: The Use Of Force In The Reagan Years, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.