Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 30 of 31
Full-Text Articles in Law
Duress, Demanding Heroism And Proportionality: The Erdemovic Case And Beyond, Luis E. Chiesa
Duress, Demanding Heroism And Proportionality: The Erdemovic Case And Beyond, Luis E. Chiesa
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
This Article discusses the Erdemovic case in order toexamine whether duress should be a defense to a crime against humanity. Although the Article contends that the arguments in favor of permitting the defendant to claim duress weaken as the seriousness of the offense charged increases, the Article also argues that the duress defense should usually succeed if it can be proved that the actor could not have prevented the threatened harm by refusing to capitulate to the coercion. After balancing the competing considerations, the Author concludes that the defendant in Erdemovic should have been able to claim duress as a …
Climate Change As A Global Challenge, Nicholas A. Robinson
Climate Change As A Global Challenge, Nicholas A. Robinson
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Justice Without Politics: Prosecutorial Discretion And The International Criminal Court, Alexander K.A. Greenawalt
Justice Without Politics: Prosecutorial Discretion And The International Criminal Court, Alexander K.A. Greenawalt
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
The ICC Prosecutor's own charging policies should be prepared to give way to the judgments of legitimate political actors in times of political transition when actual arrests are more likely and competing justice proposals pose a more troubling challenge to the ICC's authority. In that scenario, I argue that the Prosecutor should encourage legitimate political actors to reach policy decisions that will command deference by the ICC. Such deference could take one or both of the following forms: (1) explicit deference to political actors, principally the U.N. Security Council acting under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, and (2) implied …
The Proliferation Security Initiative And The Evolution Of The Law On The Use Of Force, Mark R. Shulman
The Proliferation Security Initiative And The Evolution Of The Law On The Use Of Force, Mark R. Shulman
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Iucn As Catalyst For A Law Of The Biosphere: Acting Globally And Locally, Nicholas A. Robinson
Iucn As Catalyst For A Law Of The Biosphere: Acting Globally And Locally, Nicholas A. Robinson
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Unique among international organizations, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) operates at the global, regional, and national levels to build governmental capacity to protect the environment. With a membership of over 75 sovereign states and 800 nongovernmental organizations, IUCN functions as an intergovernmental organization at the transnational level while operationally embodying the maxim "think globally, act locally." IUCN acts as a consortium of environmental scientists and professionals, including environmental lawyers who have proposed and secured adoption of significant environmental treaties such as the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and their …
The Death Penalty--An Obstacle To The "War On Terrorism"?, Thomas Michael Mcdonnell
The Death Penalty--An Obstacle To The "War On Terrorism"?, Thomas Michael Mcdonnell
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
September 11 seared our collective memory perhaps even more vividly than December 7, 1941, and has evoked a natural demand both for retribution and for measures to keep us safe. Given the existing statutory and judicial authority for capital punishment, the U.S. Government has to confront the issue whether to seek the death penalty against those who are linked to the suicide attacks or to the organization that sponsored them or both. Meting out the death penalty to international terrorists involves difficult moral, legal, and policy questions. The September 11 crimes were not only domestic crimes, but also international ones. …
The Iucn Academy Of Environmental Law: Seeking Legal Underpinnings For Sustainable Development, Nicholas A. Robinson
The Iucn Academy Of Environmental Law: Seeking Legal Underpinnings For Sustainable Development, Nicholas A. Robinson
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
An article describing a “work in progress” can provide only a sketch of the initial plans for the new IUCN Academy of Environmental Law. As the Academy establishes its administrative secretariat, builds its research program, and fashions its collaborative teaching undertakings, the details of this further work will become clear. Their analysis must await the events. Nonetheless, the precedents to date portend a promising future, as illustrated by the launch in Shanghai, and the Academy's initial research into the environmental sustainability of contemporary energy law.
Enforcing Environmental Norms: Diplomatic And Judicial Approaches, Nicholas A. Robinson
Enforcing Environmental Norms: Diplomatic And Judicial Approaches, Nicholas A. Robinson
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Environmental norms are observed because they are norms about how people respect each other and the natural systems that sustain human communities. Environmental norms are basic to human well-being. They arise out of the human condition, not unlike human rights laws. Environmental norms emerge from the fact that humans exist within ecosystems, and human society is embedded in the natural systems in which they have evolved; environmental norms are grounded in an objective reality, and scientists can measure the consequences of observing--or failing to observe--those norms. The provisions of environmental norms, therefore, exist not merely as pronouncements of governments, applied …
"Artillery Lends Dignity To What Otherwise Would Be A Common Brawl": An Essay On Post-Modern Warfare And The Classification Of Captured Adversaries, Ralph Michael Stein
"Artillery Lends Dignity To What Otherwise Would Be A Common Brawl": An Essay On Post-Modern Warfare And The Classification Of Captured Adversaries, Ralph Michael Stein
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
This essay allows the writer to enter a fluid fray being played out almost day-by-day in the media and, of course, where it counts: in the administration of President George W. Bush. Conscious of the ebbs and drifts of both the current debates and desperately anxious not to be preempted by the march of a swiftly moving time frame, this essay suggests an approach to U.S. integration of generally accepted rules for the treatment of POWs that will advance both the war on terrorism and America's need to embrace the reality of the globalization of humanistic mores and notions about …
Cluster Bombs Over Kosovo: A Violation Of International Law?, Thomas Michael Mcdonnell
Cluster Bombs Over Kosovo: A Violation Of International Law?, Thomas Michael Mcdonnell
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
As the United States continues to fight a war against private terror organizations, we and our coalition partners must avoid resorting to terror ourselves, lest our moral and legal standing be undermined. Both in Afghanistan and in Kosovo, the United States employed a weapon that violates the spirit if not the letter of humanitarian law. That weapon, the cluster bomb, unduly endangers and terrorizes civilians. Although focusing primarily on NATO's use of this weapon in Serbia and its Kosovo province, the thesis of this Article also applies to the United States' employing cluster bombs in our war in Afghanistan, a …
Befogged Vision: International Environmental Law A Decade After Rio, Nicholas A. Robinson
Befogged Vision: International Environmental Law A Decade After Rio, Nicholas A. Robinson
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Environmental management has emerged as an important element of governance in practically every nation. This was not the case before the United Nations convened the 1972 Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. After Stockholm, nations learned to build environmental ministries and work across sectors nationally, and discovered how difficult it is to reshape entrenched national practices in order to curb pollution and conserve natural resources. With growing experience and knowledge, nations came to realize that no one government alone could safeguard the environment, and that international cooperation would need to be enhanced.
Strengthening Sustainable Development In Regional Inter-Governmental Governance: Lessons From The 'Asean Way', Nicholas A. Robinson
Strengthening Sustainable Development In Regional Inter-Governmental Governance: Lessons From The 'Asean Way', Nicholas A. Robinson
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
ASEAN was founded with the 1967 Bangkok Declaration in order to encourage stable relations among its original member states, i.e. Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, and to resist destabilizing influences from the war in Viet Nam. The means to stability was to promote economic, social and cultural cooperation in the spirit of equality and partnership. A formal treaty system was not required. As the Viet Nam war ended, ASEAN held its first Summit Meeting in Bali (1976), followed by the 1977 Summit in Kuala Lumpur, where cooperation on regional industrializations was launched. In this first phase of cooperation, …
David Ross Brower And Nature's Laws, Nicholas A. Robinson
David Ross Brower And Nature's Laws, Nicholas A. Robinson
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
“We're not blindly opposed to progress. We're opposed to blind progress.” These words summed up the style and power of David R. Brower. Indelibly, he chiseled toe hold after toe hold on an arduous climb across the rock face of the commercial forces driven to seek short-term gain from natural resources and oblivious to the longer-term costs to the Earth that the ecological sciences would chronicle but that economists would disregard as mere “externalities” in their classical market models. As Brower campaigned to protect the wilderness of North America and the Earth, through his sheer conviction and abundant eloquence, he …
Legal Systems, Decisionmaking, And The Science Of Earth's Systems: Procedural Missing Links, Nicholas A. Robinson
Legal Systems, Decisionmaking, And The Science Of Earth's Systems: Procedural Missing Links, Nicholas A. Robinson
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Decisionmakers disregard scientific findings regarding environmental conditions, despite recommendations of the 1992 "Earth Summit" in Agenda 21 that science should provide a foundation for sustainable development. Although environmental degradation trends continue to exacerbate, decisionmakers address only selected issues. This Article examines an analytic paradigm for evaluating when decisionmakers are ready to address a problem and describes the catalytic role that scientific information can serve in prompting remedial action. Unless systematic procedures require evaluation of environmental scientific findings in the normal course of decisionmaking, science will continue to be ignored. One hallmark of Environmental Law has been to fashion such procedures, …
Forest Fires As A Common International Concern: Precedents For The Progressive Development Of International Environmental Law, Nicholas A. Robinson
Forest Fires As A Common International Concern: Precedents For The Progressive Development Of International Environmental Law, Nicholas A. Robinson
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
Without a better global effort to prevent and cope with forest fires, the remaining wild forests' resources of the world are at risk. Quite apart from the present loss of commercial timber and species habitat, and the present problems of flooding and erosion in the aftermath of fires, the loss of these wooded lands will reduce the capacity of regions to absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, thereby making the challenge of managing emissions of greenhouse gases all the more problematic. Forests sequester carbon in their woody tissue as a result of photosynthesis, and are often termed the “lungs” of the …
Rethinking Genocidal Intent: The Case For A Knowledge-Based Interpretation, Alexander K.A. Greenawalt
Rethinking Genocidal Intent: The Case For A Knowledge-Based Interpretation, Alexander K.A. Greenawalt
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
From its initial codification in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide to its most recent inclusion in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the international crime of genocide has been defined as involving an "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such." The predominant interpetation of this language views genocide as a crime of "specific" or "special" intent, in which the perpetrator deliberately seeks the whole or partial destruction of a protected group. This Note pursues an alternate approach. Relying on both the history of …
Human Rights And Non-State Actors, Thomas Michael Mcdonnell
Human Rights And Non-State Actors, Thomas Michael Mcdonnell
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
The Utility Of International Law For Protecting Women's Health Rights, Vanessa Merton
The Utility Of International Law For Protecting Women's Health Rights, Vanessa Merton
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
There is one area, however, where international law seems to hold promise; certain cultural practices that pose special, direct threats to the lives and health of women (although male infants and children often share women's vulnerability in this regard). I have in mind sexual slavery, coercive prostitution and pornographic exploitation, rape, compulsory marriage, coerced impregnation and its converse, coerced abortion and sterilization; spousal abuse, dowry deaths and coerced suicide, female infanticide and sex-specific abortion. All of these practices are the product not of microbes, poor hygiene, or a lack of health care, but of deliberate human behavior. All these practices …
Defensively Invoking Treaties In American Courts--Jurisdictional Challenges Under The U.N. Drug Trafficking Convention By Foreign Defendants Kidnapped Abroad By U.S. Agents, Thomas Michael Mcdonnell
Defensively Invoking Treaties In American Courts--Jurisdictional Challenges Under The U.N. Drug Trafficking Convention By Foreign Defendants Kidnapped Abroad By U.S. Agents, Thomas Michael Mcdonnell
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
This Article unravels the non-self-executing treaty doctrine, examines the invocation of a treaty as a defense to governmental action, and develops a test for when an individual (rather than a government) may assert a treaty defensively in state or federal courts. Lastly, this Article applies this test to state-sponsored kidnapping and the U.N. Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances. The parties to this treaty, which was sponsored by the United States, barred one country's law enforcement agents from operating without permission on another country's soil and rejected a provision requiring a country to extradite its own …
The Law Of Sustainable Development, Nicholas A. Robinson
The Law Of Sustainable Development, Nicholas A. Robinson
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
I am going to talk briefly, as dictated by the format of this seminar, about the law of sustainable development and how it has been developing. Sustainable development is, today, the guiding theme for both public and private measures to improve social conditions and strengthen economic conditions around the world. It did not become a guiding theme overnight. The recognition that sustainable development is fundamental has been growing gradually. The concept recognizes that the sort of development that was popular in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States of America and elsewhere was, by itself, an inadequate base on …
Iucn's Proposed Covenant On Environment & Development, Nicholas A. Robinson
Iucn's Proposed Covenant On Environment & Development, Nicholas A. Robinson
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
This article examines the genesis and scope of the IUCN draft Covenant. It (a) describes IUCN's interest and experience in preparing the proposed draft Covenant; (b) analyzes the roles the draft Covenant can serve; and (c) identifies some illustrative precedents for the Articles of the draft Covenant.
International Trends In Environmental Impact Assessment, Nicholas A. Robinson
International Trends In Environmental Impact Assessment, Nicholas A. Robinson
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
This paper explores the range of legislation that has created the EIA mandate. A more comprehensive study of all EIA laws is under preparation by the Commission on Environmental Law of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, but this study will not be complete until 1992. In the absence of such an exhaustive analysis, this paper sketches the global legislative trends in EIA.
Soviet Environmental Protection: The Challenge For Legal Studies, Nicholas A. Robinson
Soviet Environmental Protection: The Challenge For Legal Studies, Nicholas A. Robinson
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
The five essays by Soviet environmental law specialists published in this volume of the Pace Environmental Law Review provide insights into the contemporary debate in the USSR about how to protect nature. Before commenting on each essay, it is useful to sketch out the problems which the Soviet Union is encountering as it struggles to cope with its substantial pollution and widespread natural resource misuse.
Straight Baselines In International Law: A Call For Reconsideration, Gayl S. Westerman
Straight Baselines In International Law: A Call For Reconsideration, Gayl S. Westerman
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
Perestroika And Priroda: Environmental Protection In The Ussr, Nicholas A. Robinson
Perestroika And Priroda: Environmental Protection In The Ussr, Nicholas A. Robinson
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
This article reviews the initial Soviet decisions through 1988, applying perestroika to the problem of protecting priroda. Surveyed here is the scope of the ecological problems in the USSR and traditional responses, followed by an examination of the current Soviet policy to restructure its administrative and legal system for environmental protection. These initial reforms will not all result in a direct or immediate improvement of the Soviet environmental protection regime. For instance, the reforms also are stimulating the Soviet "not in my backyard" (NIMBY) phenomenon, or local opposition to the siting of developments ranging from electrical power plants, to facilities …
The U.S. - U.S.S.R. Agreement To Protect The Environment: 15 Years Of Cooperation, Nicholas A. Robinson
The U.S. - U.S.S.R. Agreement To Protect The Environment: 15 Years Of Cooperation, Nicholas A. Robinson
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
This Article will discuss the origins and operation of the Environmental Bilateral, its functioning in international law, and its contribution to environmental law in each country.
The Juridical Status Of The Gulf Of Taranto: A Brief Reply, Gayl S. Westerman
The Juridical Status Of The Gulf Of Taranto: A Brief Reply, Gayl S. Westerman
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
The special problem of identifying the juridical nature of coastal indentations is but one aspect of a more fundamental problem: the need to accommodate the legitimate exclusive interests of coastal states in maximizing wealth, power, and national security with the inclusive interests of the community of states in maximizing freedom of the seas. Throughout historical cycles of mares liberum and clausum, this fundamental accommodation has remained the central focus of the international law of the sea. Even today, after thoroughgoing codification efforts in 1958 and 1982: the legal regime of the oceans remains in transition.
Introduction: Emerging International Environmental Law, Nicholas A. Robinson
Introduction: Emerging International Environmental Law, Nicholas A. Robinson
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
This Introduction notes the emerging mandate for international environmental law and the concurrent problems of implementation. It focuses on two particular applications of this new mandate: the United States-Panama Joint Environment Commission for the Panama Canal, and the suggested role of the United Nations Environment Programme in developing a system of global environmental hazard alerts.
Review Of International Product Liability, David S. Cohen
Review Of International Product Liability, David S. Cohen
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
No abstract provided.
When Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: Proposed Ratification By The United States Of The Geneva Protocol On Chemical-Biological Warfare, Linda C. Fentiman
When Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: Proposed Ratification By The United States Of The Geneva Protocol On Chemical-Biological Warfare, Linda C. Fentiman
Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications
In light of the Japanese proposal, the current disarmament talks, the Administration's review of the United States' chemical warfare policy, the Defense Department's request for appropriations for production of binary weapons, and the as yet unratified Convention on Bacteriological Weapons and Toxins, it seems more important than ever for the Senate to give its advice and consent to the ratification of the Geneva Protocol. Since the dispute between the Administration and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is over the interpretation of the scope of the Protocol's chemical warfare prohibition, it seems particularly appropriate at this time to determine whether or …