Law Commons^™

Failed States, Or The State As Failure?, Rosa Ehrenreich Brooks

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article seeks to challenge a basic assumption of international law and policy, arguing that the existing state-based international legal framework stands in the way of developing effective responses to state failure. It offers an alternative theoretical framework designed to spark debate about better legal and policy responses to failed states. Although the article uses failed states as a lens to focus its arguments, it also has broad implications for how we think about sovereignty, the evolving global order, and the place of states within it.

State failure causes a wide range of humanitarian, legal, and security problems. Unsurprisingly, given …

Administrative Procedure And Democracy: The Italian Experience, Fabrizio Fracchia

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Back to Government?: The Pluralistic Deficit in the Decisionmaking Processes and Before the Courts, Symposium. University of Trento, Italy, June 11-12, 2004.

Privatization, Prisons, Democracy, And Human Rights: The Need To Extend The Province Of Administrative Law, Alfred C. Aman

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Back to Government?: The Pluralistic Deficit in the Decisionmaking Processes and Before the Courts, Symposium. University of Trento, Italy, June 11-12, 2004.

The Syracuse Conference On A World Rule Of Law: American Perspectives An Introduction, Malcolm M. Feeley

Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce

The working group was charged with exploring virtually all facets of democracy and the rule of law, as they pertain to established constitutional democracies, societies undergoing "transitions to constitutional democracies," and those societies where democracy remains little more than a hopeful wish. Papers and much of the discussion during the two days probed beneath the structural formalities that are obvious and important requisites of democracy, to explore the subtexts of and cultural conditions for democracy and the rule of law, those features that may be so taken-for-granted that they usually go unacknowledged, let alone unexplored in discussion of democratic theory. …

Democratization In Iraq, Kate Lotz, Tim Melvin

Human Rights & Human Welfare

With the war in Iraq over, Coalition forces are still present as the cultivation of Iraqi democracy is underway. Coalition-led democratization in Iraq will prove to be a lengthy and complex objective, but one which will be pursued until successfully accomplished.

The Islamic Roots Of Democracy, Ali Iyad Yakub

University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Oas And Constitutionalism: Lessons From Recent West African Experience, Stephen J. Schnably

Articles

No abstract provided.

Democratization In Bosnia, Melanie Kawano, Amber Goodman, Chris Saeger

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Democratization in post-conflict, post-Dayton Bosnia has been characterized by many scholars as a “noble experiment”: the West’s guinea pig for internationally initiated post-communist democratization. In a state so wearied by war and dictatorship, democracy would be expected to take root quickly and flourish. However, due to various cultural and political influences, what the Dayton Peace Agreement originally intended to quickly lead to Bosnia’s self-governance has instead resulted in the state’s crippling dependence on external actors. The articles in this section of this bibliography explore the myriad influences (primarily under the umbrella of ethnicity) on the process.

Roads To Democracy, Lawrence M. Friedman

Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce

Of course, "democracy" is not a simple concept; and no two systems that claim to be democracies are exactly the same. The "rule of law" is if anything an even more contested concept. For the purposes of this paper, we do not really need to define democracy rigorously. A society with a reasonable dose of freedom of speech and the press, freedom of religion, more or less fair elections, and the customary package of basic human rights, respected (on the whole) by the government, qualifies as a democracy. These will also tend to be societies that respect the rule of …

Democracy And The Arab World, David Shomar

Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce

In the pursuit of spreading democracy (constitutional democracy) in the Arab world, a worthy goal in abstract terms, we should start by defining democracy. I found it more enlightening and necessary to dismiss certain false perceptions about what democracy is, before determining what a democracy might mean to us, let alone other cultures.

Community And Democracy: Syracuse Reflections, Richard E.D. Schwartz

Syracuse Journal of International Law and Commerce

How does the American experience with democracy contribute to our understanding of the prospects for, and paths to, democracy worldwide?" Another half of the papers prepared for the Conference deal with the experience of other countries, many of them moving toward rule-of-law democracy. Taken together, they represent a sample of our present knowledge-and they suggest new directions for future research. Communities with certain qualities contribute to the development and sustaining of democracy. The qualities to which I refer include: mutual respect across lines of division and the creative composition of differences. At Syracuse, we saw two kinds of community: local …

Constitutionally Excluded Confessions: Applying America's Lessons To A Democratic Iraq, Joseph T. Thai

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Minority Rights, Minority Wrongs, Elena Baylis

Articles

Many of the new democracies established in the last twenty years are severely ethnically divided, with numerous minority groups, languages, and religions. As part of the process of democratization, there has also been an explosion of “national human rights institutions,” that is, independent government agencies whose purpose is to promote enforcement of human rights. But despite the significance of minority concerns to the stability and success of these new democracies, and despite the relevance of minority rights to the mandates of national human rights institutions, a surprisingly limited number of national human rights institutions have directed programs and resources to …