Law Commons^™

Cameroon Pastoralists Fight For Their Way Of Life, Kaitlin Y. Cordes

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

After years of struggles against governments and private parties, the Mbororo-Fulani are gaining international attention. But is this too little too late?

Why The Extractive Industry Should Support Mandatory Transparency: A Shared Value Approach, Julien Topal, Perrine Toledano

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

The Transparency Amendment, included in the Dodd‐Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, can be an important tool in curtailing the resource curse that so heavily burdens resource‐rich developing countries by shedding light on opaque payments between the extractive sector and host countries. From the get‐go, however, extractive industry companies have fiercely opposed the new mandatory disclosure requirements as set out in this regulation. The corporate opposition is for the largest part motivated by the fear of a competitive disadvantage that derives from the fact that the amendment is housed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and thus …

Memo To The Obama Administration On The Burma Responsible Investment Reporting Requirements, Kaitlin Y. Cordes, Lisa E. Sachs

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

In September 2013, CCSI sent a memo to President Obama and his Administration in response to the first public reports submitted by U.S. companies in compliance with the Burma Responsible Investment Reporting Requirements. The memo applauded the U.S. Government’s efforts to encourage responsible investment in Burma, noting that robust due diligence is essential to ensuring that international investments contribute to sustainable development. Yet the memo also urged the Obama Administration to take steps to strengthen future reporting. In particular, CCSI urged the Administration to issue clarifying guidance that any U.S. investor submitting a report should (1) provide information on due …

On Solid Ground: Toward Effective Resource-Based Development, Lisa E. Sachs

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

The small island-state of Timor-Leste exemplifies the challenge of resource-based development for a poor country well-endowed with a valuable natural resource. Timor-Leste, which gained its independence in 2002, has accumulated $13 billion in its petroleum fund in less than a decade. Some of the largest multinational oil companies are operating in the country, and the revenues continue to flow. And yet, while Timor-Leste has seen very notable improvements in its development indicators in the past few years, it continues to face a massive challenge of converting financial wealth into economic development. There are also heated debates about how to spend …

Civilian Harm From Drone Strikes: Assessing Limitations & Responding To Harm, Human Rights Clinic

Human Rights Institute

U.S. intelligence officials tout the drone platform as enabling the most precise and humane targeting program in the history of warfare. While drone technology is a significant advance, claims about minimal civilian harm from drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen elide many of the operational realities of using drones outside of full-scale military operations.

The Long-Term International Law Implications Of Targeted Killings Practices, Christof Heyns, Sarah Knuckey

Faculty Scholarship

One of the most crucial and enduring questions about “targeted killings” is: How will the currently expanding practices of singling out individuals in advance and eliminating them in other countries without accountability impact the established international legal system?

International law, since at least World War II, has developed various mechanisms to limit killing in general, including targeted killings. These take the form of vigorous protections for the right to life under human rights law; safeguards against the interstate use of force while permitting states to protect themselves where necessary; and aiming to strike a balance between the principles of humanity …

Some Pluralism About Pluralism: A Comment On Hanoch Dagan's "Pluralism And Perfectionism In Private Law", Jedediah S. Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

Hanoch Dagan is among “those who think it advantageous to get as much ethics into the law as they can,” in the phrase of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. His pluralism is a perfectionism for polytheists: There are many human goods, and each has its domain, including some portion of the law of property. Depending on where we stand on the property landscape at any time, we may be community-minded sharers, devoted romantics in marriage, or coolly rational market actors, and the local property law will smooth each of these paths for us. Property law is built on the design of …

Law And Ethics For Autonomous Weapon Systems: Why A Ban Won't Work And How The Laws Of War Can, Kenneth Anderson, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

Public debate is heating up over the future development of autonomous weapon systems. Some concerned critics portray that future, often invoking science-fiction imagery, as a plain choice between a world in which those systems are banned outright and a world of legal void and ethical collapse on the battlefield. Yet an outright ban on autonomous weapon systems, even if it could be made effective, trades whatever risks autonomous weapon systems might pose in war for the real, if less visible, risk of failing to develop forms of automation that might make the use of force more precise and less harmful …

The Invention Of A Human Right: Conscientious Objection At The United Nations, 1947-2011, Jeremy Kessler

Faculty Scholarship

The right of conscientious objection to military service is the most startling of human rights. While human rights generally seek to protect individuals from state power, the right of conscientious objection radically alters the citizen-state relationship, subordinating a state's decisions about national security to the beliefs of the individual citizen. In a world of nation-states jealous of their sovereignty, how did the human right of conscientious objection become an international legal doctrine? By answering that question, this Article both clarifies the legal pedigree of the human right of conscientious objection and sheds new light on the relationship between international human …