Law Commons^™

Currency Of Love: Customary International Law And The Battle For Same –Sex Marriage In The United States, Sonia B. Green

Sonia Bychkov Green

The battle for same-sex marriage is likely to be the civil rights issue of this decade. Developments all over the world over the last several years have caused celebration, public outcry and passionate debate. In the last year alone, the first Latin American same-sex wedding was performed, Sweden joined the nations who allow same-sex marriage, and the United States saw the “Proposition 8” debacle in California, and the new federal lawsuits that will inevitably propel the issues toward the Supreme Court. The legal debate in the United States has asked the crucial question: is there a legal right to marriage …

Withdrawing From Custom And The Paradox Of Consensualism In International Law, Chin Leng Lim, Olufemi Elias

Chin Leng Lim

In their excellent article, Withdrawing from International Custom, Professors Curtis Bradley and Mitu Gulati call into question the prevailing conception of customary international law, according to which states “never have the legal right to withdraw unilaterally from customary law” (the “Mandatory View”). Bradley and Gulati question the intellectual history and functional desirability of the Mandatory View, and they identify “significant uncertainties about how the Mandatory View would work in practice.” Their observations appear to us to be convincing. If the basis of the Mandatory View is not convincing, then its main tenets, such as the absence of a right of …

Who Watches The Watchmen? 'Vigilant Doorkeeping,' The Alien Tort Statute, & Possible Reform, Keith A. Petty

Keith A. Petty

The Alien Tort Statute (ATS) allows alien plaintiffs to file civil actions in U.S. district courts for torts violating the law of nations or U.S. treaties. After the 2nd Circuit’s Filartiga decision in 1980, the debate began as to whether the ATS was a useful tool against human rights violators or an intrusion into U.S. foreign relations. In 2004, the Supreme Court in Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain resolved some of the questions left open by Filartiga.

Sosa concluded that ATS claims must be limited to law of nations violations as well defined as those recognized in 1789. The Court tasked the …