International Law Commons^™

Keynote: Encouraging This Particular Form Of (Very Fun) Madness - Roles For Deans & Faculty Members, Martin J. Katz, Phoenix X.F. Cai

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This keynote address discusses the ways in which faculty and administrators can facilitate experiential learning in transactions classes.

The United Nations: The Syrian Refugee Crisis, Zahra R. Syed

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The main objective of this research paper is to analyze the international effects the Syrian Conflict has had to the global community. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has declared this conflict to be the worst humanitarian crisis of our time. Millions of Syrians have fled their home country to avoid unjust persecution and are looking to not only neighboring countries, but the European Union for assistance in resettlement.

Since the outbreak of the conflict in Syria in 2011, more than 220,000 people have been massacred, leaving fifty percent of the population in unrest due to home displacement. According …

Presidential War Powers As A Two-Level Dynamic: International Law, Domestic Law, And Practice-Based Legal Change, Curtis A. Bradley, Jean Galbraith

Faculty Scholarship

There is a rich literature on the circumstances under which the United Nations Charter or specific Security Council resolutions authorize nations to use force abroad, and there is a rich literature on the circumstances under which the U.S. Constitution and statutory law allows the President to use force abroad. These are largely separate areas of scholarship, addressing what are generally perceived to be two distinct levels of legal doctrine. This Article, by contrast, considers these two levels of doctrine together as they relate to the United States. In doing so, it makes three main contributions. First, it demonstrates striking parallels …

Can Greece Be Expelled From The Eurozone? Toward A Default Rule On Expulsion From International Organizations, Joseph Blocher, Mitu Gulati, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

The ongoing European crisis has raised uncomfortable questions about the conditions under which treaty-based unions of nations like the EU or the EMU can legally expel a member—Greece being the most obvious candidate. The EU, for example, has rules governing the voluntary withdrawal of members, but says nothing about whether a member can be expelled. As a matter of international law, what does the silence mean? Put differently: What is the default rule regarding expulsions when a treaty says nothing about forced withdrawals? Is there an absolute bar on expulsion, as some have suggested? Conversely, is there an implicit right …

Does Brexit Spell The Death Of Transnational Law?, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

The British leave vote in the referendum on EU membership has important implications for how we think about law . The vote must be viewed as a manifestation of a globalized nationalism that we find in many EU member states and many other countries. As such, it is also a challenge of the idea of transnational law, forcefully introduced in Jessup’s book on Transnational law 60 years ago. In this paper, I suggest that the hope to return from transnational law to the nation state of the 19th century is nostalgic and futile. However, I argue that transnational law has …

Toward A Political Theory For Private International Law, John Linarelli

Scholarly Works

Private international law presents a dilemma for legal and political philosophy. Legal and political philosophers have ignored private international law, with only a few scattered attempts to evaluate its claims. Private international law offers a powerful set of counterexamples that put into serious doubt attempts to link law’s authority only or primarily to relationships between states and citizens. No society, state, or other practice-mediated relationship can serve as grounds for the authority of private international law to persons to whom it applies but who are outside of such relationships. Private international law affects the normative situations of persons entirely outside …

Corporations And The Limits Of State-Based Models For Protecting Fundamental Rights In International Law, David Bilchitz

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

At the heart of international law lies a central tension. On the one hand, the fundamental rights recognized in international treaties protect the fundamental interests of individuals, obligating all actors who can affect these rights. One the other hand, international law has often been conceived of as a system in which the only legitimate actors are states. In turn, only states can be bound by the fundamental rights obligations in international treaties. To address this tension, two models have been proposed. The first is an "Indirect duty" approach, whereby the state remains the primary duty-bearer and must itself "create" the …

Fractured Territories And Abstracted Terrains: Human Rights Governance Regimes Within And Beyond The State, Larry Catá Backer

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The problem of representation has become a central element for the development of human rights norms, not just within international organizations, but within states as well. The problem has been made acute by two significant changes in the organization of power that became visible after the 1950s. On one hand, the idea of the individual became more abstract. Mass democracy became symptomatic of a general trend toward the dissolution of the individual within a mass population, which was incarnated as the aggregation of its group characteristics, its statistics, and data. On the other hand, states were becoming less solid; the …

Statehood, Power, And The New Face Of Consent, Sheldon Leader

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

Individuals and groups are often subjected to power, both public and private, by eliciting their consent. Debate usually focuses on whether or not that consent is freely given or is vitiated by imbalances of strength between the bargaining parties. This essay focuses on a different issue, one that is largely passed over in legal and moral analyses: how far does and should consent bind one to accepting in advance changes in the future? There are signs of a fundamental shift in answering this question-a shift that particularly concerns the control of power in the economy. Industrial democracies may be abandoning …

Treaty Commitment And The Reconstruction Of Social Relations Among States, Youcheer Kim

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Does states’ treaty commitment promote the inter-state socialization? A gap exists in the existing constructivist International Relations literature as to which agents could promote the internalization of constitutive beliefs through which process. This project seeks to illuminate whether states’ treaty commitments have promoted the inter-state socialization in three dimensions: (1) the convergence of voting patterns in the UN General Assembly (2) the convergence of state practices in territorial disputes (3) the emergence of rules-oriented domestic governance. I draw on classical sociology, public law theory, the English School theory, and the Transnational Legal Process theory to develop the Social Theory of …

Some Newly Emergent Geographies Of Injustice: Boundaries And Borders In International Law, Upendra V. Baxi

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This conversation examines the relationship between the boundaries and borders in international law and the production of geographies of injustice through the lens of the colonial epistemologies, especially of private international law in the face of mass social disasters like the archetypal Bhopal catastrophe. I also address the languages and logics of coloniality and postcoloniality, as states of consciousness and social organization, under the complex and contradictory unity of neoliberalism.

Examining The Legality Of The Guantánamo Bay Detention Center According To International Humanitarian Law And International Human Rights Law, Sydney T. Winchester

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The purpose of this research paper is to examine how international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL) are applied to the Guantánamo Bay detention center. This paper was completed through the research of international treaties, court cases, and secondary sources that thoroughly discussed issues pertaining to Guantánamo and international law.

This paper first examines the differences between the two laws by looking at the particular roles each is meant to play in the subject of international law, as well as how the two have been applied thus far to the situation at Guantánamo. Second, the paper discusses …

The International Community's Response To The Hypothetical Emergence Of Superheroes, Brittany Nicole Woods

CMC Senior Theses

In a golden era for comic based media, this paper uses the hypothetical emergence of superheroes to analyze the assumptions and predictions of three international relations theories: realism, liberalism, and constructivism. Comics consistently reflect the real world, paralleling events and concepts discussed in foreign affairs dialogues. The thought experiment, and the comic genre itself, provides a vehicle for thinking broadly about the political and social ramifications of successful or failed problem solving, state interaction, and scientific advances.

The Supreme Court As A Filter Between International Law And American Constitutionalism, Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

As part of a symposium on Justice Stephen Breyer’s book, “The Court and the World,” this essay describes and defends the Supreme Court’s role as a filter between international law and the American constitutional system. In this role, the Court ensures that when international law passes into the U.S. legal system, it does so in a manner consistent with domestic constitutional values. This filtering role is appropriate, the Essay explains, in light of the different processes used to generate international law and domestic law and the different functions served by these bodies of law. The Essay provides examples of this …

Cyberwar, International Politics, And Institutional Design, Daniel Abebe

Faculty Scholarship

In the United States, the breadth of the president’s warmaking authority has been governed by the Constitution, the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence, and, over time, historical practice; in short, the president’s powers are constrained by a well-developed body of US foreign relations law. But the prospect of a new kind of conflict — cyberwar — potentially challenges the existing regulatory regime, which rests on assumptions that are common to traditional, conventional war. For some, the complexities of cyberwar generate new foreign relations–law questions about the president’s authority to engage in offensive cyberoperations, and they thus necessitate a new regulatory framework. For …

Making Ends Meet: Using A Market-Based Approach To Incentivize Foreign Vessels To Comply With The Air Emission Standards Of Marpol Annex Vi, Xiaoxin Shi

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs (2012 - Present)

No abstract provided.

One More Brick In The Wall: The Impact Of Personal Jurisdiction Of Ex Juris Defendants On The Relationship Between The United States And Canada, Matthew Johnson

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs (2012 - Present)

No abstract provided.

The Protection Of Intellectual Property Licenses In Insolvency: Lessons From The Nortel Case, Anthony Duggan, Norman Siebrasse

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs (2012 - Present)

No abstract provided.

Judicial Implementation Of South Africa’S New Business Rescue Model: A Preliminary Assessment, Patrick C. Osode

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs (2012 - Present)

No abstract provided.

High-Tech Companies And The Decision To “Go Public”: Are Backdoor Listings (Still) An Alternative To “Front-Door” Initial Public Offerings?, Erik P.M. Vermeulen

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs (2012 - Present)

No abstract provided.

Commercial Law And The Public Interest, Jay Lawrence Westbrook

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs (2012 - Present)

No abstract provided.

The Colombian Simplified Corporation: An Empirical Analysis Of A Success Story In Corporate Law Reform, Francisco Reyes

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs (2012 - Present)

No abstract provided.

The Natural Person, Legal Entity Or Juridical Person And Juridical Personality, Elvia Arcelia Quintana Adriano

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs (2012 - Present)

No abstract provided.

Justifications For Ucc Article 9’S Treatment Of Deposit Accounts: A Comparative Note, Catherine Walsh

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs (2012 - Present)

No abstract provided.

The Role Of Party Autonomy In The Enforcement Of Secured Creditor’S Rights: International Developments, Anna Veneziano

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs (2012 - Present)

No abstract provided.

Party Autonomy And Consumer Arbitration In Conflict: A “Trojan Horse” In The Access To Justice In The E.U. Adr-Directive 2013/11?, Norbert Reich

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs (2012 - Present)

Arbitration clauses in consumer contracts have been subject to controversy in many jurisdictions; recent U.S. and Canadian Supreme Court case law have been used as examples. European Union (E.U.) law, which originally excluded arbitration in general from the Brussels/Rome regimes, has recently taken a mixed, and to some extent limited, approach by including Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) entities “imposing” a solution in its recent ADR Directive 2013/11. There seems to be an indirect encouragement to develop consumer arbitration schemes in E.U. Member States as a second route to justice. It is too early to evaluate this new and somewhat clandestine …

Lessons And Best Practices For Designers Of Fast Track, Low Value, High Volume Global E-Commerce Odr Systems, Louis F. Del Duca, Colin Rule, Brian Cressman

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs (2012 - Present)

The momentum behind development of global online fast track low value high volume dispute resolution (hereafter ODR) continues to accelerate. Consumer and business groups around the world are promoting fair, proportionate, effective, online, fast track redress for low value high volume cross border e-commerce disputes. As a result, there will continue to be increasing demand for a variety of effective ODR systems design and procedural rules. Best practices developed by entities like eBay and lessons learned from the work of UNCITRAL Working Group III can be helpful in developing framework models for fast track low value high volume e-commerce ODR …

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly In Distribution Contracts: Limitation Of Party Autonomy In Arbitration?, Pilar Perales Viscasillas

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs (2012 - Present)

No abstract provided.

Limits On Party Autonomy In International Commercial Arbitration, Giuditta Cordero-Moss

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs (2012 - Present)

No abstract provided.

An Institutional Approach To The Creation Of Innovation Ecosystems And The Role Of Law, Toshiyuki Kono, Kazuaki Kagami

Penn State Journal of Law & International Affairs (2012 - Present)

No abstract provided.