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Contemporary Practice Of The United States Relating To International Law, Kristina Daugirdas, Julian Davis Mortenson

Articles

• Another Mexican National Executed in Texas in Defiance of Avena Decision • Manhattan Arrest of Indian Consular Official Sparks Public Dispute Between the United States and India • United States Questions Claims Based on China’s “Nine-Dash Line” in the South China Sea • United States Takes Steps to Combat Illegal Trade in Wildlife • U.S. Compromises Facilitate Agreement on World Trade Organization’s Bali Package; Question Remains Whether Bali Package Requires Congressional Approval • Destruction of Syrian Chemical Arms Delayed • Iran Nuclear Agreement Is Implemented Notwithstanding Expressions of Distrust by Iran and the U.S. Congress

War Is Governance: Explaining The Logic Of The Laws Of War From A Principal-Agent Perspective, Eyal Benvenisti, Amichai Cohen

Michigan Law Review

What is the purpose of the international law on armed conflict, and why would opponents bent on destroying each other’s capabilities commit to and obey rules designed to limit their choice of targets, weapons, and tactics? Traditionally, answers to this question have been offered on the one hand by moralists who regard the law as being inspired by morality and on the other by realists who explain this branch of law on the basis of reciprocity. Neither side’s answers withstand close scrutiny. In this Article, we develop an alternative explanation that is based on the principal–agent model of domestic governance. …

Humanity And National Security: The Law Of Mass Atrocity Response Operations, Keith A. Petty

Michigan Journal of International Law

Among the greatest threats to global security is the slaughter of civilians. This is due to the inconsistent reaction of the international community to genocide and other atrocity crimes. Whether it was the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in Turkey in 1915 or Rwandan Tutsis in 1994, mass murderers act with impunity when there is not a forceful response. Contrast these situations to Vietnam’s intervention in Cambodia in 1978 that put an end to the Khmer Rouge’s nightmarish killing fields, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) intervention in Kosovo in 1999 that protected ethnic Albanians from Serb …

The War Against Iraq And The Future Of International Law: Hegemony Or Pluralism?, Andreas Paulus

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Article is devoted to the question of the future relevance of international law at a time when the idea of a "rule of law" in international affairs seems to be waning. Why should the sole superpower look to international law in its quest for protection from dangers of weapons of mass destruction and terrorists? Is the European insistence on questions of legality, which was visible in the dramatic British attempts to secure some kind of Security Council backing and to advance international legal arguments for its participation in the invasion of Iraq, more than a fig leaf for a …

Reappraising Policy Objections To Humanitarian Intervention, Dino Kritsiotis

Michigan Journal of International Law

This article's purpose is not to search for particular conclusions as to the substantive merit or the present legal status of the right of humanitarian intervention as defined and in view of this seeming tension between recent practice and established principle. Its governing concern, rather, lies with: fundamental principles of analysis and method; the formal sources of public international law consulted in the examination of the validity of humanitarian intervention; how normative determinations are reached in the first place; and the techniques which are adopted in navigating our course to these ends.

The Complexities Of Humanitarian Intervention: A New World Order Challenge, Richard Falk

Michigan Journal of International Law

The interplay between juridical support for norms of non-intervention and the actualities of interventionary diplomacy is an integral feature of a world of sovereign, yet unequal, states pursuing diverse goals. Pointing in one direction is the juridical stress on sovereignty, reinforced by spatial notions of territorial supremacy within fixed boundaries, which provides the doctrinal underpinnings of non-interventionism. Pointing in the other direction is the effort to project power and influence beyond territorial sovereignty, virtually a definition of what distinguishes a great power from an ordinary state, which creates the geopolitical pressures that result in intervention in the internal and external …

Grotius Nunc Pro Tunch, Alfred P. Rubin

Michigan Journal of International Law

Review of A Normative Approach to War: Peace, War and Justice in Hugo Grotius (Yasuaki Onuma ed.)

Interpreting The Withdrawal Clause In Arms Control Treaties, Cindy A. Cohn

Michigan Journal of International Law

This Note argues that although a danger to future arms control may exist, a treaty clause must be susceptible to interpretation and boundaries of use which are in harmony with general international law principles. As Professor Schwelb has stated: "[I]t cannot have been… the intention of the parties to throw the principle of pacta sunt servanda overboard in favor of the anarchic idea of the unfettered right of a sovereign state to free itself unilaterally from a treaty obligation." Although Schwelb admits that the Clause itself is subject to "auto-interpretation" by the states parties to the treaty, he adds that …

International Law-Trusteeship Compared With Mandate, Donald S. Leeper S. Ed.

Michigan Law Review

The mandate system represented an attempt to cope with the problem of nonself-governing territories as an international responsibility and, for the most part, was an advancement over former methods of treatment. The system was not perfect and its operation pointed up a number of its defects. The framers of the United Nations Charter formulated the trusteeship system to take the place of the mandate system, correcting its defects and adding certain innovations. The purpose of this comment is to present a brief comparison of the two systems and to consider a few of the major problems presented.

Application Of The Law Of The Absent* Sovereign In Territory Under Belligerent Occupation: The Schio Massacre, Eric Stein

Michigan Law Review

On July 6, 1945, in the village of Schio, a small community in the northern Italian Province of Vicenza, fifty-four persons confined in the Schio jail were shot to death by masked men who had forced their way into the prison. A large majority of the persons held in the Schio jail at the time of the shooting were suspected of collaboration with the Germans, and other political crimes. No formal charges were pending against one-third of the prisoners. At the time of the massacre the area was under the rule of the Allied Military Government.

Seven former partisans were …

International Political Questions In The National Courts, Edwin D. Dickinson

Articles

"Much has been made of the principle, in England and America, that international law is part of the national law to be applied by national courts in appropriate circumstances. As Mr. Justice Gray has expressed it, in the Paquete Habana: 'International law is part of our law, and must be ascertained and administered by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction, as often as question of right depending upon it are duly presented for their determination...'

This principle is useful, where it is applicable, but it is subject to limitations which are sometimes inadequately appreciated ..."

Book Reviews, Robert T. Crane, Edwin D. Dickinson, Grover C. Grismore, Henry M. Bates, Joseph H. Drake

Michigan Law Review

Among all the writings that have appeared on the problem of preserving the order of world society, the most searching and the most illuminating is Hart's Bulwarks of Peace. Particularly in connection with any consideration of the plan of the Paris Covenant of the League of Nations, it compellingly arrests attention.