Law Commons^™

Why Aim Law Toward Human Survival, John William Draper

Librarian Scholarship at Penn Carey Law

Our legal system is contributing to humanity’s demise by failing to take account of our species’ situation. For example, in some cases law works against life and supports interests such as liberty or profit maximization.

If we do not act, science tells us that humanity bears a significant (and growing) risk of catastrophic failure. The significant risk inherent in the status quo is unacceptable and requires a response. We must act. It is getting hotter. When we decide to act, we need to make the right choice.

There is no better choice. You and all your relatives have rights. The …

R2h And The Prospects For Peace: An Essay On Sovereign Responsibilities, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay examines novel threats to peace – social and political threats as well as military and technological. It worries that familiar conceptions of state sovereignty cannot sustain a legal order capable of meeting those threats, not even if we understand sovereignty as responsibility to protect human rights. The essay tentatively proposes that recent efforts to reformulate state sovereignty as responsibility to humanity – ‘R2H’ for short – offer a better hope. Under this reformulation, states must take into account the interests of those outside their sovereign territory as well as those of the of their own people – in …

Unfriendly Unilateralism, Monica Hakimi

Articles

This Article examines a category of conduct that I call “unfriendly unilateralism.” One state deprives another of a benefit (unfriendly) and, in some cases, strays from its own obligations (noncompliant), outside any structured international process (unilateral). Such conduct troubles many international lawyers because it looks more like the nastiness of power politics than like the order and stability of law. Worse, states can abuse the conduct to undercut the law. Nevertheless, international law tolerates unfriendly unilateralism for enforcement. A victim state may use unfriendly unilateralism against a scofflaw in order to restore the legal arrangement that existed before the breach. …

Effect Precedes Cause: Kant And The Self-In-Itself, David G. Carlson

Faculty Articles

This article describes the metaphysics of Kant, according to which we never know the Thing In Itself but only the appearance of it. When applied to selfhood (which is a “thing”), Kant implies that we never know what motivates us to do what we do. Our reasons are after-the-fact apologies to justify our acts. For that reason the “cause” of our deed always (that is to say, our reasons) follows the deed itself. Effect precedes cause, on Kantian metaphysics.

Slides: Appropriate Sustainable Energy Technologies: A Light To The World, Lakshman D. Guruswamy, Jason B. Aamodt, Blake Feamster

2012 Energy Justice Conference and Technology Exposition (September 17-18)

Presenter: Jason Aamodt, Attorney; Adjunct Professor, University of Tulsa

15 slides

General Jurisprudence, William Twining

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Twining's Complaint, Dennis Patterson

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Enhancing The Prospects For General Jurisprudence, Brian Z. Tamanaha

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

Water: Rights, Flexibility And Governance: A Balance That Matters?, Miguel Solanes

Allocating and Managing Water for a Sustainable Future: Lessons from Around the World (Summer Conference, June 11-14)

15 pages.

Contains footnotes.

"Liberalism's Dangerous Supplements": Medieval Ghosts Of International Law, Anthony Carty

Michigan Journal of International Law

A book review of From Apology to Utopia: The Structure of International Legal Argument by Martti Koskenniemi

Book Review. Scott, J. B., Law, The State And The International Community, Jerome Hall

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Executive Legislative And Judical Recognition Of International Law In The United States, Charles G. Fenwick

Michigan Law Review

The indefiniteness which attends both the concept and the con- tent of what is known as international law will sufficiently explain why it is difficult to -determine the exact relation which that body of law which regulates the conduct of states bears to the domestic law of each individual state. First of all, jurists are not agreed as to whether international law deserves to be called law in any real sense. The followers of the school of AUSTIN who, restrict law to the category of commands imposed by a political superior upon a political inferior, naturally refuse to recognize the …