Law Commons^™

Duress In Immigration Law, Elizabeth A. Keyes

Seattle University Law Review

The doctrine of duress is common to other bodies of law, but the application of the duress doctrine is both unclear and highly unstable in immigration law. Outside of immigration law, a person who commits a criminal act out of well-placed fear of terrible consequences is different than a person who willingly commits a crime, but American immigration law does not recognize this difference. The lack of clarity leads to certain absurd results and demands reimagining, redefinition, and an unequivocal statement of the significance of duress in ascertaining culpability. While there are inevitably some difficult lines to be drawn in …

Transitional Justice As Communication: Why Truth Commissions And International Criminal Tribunals Need To Persuade And Inform Citizens And Leaders, And How They Can, Jamie O'Connell

South Carolina Law Review

No abstract provided.

Table Of Contents

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents.

Book Review: The Right To A Fair Trial In International Law, Robert Currie

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

No abstract provided.

Heaven Or Earth: The Hagia Sophia Re-Conversion, Turkish And International Law, And The Special Case Of Universal Religious Sites, Michael Goodyear

Articles & Chapters

The Hagia Sophia has stood as one of the greatest religious buildings in the world for nearly 1,500 years. During this time, the structure was a church and then a mosque, before finally becoming a museum in 1934. But in July 2020, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, re-converted the Hagia Sophia to a mosque following a ruling by the Turkish Council of State. The re-conversion was received with outrage across much of the world, but whether the decision was legal poses a much more difficult question.

This article analyzes Turkish domestic law and international law to conclude that there …

Interpretive Entrepreneurs, Melissa (M.J.) Durkee

Scholarship@WashULaw

Private actors interpret legal norms, a phenomenon I call “interpretive entrepreneurship.” The phenomenon is particularly significant in the international context, where many disputes are not subject to judicial resolution and there is no official system of precedent. Interpretation can affect the meaning of laws over time. For this reason, it can be a form of “post hoc” international lawmaking, worth studying alongside other forms of international lobbying and norm entrepreneurship by private actors. The Article identifies and describes the phenomenon through a series of case studies that show how, why, and by whom it unfolds. The examples focus on entrepreneurial …

Introduction To The Symposium On Frederic Megret, "Are There 'Inherently Sovereign Functions' In International Law?", Melissa (M.J.) Durkee

Scholarship@WashULaw

Imagine a future in which the U.S. government has closed the postal service, shuttered its administrative apparatus, and stopped funding education. Confirmation battles have dismantled the federal judiciary, with most adjudication now performed by private arbitrators. After years of erosion of public standards, corporate environmental and labor practices are now left to voluntary self-regulation and market pressures. Private military and security companies command and regulate a vast military infrastructure, executing contracts to meet U.S. intelligence and defense requirements. Prisons have been fully privatized. After losing faith in elections, the U.S. populace no longer insists on them. The country is administered …

Welcoming Participation, Avoiding Capture: A Five-Part Framework Between Participation And Capture: Non-State Actor Participation In International Rule-Making, Melissa (M.J.) Durkee

Scholarship@WashULaw

What role should non-state actors have in the work of international organizations? It is particularly fitting that this panel is titled “between participation and capture,” because the phrase calls up the conflicting values that animate this question. When we think of non-state actors “participating” in the work of international organizations, we think about open, transparent organizations that are receiving the benefit of diverse perspectives and expertise. We may associate this phrase with process, access, and legitimacy in governance. On the other hand, when we think about non-state actors “capturing” the agenda of international organizations, we have a conflicting set of …

Wrongful Extradition: Reforming The Committal Phase Of Canada’S Extradition Law, Robert Currie

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

There has recently been an upswing in interest around extradition in Canada, particularly in light of the high-profile and troubling case of Hassan Diab who was extradited to France on the basis of what turned out to be an ill-founded case. Diab’s case highlights some of the problems with Canada’s Extradition Act and proceedings thereunder. This paper argues that the “committal stage” of extradition proceedings, involving a judicial hearing into the basis of the requesting state’s case, is unfair and may not be compliant with the Charter and that the manner in which the Crown conducts these proceedings contributes to …

Corporate Commitment To International Law, Jay Butler

Faculty Publications

Corporations are increasingly important actors in international law. But vital questions underlying this development have long gone unanswered: How and why do corporations commit to international law?

This article constructs a general account of business interaction with international legal obligation and suggests that a gateway to demystifying this persistent puzzle lies in corporate opinio juris.

Corporate opinio juris describes a company's subscription to a rule of international law, even though the company is not technically bound by that rule. This subscription functions as a kind of pledge that, once made, has sway over the company and its peers and symbiotically …

Introduction To The Symposium On Frédéric Mégret, "Are There 'Inherently Sovereign Functions' In International Law?", Melissa J. Durkee

Scholarly Works

Imagine a future in which the U.S. government has closed the postal service, shuttered its administrative apparatus, and stopped funding education. Confirmation battles have dismantled the federal judiciary, with most adjudication now performed by private arbitrators. After years of erosion of public standards, corporate environmental and labor practices are now left to voluntary self-regulation and market pressures. Private military and security companies command and regulate a vast military infrastructure, executing contracts to meet U.S. intelligence and defense requirements. Prisons have been fully privatized. After losing faith in elections, the U.S. populace no longer insists on them. The country is administered …

Self-Defense To Cyber Force: Combatting The Notion Of 'Scale And Effect', Thomas Eaton

Scholarly Works

The ability to reach out, with a few keystrokes or a couple lines of code, through the interconnected world of cyberspace and create militarily advantageous effects 10,000 miles away has changed warfare as previously conceived, perhaps more than any other advancement in any other domain of war. Cyber weapons are weapons, and whatever law applies to conventional weapons equally applies to cyber weapons. Long before cyber operations were even science fiction, there was much debate over what constituted a use of force that would justify force in response. In many ways, the debate over what constitutes cyber-attacks has been pasted …

Microwaving Dreams? Why There Is No Point In Reheating The Hart-Dworkin Debate For International Law, Jason A. Beckett

Faculty Book Chapters

A critique of attempts to transpose Hart and Dworkin's legal theories to international law. I demonstrate why neither approach can provide insights into international law. Hart and Dworkin are institutional theorists, their methodologies are anchored by the need to justify the exercise of socially centralised violence. International law lacks both institutions and centralised violence, and the stabilising force these bring; it is radically indeterminate. Attempts to suppress this indeterminacy have resulted in international lawyers fragmenting into communities of practice, united by their eschatological faith in the international community. I challenge this faith.

Harry Potter And The Gluttonous Machine, Jason A. Beckett

Faculty Journal Articles

In this paper, I outline the colonial structure of international law, and examine the short decline or suppression of its coloniality in the so-called ‘era of decolonisation’, then illustrate its resurgence in the modern neo-colonial order. PIL has split into two separate systems. One includes, and is justified by, the heroic tales of human rights and ‘Humanity’s Law’. The other is the actualised system of International Economic Law (IEL), an order driven by the need of the over-developed states to plunder the under-developed states’ resources and labour, to subsidise the luxury to which we have grown accustomed. One purports to …

The Deceptive Dyad: How Falseness Structures International Law, Jason A. Beckett

Faculty Journal Articles

Public International Law (PIL) is portrayed as an autonomous and tolerably just legal system. A determinable system of rules and principles, deployed by professionals to evaluate and constrain the global machinations of power politics. Law as an authoritative structure through which global justice can be pursued. This entrenches a comforting, but false, progress narrative; and obscures the limitations of pursuing progressive change through international law. PIL is structured by false necessity and false contingency. These interact to create the Deceptive Dyad, which disguises the radical indeterminacy of PIL. PIL’s purported demands, however meticulously crafted, do not effect change in the …

Pandemic Nationalism, Covid-19, And International Law, Leila Nadya Sadat

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Essay explores possible reforms to the World Health Organization (WHO) considering its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It also suggests using existing mechanisms to enforce the WHO Constitution and the International Health Regulations (IHR). The Essay focuses on three aspects of global health governance: (1) how nationalism of powerful States renders pandemic control difficult given the “weakest-link public goods” character of global health emergencies; (2) how legal and practice reforms might nonetheless strengthen and fortify the WHO’s response; and (3) how existing provisions of the WHO Constitution and the IHR might be enforced through the dispute resolution clauses in …

Dealing With Gender-Based Crimes In International Criminal Law, Tamara Cummings-John

FIU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Closing Reflections On The Contributions On The Scsl’S Legal Legacy, Charles C. Jalloh

FIU Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Continued Relevance Of The Contributions Of The Sierra Leone Tribunal To International Criminal Law, Charles C. Jalloh

FIU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Othering Across Borders, Steven Arrigg Koh

Faculty Scholarship

Our contemporary moment of reckoning presents an opportunity to evaluate racial subordination and structural inequality throughout our three-tiered domestic, transnational, and international criminal law system. In particular, this Essay exposes a pernicious racial dynamic in contemporary U.S. global criminal justice policy, which I call othering across borders. First, this othering may occur when race emboldens political and prosecutorial actors to prosecute foreign defendants. Second, racial animus may undermine U.S. engagement with international criminal legal institutions, specifically the International Criminal Court. This Essay concludes with measures to mitigate such othering.

The Italian Model To Fight Covid-19: Regional Cooperation, Regulatory Inflation, And The Cost Of One-Size-Fits-All Lockdown Measures, Fernanda Giorgia Nicola Dr.

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

What has come to be known worldwide as the Italian model to fight COVID-19 was a series of governmental measures undertaken in early 2020 to reduce the contagion of a deadly virus ravaging the northern regions of Italy—especially Lombardy, Veneto, and Piedmont. These measures included quarantine or lockdown throughout the Italian territory, together with the revamping of hospitals, followed by economic recovery packages to address the standstill of the national economy. This Article focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of the Italian model. By highlighting the initial missteps, we can understand how this turned into a productive national and regional …

The Emerging Shape Of Global Justice: Retrogression Or Course Correction?, Diane Orentlicher

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Cyber Due Diligence, Eric Talbot Jensen, Sean Watts

Faculty Scholarship

Due diligence—the notion that international law includes a duty to cease and remedy damage that emanates from a State’s territory—has been proposed as an international legal measure to temper destabilizing effects of harm from cyber infrastructure. Yet the extent to which States, particularly the United States, accept due diligence as either a principle of general international law or as a rule of conduct applicable to the context of cyberspace is not clear. This Article examines past and present U.S. experience with due diligence, both as a principle and rule of conduct in general international law. In light of U.S. foreign …

The Right To Strike As Customary International Law, James J. Brudney

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Protection Of Natural Resources In International Law: Case Study Of Palestine, Ahmed Said Elagha

Journal of the Arab American University مجلة الجامعة العربية الامريكية للبحوث

This paper addresses the issue of protection of wealth and natural resources of nations on the grounds that such protection is still experiencing many contradictions in theory and practice. Although the international community through many of its organizations, particularly the United Nations, has issued several resolutions which confirm the right of peoples to self-determination and their right to have complete control over their wealth and natural resources, the main dilemma lies in two directions. Firstly, the weakness of the texts of such international resolutions and implementation mechanism. Secondly, the policies of the great powers in their relentless attempts to circumvent …

The Case Against Prosecuting Refugees, Evan J. Criddle

Faculty Publications

Within the past several years, the U.S. Department of Justice has pledged to prosecute asylum-seekers who enter the United States outside an official port of entry without inspection. This practice has contributed to mass incarceration and family separation at the U.S.–Mexico border, and it has prevented bona fide refugees from accessing relief in immigration court. Yet, federal judges have taken refugee prosecution in stride, assuming that refugees, like other foreign migrants, are subject to the full force of American criminal justice if they skirt domestic border controls. This assumption is gravely mistaken.

This Article shows that Congress has not authorized …

Is The U.S. Government Violating The Safe Conducts Of Noncitizens? How A Turn To Strict Originalism Could Revitalize The Alien Tort Statute, Gabe Cahn

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fraudulent Malattributed Comments In Agency Rulemaking, Michael Herz

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Applying International Law Solutions To The Xinjiang Crisis, Preston Jordan Lim

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Revisiting Individual Rights And Personal Responsibilities Amid Covid-19, Christie S. Warren

Popular Media

No abstract provided.