International Law Commons^™

Undated, Unauthored, Working Paper On The Review Of Ifc-Miga Accountability Framework, Unauthored

CAO General 1999-Present

No abstract provided.

International Law And Power Politics: On Koskenniemi's Perceptions Of Justice, Monica Hakimi

Faculty Scholarship

Martti Koskenniemi wrote ‘Perceptions of Justice’ against the backdrop of the 2003 Iraq War. The piece draws a stark distinction between American and European conceptions of justice – and approaches to international law. Over twenty years later, his distinction might still (or again) resonate. This retrospective analyses it in light of his other work and more contemporary events, arguing that it is a mix of misguided and confused. The United States and Europe have for decades, if not centuries, been profoundly entwined; each has significantly shaped and been shaped by its relationship with the other. The urgent question now is …

Introduction To The Oral History Project Of The World Trading System: The Story Of John H. Jackson And His Unique Role, Jennifer A. Hillman

The Oral History Project of the World Trading System

Georgetown Law has been fortunate to have so many pathbreaking professors teaching, researching, and writing here. For those in the international trade arena, none stands taller than Professor John H. Jackson, who came to Georgetown in 1998 after a storied teaching career at the University of Michigan and immediately set to work with his singular ability to bring together scholars, students, government officials, and practitioners to examine the trade challenges of the day from every angle—always looking to develop innovative ideas and practical solutions.

Immediately upon arrival at Georgetown, Professor Jackson created the Institute of International Economic Law (IIEL)—one of …

Support The Icc As A Vital Court Of Last Resort For Victims Of Grave International Crimes, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum, Gabor Rona

Online Publications

This public statement, issued on International Justice Day (July 17, 2026), affirms support for the International Criminal Court (ICC) as an independent judicial institution and a court of last resort for victims of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. Signed by more than 100 organizations and individuals, including legal scholars, practitioners, human rights advocates, and civil society organizations, the statement expresses concern over efforts to undermine the ICC's independence and functioning. It calls on the United States to reaffirm its longstanding commitment to the rule of law, judicial independence, and international accountability, emphasizing the importance …

Counterclaims In Investor-State Arbitration: A Call For Clear Thinking, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

As exemplified by the agenda of UNCITRAL Working Group III, the focus of ongoing debates over reform of the current investor-State dispute resolution (ISDS) system has been on procedural reform, broadly understood. The debates thus sideline the substantive aspects of ISDS, i.e. the rights and obligations of investors and States.  Within this structure, the place of counterclaims by States in investor-State arbitration is uncertain. To be sure, the question of counterclaims is basically a procedural one, for, by definition, counterclaims represent a vehicle by which a respondent State may assert a claim against an investor in a proceeding initiated by …

Periodic Adjustments — Treaties And Other Issues, Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, Jeffery M. Kadet

Articles

In his May article, Michael McDonald, a former managing director at Ernst & Young and current adjunct professor at the University of Virginia School of Law, criticized the IRS’s recently announced method for applying the commensurate with income (CWI) requirement that addresses the widespread underpricing of intangibles.1 His analysis questioned the IRS’s interpretation of section 482. McDonald argues that, until 2025, Treasury and the IRS applied CWI in a manner consistent with the arm’s-length principle despite congressional misgivings about the arm’s-length principle that were not only expressed in the legislative history of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 but were …

Canada’S Contributions To International Legal Discourse: Gender, Genocide, And Neocolonial Investments (2015–2025), Heidi Matthews

Articles & Book Chapters

This chapter critically evaluates Canada’s major points of engagement with international law in the period between 2015 and 2025. In partnership with European and Commonwealth allies, Canada has been an active participant in several contentious cases at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), including against Myanmar, Syria, and Afghanistan. Canada has taken progressive legal positions in this litigation with respect to the interpretation and application of international law as it relates to sexual and gender-based crimes, as well as abuses committed against children. However, the past decade also reveals that Canada’s policy responses to its genocide and other crimes against …

International Advice, Mature Democracies And The Venice Commission, Maartje De Visser

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The aim of this article is to explore the role and practice of constitutional advice-giving as it relates to mature democracies. More precisely, this article considers how the Venice Commission – the official advisory body for constitutional matters of the Council of Europe – exercises its mandate vis-à-vis such democracies through the delivery of country-specific Opinions, based on a close reading of all such Opinions rendered between 2002 and 2024. It examines the substantive focus of those Opinions, the way they engage with constitutional experiences elsewhere, as well as the tone of the assessment and the approach taken in formulating …

Evolving Networks: Information Exchanges Reshaping Of Global Finance, Andrew P. Morriss, Charlotte Ku

Faculty Scholarship

This article challenges the characterization of international financial centers (IFCs), often called "tax havens," as enablers of tax evasion and money laundering. Drawing on an extensive analysis of tax treaties, regulatory statutes, and historical literature, we explore the evolution of the global information exchange network, its impact on integrating IFCs into the global financial system, and the resulting curtailment of their use for illicit purposes. The expansion of treaties, from Mutual Legal Assistance Treaties (MLATs) to Tax Information Exchange Agreements (TIEAs) and multilateral frameworks like the OECD's Common Reporting Standard (CRS), has significantly limited the potential for secrecy-driven financial activities …

All But The Death Penalty: Incomplete Protection For Civilian Internee Mothers, Minju Kwon

Political Science Faculty Articles and Research

How did unrecognised gender biases impact the codification of international humanitarian law (IHL)? While recent studies on IHL have highlighted historical lawmaking processes, little research has examined gender biases behind the codification of the “Protection of Women” in the Geneva Conventions and additional protocols. This study examines gender biases and state interests reflected in the codification process by focusing on Article 76§3 of the 1977 Protocol Additional I, which incompletely protects civilian women internees who are pregnant or have dependent children by prohibiting execution but leaving room for pronouncement of the death penalty. Referring to the theory of benevolent sexism, …

The Continuum Of Contractual Commitment, David Snyder

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Contracts frequently call for one or more differentiated levels of contractual commitment. Although contractual liability in the common law is said to be strict liability, and a claim that a good attempt was made is said to be no defense, often a party promises only to try. Contract theory in the United States struggles with departures from the paradigm of strict liability, and it has failed to fully consider the continuum of contractual commitment. To encompass the range of assent-based commitment and its consequent liability, U.S. contract theory needs to distinguish more clearly between (1) promises to try, which do …

Clihhr Leads Push For Regulatory Scrutiny Of Amazon Mining Project, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Cardozo Law News Archive

The Cardozo Law Institute in Holocaust and Human Rights (CLIHHR), in collaboration with the University of Toronto's International Human Rights Program, filed requests with U.S. and Canadian securities regulators seeking investigations into alleged misrepresentations related to Brazil Potash's proposed mining project in the Brazilian Amazon. The initiative highlights concerns regarding Indigenous rights, environmental impacts, and investor disclosure.

Blue Sky Thinking In A Red Sky World, Camila Bustos, Joshua Ulan Galperin, Margot J. Pollans, Laurie Jamile Beyranevand, Rebecca Bratspies, Cinnamon Carlane Hirokawa, Sarah Fox, Keith H. Hirokawa, Sarah Matsumoto, Anthony Moffa, Laura Mott, Jessica Owley, Gabriel Pacyniak, Melissa Powers, Paul Rink, Kristin Van De Biezenbos, Leehi Yona

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

In 2004, visionary environmental leader Gus Speth's book Red Sky at Morning warned that “[a] global crisis has unfolded quickly ... but so far we seem unable to step from the path to disaster.” More than 20 years later, we have made great gains, but the fundamental transition Speth envisioned did not come to pass, and global environmental deterioration continues to intensify at an alarming pace. Approaching Speth's “red sky world” with “blue sky thinking,” members of the 2025 Environmental Law Collaborative explored new strategies for a more sustainable future. This latest in a biannual series of essays covers a …

Climate Change And The Reconfiguration Of Arctic Access, Charles H. Norchi, Amanda H. Lynch

Faculty Publications

The Arctic is warming faster than any other region on Earth, with surface air temperatures increasing at a rate nearly four times the global average.1 This amplification of global change has been reshaping the Arctic for decades, altering sea ice extent and thickness, snow regimes, permafrost stability, and hydrological systems. Against this backdrop, a persistent narrative has taken hold that the diminishing cryosphere2 is setting the table for opportunity: opening the Arctic to navigation, development, and exploitation. But this thaw renders the Arctic neither benign nor uniformly accessible. The region remains frozen for most of the year, dark for months …

The Great Depression And Canada's Major Originalist Decade, Preston Jordan Lim

Faculty Publications

Few periods of Canadian history have been as momentous or terrible as the Great Depression. The Dominion and provincial governments’ inability to combat financial and environmental catastrophe led many Canadians to openly question the appropriateness of their constitutional framework. As legal historians have since documented, many leading jurists of the time believed that a strong central government could, through the institution of national programs, contain the Great Depression; in the eyes of these 1930s jurists, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council—then Canada’s apex court—had sapped the federal government of its powers by misinterpreting the British North America Act, 1867 …

The Legal Framework For Direct Ocean Carbon Capture And Storage (Volume 1: International Law), Romany M. Webb, Korey Silverman-Roati

Sabin Center for Climate Change Law

This paper focuses on the marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) approach of direct ocean carbon capture and storage (DOCCS), which aims to remove some of the carbon currently stored in the ocean and thereby enable it to uptake additional carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. DOCCS is still undergoing research, but early studies suggest it could have significant carbon dioxide removal potential. However, DOCCS could also present environmental and other risks, including from the construction of new facilities, the intake and processing of water, and the handling and storage of carbon dioxide. Careful siting, design, and operation of DOCCS systems is …

Thinking Constructively About International Law, Monica Hakimi

Faculty Scholarship

The international order that has defined the post-World War II period is being radically transformed, presenting a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reconstitute its basic foundations. The pressing questions for international lawyers are about the roles their enterprise can and should play going forward. I argue in this Article that most lack the analytic framework they need even to begin tackling these questions. Worse, most seem mired in an old theory about law that corrupts how they approach their enterprise. My goals in the Article are to expose the prevalence of this bad theory and to present the grounds for discarding it, …

Climate Justice For Puerto Rico: The Right To Stay And Energy Sovereignty, Camila Bustos, Mercè Marti Exposito

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

Following Hurricane Maria and subsequent disasters, Puerto Rico has experienced displacement, infrastructure collapse, and intensified economic exploitation through austerity policies championed as part of a disaster capitalist agenda. Climate change threatens self-determination globally, but its impacts are amplified by asymmetrical power relations. For Puerto Rico, climate vulnerability cannot be separated from colonial subordination. The Trump administration's contemptuous response to Maria, PROMESA's imposition of austerity, and the redirection of renewable energy funding toward fossil fuel infrastructure-each reveals how climate injustice compounds colonial injustice. Drawing on international human rights law-particularly the rights to self-determination and to stay-we examine how Puerto Ricans assert …

Law Over Water: Piracy And The Yemen Civil War, Case Western Reserve University School Of Law

Yemen Accountability Project (YAP)

"The Yemen Accountability Project (YAP) is proud to announce the publication of its seventh white paper, Piracy and the Yemen Civil War. Piracy is a crime of such gravity that it has been recognized as jus cogens—a peremptory norm of customary international law subject to universal jurisdiction, with states holding both the right and the obligation to prosecute pirates wherever they are found. Despite this universal prohibition, YAP has documented instances of piracy and associated violations of international humanitarian and human rights law committed by parties to the Yemen Civil War, including hostage taking, torture, arbitrary detention, and the potential …

The Human Right To A Healthy Environment: Corporate Responsibility In Critical Mineral Extraction, Erika George

Faculty Scholarship

This paper argues that the emerging human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment should guide the governance of critical minerals by incorporating the corporate responsibility to respect human rights throughout supply chains to ensure a racially just energy transition. It frames the climate crisis within the history and political economy of racial capitalism, contending that without rights-based guardrails, mineral supply chains risk reproducing the extractive harms and racialized disparities of the fossil fuel era, including labor abuses, displacement, water depletion, and violence disproportionately borne by racialized and Indigenous communities. Methodologically, the paper combines doctrinal analysis of international norms …

An Analysis Of Global And Regional Human Rights Standards On Gender-Based Violence, Tamar Ezer, Denisse R. Cordova Montes

Articles

No abstract provided.

Rethinking How The United States And Mexico Share The Colorado River, Eric Kuhn, Anne Castle, Carlos De La Parra, John Fleck, Jack Schmidt, Kathryn Sorensen, Katherine Tara

The Traveling Wilburys of the Colorado River

Since 1945, the United States and Mexico have managed common interests on their two largest shared rivers systems, the Colorado and the Rio Bravo/Rio Grande, under the terms of the 1944 international treaty that was designed from the beginning with tools to adapt to changing hydrologic and societal conditions. A recent emergency agreement on the Rio Bravo/Rio Grande illustrates what is possible, and with old river management rules on the Colorado both within the United States and between the United States and Mexico about to expire, we are at a moment of opportunity for meaningful change. The core problem on …

The U.S. Intervention In South Africa V. Israel At The Icj Gets A Failing Grade, Menachem Z. Rosensaft

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

No abstract provided.

Professor Monroe Price, Former Cardozo Dean And Distinguished Scholar, Dies At 87, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Cardozo Law News Archive

Cardozo School of Law commemorates the life and legacy of Professor Monroe Price, who served as dean from 1982 to 1991 and helped shape the school's growth and academic identity. A pioneering scholar in media law and legal education, Price founded and advanced numerous signature programs at Cardozo while making lasting contributions to intellectual property, communications law, American Indian law, and international legal scholarship.

The Section 301 Surge Continues: Investigating The Adoption/Enforcement/Administration Of Forced Labor Import Bans, Desiree Leclercq

Faculty Datasets

This blog post critiques the March 12, 2026, announcement by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) launching a sweeping Section 301 investigation into 60 economies—including the European Union, Canada, and Mexico—for failing to effectively prohibit forced labor imports. While the U.S. claims these regulatory failures harm domestic commerce, the author argues that the investigation highlights deep flaws in American trade governance. Specifically, the critique outlines four primary deficiencies in the U.S. approach: inadequate Customs and Border Protection (CBP) procedures lacking independent oversight, a dramatic decline in CBP enforcement actions, mistargeted pressure against the EU despite its superior evidentiary …

El Salvador At The Crossroads: Crimes Against Humanity Under The Public Security Policy, Susana L. Sacouto, Claudia Martin, Gino Costa, Santiago Canton, Jose Antonio Guevara

Research Reports & White Papers

The International Group of Experts for the Investigation of Human Rights Violations under the State of Emergency in El Salvador (GIPES) presents its final report entitled: “El Salvador at the Crossroads: Crimes against Humanity under the Public Security Policy.”

GIPES was formed with the aim of investigating the alleged serious human rights violations taking place in the context of the State of Exception public security policy that has been in place of El Salvador since March 2022 and determining whether they might constitute crimes against humanity. The group is made up of five internationally recognized jurists: Susana SáCouto, …

Sanctioned Judge Speaks: A Conversation With Icc Judge Kimberly Prost, Kimberly Prost, David Collins

Judicature International

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Court's Policy Favoring Arbitration And Its Limits, George A. Bermann

Faculty Scholarship

While the federal policy favoring arbitration is codified in the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), the strength of that policy depends on the treatment that arbitration receives in federal courts and in the United States Supreme Court in particular.

Courts in all jurisdictions play an important role in fashioning the treatment of arbitration agreements, arbitral proceedings and arbitral awards. However, the judicial role in this regard is especially pronounced in the United States, in view of the problematic state of legislation on the subject. The federal legislation on arbitration is 100 years old and has never been meaningfully amended. The …

The Contested Roots Of Democratic Peace: Foreign Policy And Democratic Accountability, Michael W. Doyle, Hedwig Lieback

Faculty Scholarship

In this article, we review recent literature on the questions of whether existing democratic publics a) care about peaceful relations with other democracies, and b) whether their preferences are aptly translated by existing democratic institutions. Our conclusions lead us to propose an amended theory of democratically constrained foreign policy. We revisit the challenged presuppositions of the democratic peace at a moment of transnational democratic erosion. We survey the origins of the liberal republican (and later representative democratic) views emerging during the Enlightenment, highlighting Kant’s “Perpetual Peace.” We then examine the lively debate about the efficacy of democratic foreign policy-making focusing …

China And International Economic Dispute Settlement: Disaggregating The State, Gregory Shaffer, Ji Li, Henry S. Gao

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Most studies take a unitary state-centric approach to assessing China’s relationship with international economic law. In contrast, we provide a more nuanced approach that assesses variation in China’s engagement. We examine the role of different Chinese state and non-state actors, considering their interests, ideological frames, institutional contexts, and relation to state power. We illustrate our analytic framework by examining China’s response to and engagement with international dispute settlement systems in three areas: international commercial arbitration, international trade dispute settlement, and investor–state arbitration. Our approach is important for global cooperation in discrete policy areas so that the West does not ‘other’ …