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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Alien Tort Statute And The Law Of Nations, Bradford R. Clark, Anthony J. Bellia Jr.
The Alien Tort Statute And The Law Of Nations, Bradford R. Clark, Anthony J. Bellia Jr.
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
Courts and scholars have struggled to identify the original meaning of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS). As enacted in 1789, the ATS provided "[t]hat the district courts... shall... have cognizance... of all causes where an alien sues for a tort only in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." The statute was rarely invoked for almost two centuries until, in the 1980s, lower federal courts began reading the statute expansively to allow foreign citizens to sue other foreign citizens for violations of modern customary international law that occurred outside the United States. In 2004 …
Book Review Of Marc Weller, Contested Statehood: Kosovo’S Struggle For Independence, Oxford University Press, 2009 (321 Pp.), Sean D. Murphy
Book Review Of Marc Weller, Contested Statehood: Kosovo’S Struggle For Independence, Oxford University Press, 2009 (321 Pp.), Sean D. Murphy
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
How an area measuring no more than about 11,000 square kilometers could become arguably “ground zero” for the formation of post-Cold War international law is a bit of a mystery, but the province (and now country) of Kosovo, in the late twentieth/early twenty-first centuries, somehow managed to pull off that feat. In Contested Statehood: Kosovo’s Struggle for Independence Marc Weller provides the best history to date of the Kosovo crisis from the end of the Cold War up to the point that Kosovo’s independence was declared in February 2008. In its July 2009 advisory opinion on that legality of that …
International Law And Domestic Legal Systems: Incorporation, Transformation, And Persuasion (Introduction), Dinah L. Shelton
International Law And Domestic Legal Systems: Incorporation, Transformation, And Persuasion (Introduction), Dinah L. Shelton
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This book discusses developments in international law and their relationship to national legal systems. The introduction of the book notes that countries who received their independence from authoritarian regimes are more receptive to international law. A country may adopt either a monist approach to international law, where it considers international law part of its domestic law, or a dualist approach, in which a country separates its national law from international law. The introduction then proceeds to identify sources of international law, including treaties and countries’ methods of complying, customary international law, and declarations. The introduction concludes by noting the increasing …
Comments On The Normative Challenge Of Environmental “Soft Law”, Dinah L. Shelton
Comments On The Normative Challenge Of Environmental “Soft Law”, Dinah L. Shelton
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This paper describes the increased presence of non-binding soft law in international environmental law and begins by listing the possible uses of a “non-binding normative instrument.” Next, the paper describes the relationship between soft law and customary international law and notes that soft law may result in subsequent codification of those principles or interpret existing treaty obligations. The paper then contemplates why states are utilizing soft law in international environmental law and discusses issues regarding compliance with non-binding soft law. The paper concludes that the complicated nature of the international system prevents a prediction of the extent to which states …
Human Rights And The Environment: Substantive Rights, Dinah L. Shelton
Human Rights And The Environment: Substantive Rights, Dinah L. Shelton
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
This chapter focuses on the relationship between human rights and the environment. The chapter describes multiple sources of human rights and environmental obligations, including international treaties, national law, and the judicial decisions of international courts. Human rights that indirectly call for environmental conservatism include the rights to life, health, privacy, and standard of living. This chapter concludes by noting that governments must balance human rights related to the environment with other concerns such as economic advancement.
International Human Rights: Problems Of Law, Policy, And Practice, Dinah L. Shelton, Hurst Hannum, S. James Anaya
International Human Rights: Problems Of Law, Policy, And Practice, Dinah L. Shelton, Hurst Hannum, S. James Anaya
GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works
The introductory chapter of this book discusses how a unifying concern for human dignity led to the establishment of human rights as part of the body of international law. Next, the chapter includes excerpts from multiple writers’ works to employ slavery as a case study to demonstrate how the international community has used the notion of human rights to create binding law. Third, this chapter discusses the philosophical drivers of human rights by including writings from other scholars and the history of the presence of human rights in international law. The chapter concludes that increasing concern for human rights may …