Law Commons^™

Brief Amici Curiae On Behalf Of International And Constitutional Law Experts In Support Of Petition For Certiorari, Al Bahlul V. United States , 840 F.3d 757 (D.C. Cir. 2016) (En Banc), Robert D. Sloane, Foley Hoag Llp

Faculty Scholarship

Amici curiae, legal experts in international and constitutional law, believe that a majority of the en banc panel in Bahlul v. United States, 840 F.3d 757 (D.C. Cir. 2016) (en banc), mistakenly affirmed Ali Hamza Ahmad Suliman al Bahlul’s conviction by a military commission for a non-international war crime. The main concurring opinion in that case misconceived how international law defines the jurisdiction of law-of-war military commissions. As amici argue below, it is the Constitution—not international law—that limits the jurisdiction of lawof-war military commissions.

Searching Places Unknown: Law Enforcement Jurisdiction On The Dark Web, Ahmed Ghappour

Faculty Scholarship

The use of hacking tools by law enforcement to pursue criminal suspects who have anonymized their communications on the dark web presents a looming flashpoint between criminal procedure and international law. Criminal actors who use the dark web (for instance, to commit crimes or to evade authorities) obscure digital footprints left behind with third parties, rendering existing surveillance methods obsolete. In response, law enforcement has implemented hacking techniques that deploy surveillance software over the Internet to directly access and control criminals’ devices. The practical reality of the underlying technologies makes it inevitable that foreign-located computers will be subject to remote …

What Is Foreign Relations Law?, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

This draft first chapter of The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Foreign Relations Law considers what is potentially encompassed by the term “foreign relations law,” and what it might mean to think about it as a distinct field of law that can be compared and contrasted across national jurisdictions. The chapter begins by outlining some differences between foreign relations law and international law. It then describes the development of foreign relations law as a field of study within the United States and considers why, at least until recently, it has not been treated as a field in most other countries. Finally, …

Unilateral Corporate Regulation, William Magnuson

Faculty Scholarship

Corporations today wield unprecedented power in politics and society, and they have a tremendous effect on human welfare around the globe. At the same time, they are increasingly difficult to regulate. Corporations are savvy and mobile, and they can relocate to avoid burdensome domestic regulation with surprising ease. The agility of corporations creates a dilemma for government decisionmakers seeking to balance the need to attract the wealth that corporations create with the desire to pursue other policy priorities. One potential approach that governments have used to address this dilemma is international cooperation, and a growing number of scholars have argued …

Under International Law, Must A Ship On The High Seas Fly The Flag Of A State In Order To A Void Being A Stateless Vessel? Is A Flag Painted On Either Side Of The Ship Sufficient To Identify It?, Barry Hart Dubner, Mary Carmen Arias

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Corporate Criminal Responsibility For Human Rights Violations: Jurisdiction And Reparations, Kenneth S. Gallant

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Co-Belligerency, Rebecca Ingber

Faculty Scholarship

Executive branch officials rest the President’s authority in today’s war against ISIS, al Qaeda, and other terrorist groups on an expansive interpretation of a 15-year-old statute, the 2001 “Authorization for Use of Military Force” (AUMF), passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. They rely on that statute to justify force against groups neither referenced in – nor even in existence at the time of – the 2001 statute, by invoking a creative theory of international law they call “co-belligerency.” Under this theory, the President can read his AUMF authority flexibly, to justify force against not only those groups covered …

Enforcing The Fcpa: International Resonance And Domestic Strategy, Rachel Brewster

Faculty Scholarship

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”), which bans corporations from offering bribes to foreign government officials, was enacted during the Watergate era’s crackdown on political corruption but remained only weakly enforced for its first two decades. American industry argued that the law created an uneven playing field in global commerce, which made robust enforcement politically unpopular. This Article documents how the executive branch strategically under- enforced the FCPA, while Congress and the President pushed for an international agreement that would bind other countries to rules similar to those of the United States. The Article establishes that U.S. officials ramped up …

Why The State?, Joseph Raz

Faculty Scholarship

I offer two questions for the price of one: Why do so many jurisprudential theories focus on the state? And what is it about the State that gives it a special place in our social arrangements? I do not mean these to address all aspects of states. They are questions about the law or legal systems of states.

We have to be open to a negative answer to the second question, thus being critical of jurisprudential theories that focus more or less exclusively on the state. That need not deny that states have their own legal systems. It could merely …

Democratic Experimentalism, Charles F. Sabel, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Democratic Experimentalism is an orientation in contemporary legal thought that draws on both the critical impulses of modernist theory and the constructive practice of postbureaucratic organization.

Some of the core ideas of Democratic Experimentalism were formulated long ago, notably by pragmatists in the John Dewey mold, but they have been elaborated in response to social developments of recent decades. A recurring challenge presented by these developments is uncertainty, by which we mean the inability to anticipate, much less to assign a probability to, future states of the world. The constellation of changes that make contemporary economies more innovative produces uncertainty …

How International Is International Law: Remarks By Lori F. Damrosch, Lori Fisler Damrosch

Faculty Scholarship

Our moderator's questions begin with “in what sense is international law and in what sense isn't it universal?” and continue with whether international law may be “different in different places” and what the implications of such differences may be. I am here to defend the “universalist” perspective, as the immediate past president of the American Society of International Law and before that, editor-in-chief of the American Journal of International Law. Though both the Society and the Journal have “American” in their titles and our geographic headquarters is in the United States, the Society's mission statement commits us to pursue …