International Law Commons^™

The Role Of Nongovernmental Organizations In The Climate Change Negotiations, Chiara Giorgetti

Law Faculty Publications

The role of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in monitoring the implementation of international treaties, their relevance in the organization of development projects, and their importance in the representation and education of civil society has been acknowledged and valued by both international organizations and national governments. Nongovernmental actors also play an important role in the negotiations of international agreements. Moreover, many UN agencies work closely with NGOs. NGOs have played an important part in numerous environmental conventions, and their role is becoming more clearly defined. The presence of NGOs has also been instrumental in the evolution and development of many international environmental …

Separatism And The Democratic Entitlement, Diane Orentlicher

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Separation Anxiety: International Responses To Ethno-Separatist Claims, Diane Orentlicher

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Task Force Statement Of The Twentieth Century Fund's Task Force On Apprehending Indicted War Criminals: Meeting The Obligations Of Justice, Paul Williams

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Law And Human Dignity: The Judicial Soul Of Justice Brennan, Stephen Wermiel

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Redirecting The Debate Over Trafficking In Women: Definitions, Paradigms, And Contexts, Janie Chuang

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Industrial Espionage As Unfair Competition, Robert L. Tucker

Akron Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Dependent Independence: Application Of The Nunavut Model To Native Hawaiian Sovereignty And Self-Determination Claims, Jeffrey Wutzke

American Indian Law Review

No abstract provided.

The P.R.C.'S Negotiable Instruments Law: An Instrument For Facilitating Private Economic Activity Or Monetary Control?, Kara Phillips, Amy Sommers

Faculty Articles

This article discusses China’s market reforms, and how negotiable instruments have played an increasingly important role in China’s economy. The Negotiable Instruments Law, which came into effect January 1, 1996, consists of seven chapters, covering General Provisions, Drafts, Promissory Notes, Checks, Applicability of the Law to Foreign Negotiable Instruments, Legal Responsibilities, and Supplementary Provisions. This article illustrates that while the Negotiable Instruments Law constitutes a comprehensive financial statute; its scope is narrow in that it addresses negotiable instruments primarily in the context of banking transactions. This is especially apparent in the case of promissory notes that are regulated solely in …

Tadić, The Anonymous Witness And The Sources Of International Procedural Law, Natasha Affolder

All Faculty Publications

On May 7, 1997, Trial Chamber II of the International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia released its verdict in its first trial. While the proceedings of the International Tribunal were commended for their fairness, criticism quickly erupted as a result of the Trial Chamber's decision to allow anonymous testimony to be used in the Tadic trial. This article explores the Trial Chamber's decision to allow the use of anonymous testimony as a protective measure. It focuses on the challenge of defining the sources …

Rhetoric And Rage: Third World Voices In International Legal Discourse, Karin Mickelson

All Faculty Publications

This paper sets out to question the conventional view of the Third World and international law, which tends to characterize Third World legal discourse as ad hoc and reactive. It considers whether it might be possible to identify "distinctive modes of thought and analysis" characteristic of a Third World approach to international law. In her analysis, the author begins by exploring various usages of the term "Third World," and explains the way in which it is used in this paper. She then sketches out Third World approaches to the subject areas of international economic law, human rights and the environment, …

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

Articles

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

Articles

No abstract provided.

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

Articles

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 …

International Legal Careers: Paths And Directions, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

Discusses lack of clear career paths in international legal practice.

U.S. “Methods Awareness” (Methodenbewußtsein) For German Jurists, James Maxeiner

All Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this contribution is to help develop Methods Awareness in German jurists unfamiliar with American law. It shows how distant from German understanding present-day American practice is. It proceeds from Fikentscher's thumbnail sketch of German Prevailing Teaching: "this method starts from norm-thinking, therefore thinks in rules, that are applied to the case at hand." It refers to the core elements of this teaching, namely the place of the legal norm (Rechtssatz) in the legal order (Rechtsordnung) and its application to a particular set of facts (i.e., subsumption), and discusses the significance of these concepts in American law. It …

Breard And The Federal Power To Require Compliance With Icj Orders Of Provisional Measures, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Among the puzzling aspects of the Breard episode was the Clinton administration's claim that the decision whether or not to comply with the Order of the International Court of Justice requiring the postponement of Breard's execution lay exclusively in the hands of the Governor of Virginia. The ICJ's Order provided that"[t]he United States should take all measures at its disposal to ensure that Angel Francisco Breard is not executed pending the final decision in these proceedings." The Clinton administration argued that the Order was not binding, but it also took the position that, even if the order were binding, …

Indigenous Peoples And International Law Issues, S. James Anaya

Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Review, Lakshman D. Guruswamy

Publications

No abstract provided.

Should Unclos Or Gatt/Wto Decide Trade And Environment Disputes?, Lakshman D. Guruswamy

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Promise Of The United Nations Convention On The Law Of The Sea (Unclos): Justice In Trade And Environment Disputes, Lakshman Guruswamy

Publications

No abstract provided.

Customary International Law, S. James Anaya

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Justiciability Of Paraguay's Claim Of Treaty Violation, Lori Fisler Damrosch

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Government's position asserting nonjusticiability of the treaty claims raised by Paraguay in the domestic and international lawsuits is disturbing. The Government's amicus filings at the court of appeals and the Supreme Court denied that Paraguay's claims belonged in federal court (or indeed in any court at all); at the International Court of Justice, the United States admitted a treaty violation but denied the competence of that tribunal to enter a judicial remedy. At one or another phase of these proceedings, the U.S. Government pressed a variety of arguments that (if accepted) would rule out virtually any judicial consideration …

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

Articles

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 …

International Water Law, Groundwater Resources And The Danube Dam Case, Gabriel Eckstein, Yoram Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

International water law is generally applied to disputes between states concerning surface bodies of water crossing international borders. Disputes and policy-making over transboundary ground water resources, however, have traditionally been determined on an ad hoc basis or based on regional custom. This disparate treatment stems primarily from the misunderstood nature of ground water and its relationship to surface water among government officials, policy-makers, jurists, and others. The result often has been the degradation of subsurface waters on both sides of political boundaries, and unwittingly, of numerous international surface bodies of water.

International concern over regional and global availability and quality …

The Wto Legal System: Sources Of Law, David Palmeter, Petros C. Mavroidis

Faculty Scholarship

Modern discussions of the sources of international law usually begin with a reference to Article 38 (1) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which provides:

The Court, whose function is to decide in accordance with international law such disputes as are submitted to it, shall apply:

1. international conventions, whether general or particular, establishing rules expressly recognized by the contesting states;
2. international custom as evidence of a general practice accepted as law;
3. the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations;
4. subject to the provisions of Article 59, judicial decisions and the teachings of the most highly …

Secret Knowledge Of Genocide: British Failure To Disclose The Killing Of Jews In 1941, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

In the late summer and early autumn of 1941, the British military intercepted coded German radio messages that revealed that German troops were killing large numbers of Jewish civilians in German-occupied parts of the Soviet Union. The British did not make this knowledge public at that time, nor did they use their still classified records during the war crimes trials after the end of World War II.

Commentators more expert than I have addressed themselves to the question of whether the British had a legal obligation to disclose the information from the coded messages. These remarks concentrate on the possible …

Recent Publications: Puerto Rico, Christina D. Ponsa-Kraus

Faculty Scholarship

Ask yourself why you are reading a review of a book about a colony called Puerto Rico in a journal on international law. Isn't Puerto Rico a self-governing Commonwealth? Isn't it part of the United States? If you decide to buy the book, ask yourself where in the bookstore you should look for it. In the international relations section? The U.S. history section? A turn-of-the-century Supreme Court case analyzing the status of Puerto Rico (and other territories "acquired" by the United States in 1901) may provide some guidance: Puerto Rico is "foreign in a domestic sense."' Perhaps the bookstore has …

Use Of Force And Constitutionalism, Lori Fisler Damrosch

Faculty Scholarship

Are constitutional democracies more inclined than other kinds of regimes to observe the international law of the United Nations Charter on use of force? Are they relatively more vulnerable to unlawful behavior by others? How can constitutional democracies ensure fidelity to their underlying constitutional principles when they engage in multinational military operations for preservation or restoration of international peace? These and related questions at the intersection of the international and national legal orders merit careful attention as political structures around the world undergo post-Cold War transformation.