International Law Commons^™

Protocol On Liability And Compensation For Damage Resulting From The Transboundary Movements Of Hazardous Wastes And Their Disposal, Jerrold A. Long

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No abstract provided.

Refugee Rights Are Not Negotiable, James C. Hathaway, Anne K. Cusick

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America's troubled relationship with international law, in particular human rights law, is well documented. In many cases, the United States simply will not agree to be bound by international human rights treaties. For example, the United States has yet to ratify even such fundamental agreements as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. When the United States does agree to become a party to an international human rights treaty, it has often sought to condition its acceptance …

America, Defender Of Democratic Legitimacy?, James C. Hathaway

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American exceptionalism - a belief that the United States has a unique mission to lead the world, but ought logically to be exempt from the rules it promotes - is at the root of much of the American academy's effort to rationalize the US government's increasing rejection of multilateralism as the cornerstone of modern public international law. Even American scholars who disagree fundamentally on the problems with multilateralism (Kenneth Anderson arguing that it favours anti-democratic intervention by unelected NGOs, Michael Reisman asserting that it privileges elitist state-based lawmaking in the face of more democratic non-state 'lawmaking' processes) can agree on …

A New Agenda For International Human Rights: Economic Freedom, John O. Mcginnis

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Succession By Estoppel: Hong Kong's Succession To The Iccpr, Peter K. Yu

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Sub-Regional, Regional And International Co-Operation In Responding To And Deterring Transboundary Marine Pollution, Bernard H. Oxman

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Federalism In The Era Of International Standards: Federal And State Government Regulation Of Merchant Vessels In The United States (Part Iii), Craig H. Allen

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The Constitutional Authority Of The Federal Government In State Criminal Proceedings That Involve U.S. Treaty Obligations Or Affect U.S. Foreign Relations, Malvina Halberstam

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America's Apostasy, James C. Hathaway

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It has often struck me that the prominence of the Restatement of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States epitomizes the plight of international law in this country. The title of this standard reference on international law does not even refer to international law, but instead to foreign relations law. That is, it is meant to set out the standards by which we may legitimately judge the conduct of others. The clear, if unintended, message is that the Restatement is not really a codification of laws that bind us. And indeed, it is explicitly not just a codification, but …

International Refugee Law: The Michigan Guidelines On The Internal Protection Alternative, James C. Hathaway

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International refugee law is designed only to provide a back-up source of protection to seriously at-risk persons. Its purpose is not to displace the primary rule that individuals should look to their state of nationality for protection, but simply to provide a safety net in the event a state fails to meet its basic protective responsibilities.1 As observed by the Supreme Court of Canada, "[t]he international community was meant to be a forum of second resort for the persecuted, a 'surrogate,' approachable upon the failure of local protection. The rationale upon which international refugee law rests is not simply the …

Observations On The Interpretation And Application Of Article 43 Of Unclos With Particular Reference To The Straits Of Malacca And Singapore, Bernard H. Oxman

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Alejandre V. Republic Of Cuba [Cuban Liability For Shooting Down Civil Aircraft], Stephen J. Schnably

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The Empire Strikes Back, A. Michael Froomkin

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Secrets And Lies? Swiss Banks And International Human Rights, Anita Ramasastry

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This Article explores the relationship of Swiss banks and their tradition of bank secrecy to the activities of a particular group of depositors: war criminals and other human rights violators. The Article focuses on litigation brought in U.S. courts by plaintiffs seeking access to Swiss bank deposits made by the Nazis and Ferdinand Marcos. The Article examines the possibility of holding banks accountable under international law for assisting a customer who has committed a serious breach of international law. Part I introduces the role of bank secrecy in the current litigation. Part 11 describes the Swiss tradition of bank secrecy. …

Federalism In The Era Of International Standards: Federal And State Government Regulation Of Merchant Vessels In The United States (Part Ii), Craig H. Allen

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Federalism In The Era Of International Standards: Federal And State Government Regulation Of Merchant Vessels In The United States (Part I), Craig H. Allen

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In examining federalism issues relevant to merchant vessels, this article will distinguish between those laws and regulations governing liability for harm and those which regulate safety. Federalism questions arise most frequently in the former, private, maritime law domain, when courts are called upon to determine judicial jurisdiction and the extent to which state law may be applied to adjudicate liability and damages in cases falling within the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction. Less frequently, the federalism debate focuses on public maritime law, when states seek to regulate commercial vessel safety or vessel-source pollution.

This article will begin with an examination of …

Can International Refugee Law Be Made Relevant Again?, James C. Hathaway

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Ironic though it may seem, I believe that the present breakdown in the authority of international refugee law is attributable to its failure explicitly to accommodate the reasonable preoccupations of governments in the countries to which refugees flee. International refugee law is part of a system of state self-regulation. It will therefore be respected only to the extent that receiving states believe that it fairly reconciles humanitarian objectives to their national interests. In contrast, refugee law arbitrarily assigns full legal responsibility for protection to whatever state asylum-seekers are able to reach. It is a peremptory regime. Apart from the right …

The Original Constitution And Its Decline: A Public Choice Perspective, John O. Mcginnis

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Public choice offers an analysis of the Constitution that is broadly consonant with an important aspect of the Framers' own approach. The Framers' values were those largely of the Scottish enlightenment: they believed in progress of civilization-the accumulation of wealth and knowledge. In order to create a structure of society that would accomplish these ends, they relied on another Enlightenment axiom, namely that man is an object of natural science. By understanding the predictable manner in which individuals are likely to behave in given situations, the Framers could shape a constitution that would channel their behavior to meet their Enlightenment …

U.S. International Treatment Of Financial Derivatives, Reuven Avi-Yonah, Linda Swartz

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The current proposals to substitute consumption for income as the principal U.S. tax base have already been the topic of considerable commentary in these pages. However, one issue has received relatively little attention in the discussion of the various reform proposals: What potential complications are likely to arise if a single major player in the world's economy unilaterally adopts radical tax reform? The global economy is becoming more and more unified, with multinational corporations dominating world trade and trillions of dollars in portfolio investment flowing across national boundaries. In this economy, what would be the consequences if a single country, …

Voluntary Bonds: The Impact Of Habitat Ii On U.S. Housing Policy, Janet Stearns

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Signals, Threats, And Deterrence: Alive And Well In The Taiwan Strait, Glenn R. Butterton

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Taiwan held its first democratic presidential elections in March 1996, which motivated mainland China to stage large scale contemporaneous war games in the Taiwan Strait and aim unusually belligerent rhetoric at Taipei. The United States responded by deploying substantial naval forces in the area. After examining this confrontation between China, Taiwan, and the United States in terms of the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, international law, and non-nuclear deterrence theory, the author presents a novel analysis of indirect deterrence communication between the United States and China

What Price Peace: From Nuremberg To Bosnia To The Nobel Peace Prize, Malvina Halberstam

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Making International Refugee Law Relevant Again: A Proposal For Collectivized And Solution-Oriented Protection, James C. Hathaway, R. Alexander Neve

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International refugee law is in crisis. Even as armed conflict and human rights abuse continue to force individuals and groups to flee their home countries, many governments are withdrawing from the legal duty to provide refugees with the protection they require. While governments proclaim a willingness to assist refugees as a matter of political discretion or humanitarian goodwill, they appear committed to a pattern of defensive strategies designed to avoid international legal responsibility toward involuntary migrants. Some see this shift away from a legal paradigm of refugee protection as a source for enhanced operational flexibility in the face of changed …

The Jerusalem Embassy Act, Malvina Halberstam

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The Right To Self-Defense Once The Security Council Takes Action, Malvina Halberstam

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Toward The Reformulation Of International Refugee Law, James C. Hathaway

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As powerful states have increasingly come to question the consonance of the Convention-based refugee law system with their more general migratory control objectives, a political space has evolved in which fundamental issues of the nature of international refugee protection are tenable for the first time since the immediate post-War era. While it is true that recent reform initiatives have generally been regionalized in scope and often restrictionist in tendency, the Reformulation Project is examining the possibility of re-invigorating a universal protection regime characterized by an enhanced conceptual scope aligned with the norms of international human rights law, yet tailored to …

The International Implications Of Tax Reform, Reuven Avi-Yonah

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This article examines the U.S. tax consequences of the use of derivative instruments in international financing transactions. The outline focuses in large part on the inconsistent U.S. tax treatment that results &om the use of various derivative financial instruments in cross-border financing transactions and the resulting implications for U.S. withholding taxes on ordinary equity and debt investments.

Law And The H-Bomb: Strengthening The Nonproliferation Regime To Impede Advanced Proliferation, Richard L. Williamson Jr.

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The Influence Of International Practice On The Revision Of Article 5 Of The Ucc, James J. White

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The topic of this symposium is the influence that international law has had on domestic law of the United States. I believe that the story of the revision of Article 5 of the Uniform Commercial Code fits here, but some might dispute that. Although it is certainly fair to say that international practice-in a sense international law-was a powerful influence on the revision of Article 5 of the Uniform Commercial Code, that practice, and the way in which that influence was exerted were almost entirely sui generis to the letter of credit law, practice and history.

Nationalism And The Right To Self-Determination: The Arab-Israeli Conflict, Malvina Halberstam

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Self-determination is a slogan that has captured the imagination of people throughout the world. Numerous U.N. General Assembly resolutions have exalted self-determination, often above the fundamental rights specifically provided for in the U.N. Charter. Notwithstanding these resolutions, in practice, self-determination generally has been applied only to the dismemberment of colonial empires. Its universal application is neither possible nor desirable.

In the Arab-Israeli conflict, self-determination was never truly the issue. The conflict has been deliberately transformed into a claim for self-determination as a political tactic designed to gain the support of third world countries in the United Nations. The issues in …