Law Commons^™

Legitimacy As An Assessment Of Existing Legal Standards: The Case Of The 2003 Iraq War, Charlotte Ku

Charlotte Ku

The Iraq war was a multiple assault on the foundations and rules of the existing UN-centered world order. It called into question the adequacy of the existing institutions for articulating global norms and enforcing compliance with the demands of the international community. It highlighted also the unwillingness of some key countries to wait until definitive proof before acting to meet the danger of the world's most destructive weapons falling into the hands of the world's most dangerous regimes. It was simultaneously a test of the UN's willingness and ability to deal with brutal dictatorships and a searching scrutiny of the …

Forging A Multilayered System Of Global Governance, Charlotte Ku

Charlotte Ku

The world in which we find ourselves today is no longer governable entirely by resort to the classical system of international law. Even more seriously, it would seem that the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter are no longer being served sufficiently in light of new concerns. The text adopted in 1945 does not convey the image of a world tormented by terrorists. Nor does it reflect the most pressing commitments of our time: to democratic governance, to environmental responsibility, and to a freer and more equitable system of world trade. Increasingly, the international law community acknowledges the …

American Lawyers And International Competence, Charlotte Ku, Christopher J. Borgen

Charlotte Ku

Just over ten years ago, Germans tore down a wall that divided their country and the whole of Europe. Stepping through the hole in the Berlin Wall, they took the first steps towards the reunification of West and East Germany and the end of the Cold War. Today another wall is being torn down - that between purely domestic law and international law. Companies are engaged in international trade at ever increasing rates. Environmental degradation has proved to be a global problem that cannot be solved with uncoordinated local measures. Individuals worldwide are pressing their governments for the recognition of …

Teaching International Law: Beyond The Law School Experience, Charlotte Ku

Charlotte Ku

As teachers, it is perhaps natural for us to think about teaching in the classroom context, although this panel is demonstrating the teaching opportunities that may exist outside of a single course or courses in international law.

The Asil As An Epistemic Community, Charlotte Ku

Charlotte Ku

Three comments, on the program of this Annual Meeting. We have answered the theme question in various ways, and we have done some things less well, others better. The focus of a political scientist differs from that of an international lawyer, dealing more with process than with outcome. We have taken a relatively simplistic look at outcomes-that is, we have often looked at whether international institutions have done what they said they were going to do; we have not looked nearly so much at whether they fixed the problems they were trying to fix. The second point that emerges very …

Toward Understanding Global Governance: The International Law And International Relations Toolbox, Charlotte Ku, Thomas George Weiss

Charlotte Ku

No abstract provided.

The Developing Role Of Non-Governmental Organizations In Global Policy And Law Making, Charlotte Ku

Charlotte Ku

The history of international relations in the twentieth century may appear principally to be the story of the state.

At the same time, the history of international relations in the twentieth century is also one of international organizations as a means to support and strengthen the state's ability to discharge its primary functions of promoting order in the international system and ensuring the security of its own citizens.

An even more aggressive approach to meeting the needs of states is through aid programs like the UN Development Program.

These international organizations were created by governments, usually by treaty, to address …

International Law - New Actors And New Technologies: Center Stage For Ngos, John King Gamble, Charlotte Ku

Charlotte Ku

Technology and the information age are changing the allocation of power and authority in the international system with non-state actors such as intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) assuming decision-making roles previously reserved primarily to states. Professor David Johnston sees the information age as "creating deep and broad disruptive breaches in our society, disruptions equal to those of the agricultural or industrial revolutions." Professors Keohane and Nye believe that the information age will alter the power structure of governments. Jessica Mathews's stimulating article in Foreign Affairs argues both that the information revolution is shaking the foundations of state authority, …

Human-Centric International Law: A Model And A Search For Empirical Indicators, John King Gamble, Charlotte Ku, Chris Strayer

Charlotte Ku

This Article is the result of the authors' application of an explicit model of the evolving international legal situation and an empirical test using multilateral treaties. The authors examine all the multilateral treaties signed over the last 350 years, about 6000 treaties, and discuss the "humanization" of international law.

Introduction To Transnational Law: What Is It - How Does It Differ From International Law And Comparative Law, Charlotte Ku

Charlotte Ku

Each of today's panelists has been asked to recount some of their personal educational and professional experience as a way of describing the kind of awareness that a transnational approach might provide. Each panelist has been asked to consider the content of a transnational course and how schools might draw on existing curricula and teaching staffs to teach a transnational law class. One of the most widely talked about experiences in developing such a curriculum is the approach adopted by the University of Michigan Law School by requiring a Transnational Law course for all its students starting with the class …

Strengthening International Law's Capacity To Govern Through Multilayered Strategic Partnerships, Charlotte Ku

Charlotte Ku

This article examines the multiple layers at which international law now functions--the international, national, and sub-national. It identifies both public and private institutions and practices that have emerged to carry out international law's normative objectives. It ends with a call to expand the formal structure of international law to include the realities of a disaggregated state, a non-hierarchical system of governance, and a transnational political space.

Filling In The Gaps: Extrasystemic Mechanisms For Addressing Imbalances Between The International Legal Operating System And The Normative System, Charlotte Ku, Paul F. Diehl

Charlotte Ku

What happens when there is an imbalance between the operating and normative systems of international law? One obvious outcome is nothing; the imbalance remains, and the norms of the system are not given full effect. For example, human rights provisions abound, but they can be widely ignored in the absence of enforcement mechanisms. In this article, we identify several other possibilities. Our contention is that adaptations occur that compensate for, or at least mitigate, the effects of the operating-normative systems imbalance. Specifically, we explore four kinds of extrasystemic (at least from the perspective of the international legal system) adaptations: (1) …

When Can Nations Go To War - Politics And Change In The Un Security System, Charlotte Ku

Charlotte Ku

We found that the post-World War II international security system as provided for in the United Nations Charter has adapted to a variety of new tasks, but that it remains incomplete. We discovered that the UN Charter system as a means to restrain the use of force has perhaps developed more fully than the Charter system's ability to authorize and to enable states to use force in situations other than a clear cross border invasion of a member state. At the same time, we recognized that the existence of an international institution like the United Nations has fundamentally changed the …

Harold K. Jacobson (1929-2001): An Appreciation, Charlotte Ku

Charlotte Ku

Harold Jacobson was born in Detroit onJune 28,1929. He attended high school in Wyandotte, Michigan, and received a bachelor's degree in history from the University of Michigan. He married his Michigan schoolmate Merelyn Jean Lindbloom in 1951, a year after he started graduate school at Yale.

He was fundamentally an optimist about human behavior; he opened his path-breaking text, Networks of Interdependence, with the words, "This is an optimistic book, though I hope not an unrealistic one."

Thus did Jacobson begin a career-long association with many whose work was rooted in international law. This interest led to fruitful collaborations and …

The Archipelagic States Concept And Regional Stability In Southeast Asia, Charlotte Ku

Charlotte Ku

For the Philippines and Indonesia, adoption by the Third Law of the Sea Conference in the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention (1982 LOS Convention) of Articles 46-54 on "Archipelagic States," marked the capstone of the two countries' efforts to win international recognition for the archipelagic principle. For both, acceptance by the international community of this principle was an important step in their political development from a colony to a sovereign state. Their success symbolized independence from colonial status and their role in the shaping of the international community in which they live.

Accountability And Democracy In The Case Of Using Force Under International Auspices, Charlotte Ku, Harold K. Jacobson

Charlotte Ku

This presentation derives from a large research project that has been more than three years in progress and reflects the work of a multinational team of lawyers, policy analysts, and political scientists. The project is supported by the Ford Foundation and will conclude at the end of 2000 with the completion of a book that will cover the experience of nine democracies in deploying their military forces under international auspices as this experience relates to two large questions.

The project examines two questions:

• What is the interactive relationship between international commitments and national constitutional and political requirements?
• How does this …

Bridging The International Law-International Relations Divide: Taking Stock Of Progress, Adam Irish, Charlotte Ku, Paul F. Diehl

Charlotte Ku

International law (IL) and international relations (IR) have long been considered separate academic enterprises, with their own theoretical orientations, methodologies, and publishing outlets.

The net effect has been that the insights and research findings of one discipline have largely been unknown or ignored in the other. This has occurred despite the commonality of focusing on many of the same substantive interests, namely international cooperation in general, issues of war and peace, environmental regulation, and trade. This has led to numerous calls over the past two decades to bridge the international law and international relations divide. Yet one recent work claims …

Choice Of Language In Bilateral Treaties: Fifty Years Of Changing State Practice, John King Gamble, Charlotte Ku

Charlotte Ku

The language in which treaties are written affects how widely and deeply treaty obligations are understood and, hence, followed.

Of course, many problems arise when the treaty does not have the same meaning in different languages.

The focus of this article is a different aspect of language in treaties--the choice of language or languages as official text or texts of bilateral treaties. Some research has addressed the broader issue of multiple use of languages in international organizations and multilateral treaties, but bilateral treaties have received scant attention. This inattention likely stems from the difficulty of examining the treaty practice of …

American Lawyers And International Competence, Charlotte Ku, Christopher J. Borgen

Charlotte Ku

Lawyers trained in U.S. law schools learn that the Constitution gives Congress the power "[t]o define and punish... offenses against the Law of Nations." Some might also be able to cite the oft-quoted dicta from the Supreme Court's decision in The Paquete Habana that "International law is part of our law, and must be ascertained and administered by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction, as often as questions of right depending upon it are duly presented for their determination." But what does this mean for today's practitioner? One century after Paquete Habana, we ask what is international law, …

Global Governance And The Changing Face Of International Law, Charlotte Ku

Charlotte Ku

No abstract provided.

Abolition Of China's Unequal Treaties And The Search For Regional Stability In Asia, 1919-1943, Charlotte Ku

Charlotte Ku

Article Extract:

On July 1, 1997, China will resume control over Hong Kong - territory ceded to Britain in 1842 following China's defeat in the Opium War. The settlement of the Hong Kong question and the scheduled 1999 reversion of Macao from Portugal to China will effectively remove the last traces of the restrictions and encroachments placed on China by treaty for 150 years following the 1842 Treaty of Nanking.

The "unequal" treaty system began with the trading and residential privileges provided by the Treaty of Nanking. Britain was the premier trading power in China in the nineteenth century, and …