International Law Commons^™

Triptych: Three Meditations On How Law Rules After Globalization, David A. Westbrook

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

A Hydrogeological Approach To Transboundary Ground Water Resources And International Law, Gabriel Eckstein, Yoram Eckstein

Faculty Scholarship

Ground water resources have long been the neglected stepchild of water law. While agreements focusing on transboundary rivers and lakes have been relatively common, there is a paucity of treaties and international norms squarely addressing shared ground water resources. As a result, the rules governing the use, management, and conservation of transboundary ground waters is unclear at best.

This dearth is, in large part, the result of a deficit of scientific understanding among legislators, policymakers, and the judiciary. This is evidenced in many international and domestic laws and policies that have little or no scientific underpinning. Accordingly, there is a …

"My Friend Is A Stranger": The Death Penalty And The Global Ius Commune Of Human Rights, Paolo G. Carozza

Journal Articles

This article examines the judicial use of foreign jurisprudence in human rights adjudication, using as data a set of court decisions regarding the death penalty from over a dozen different tribunals in different parts of the world. The global human rights norms and judicial discourse on human rights in these cases can be understood and explained by comparing the contemporary practices to the medieval ius commune. The modern ius commune of human rights has three distinct characteristics which it shares with the historical example to which it is analogized: it is broadly transnational in scope and application; it is grounded …

Jurisdiction To Adjudicate And Jurisdiction To Prescribe In International Criminal Courts, Kenneth S. Gallant

Law Faculty Scholarship

Direct jurisdiction over individuals, along with responsibilities to them, are outstanding characteristics of the new International Criminal Court (ICC or Court), as they already are of the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and for Rwanda (ICTR). This Article raises issues of legitimate power to prosecute and to define criminal law and issues of individual human rights which necessarily arise in any criminal system.

This Article is predominantly an analysis of issues of criminal jurisdiction over persons as they are treated in the ICC Statute, as well as in the current ad hoc international criminal tribunals. Part II …

Kosovo: Virtual War And International Law, Aaron Schwabach

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Judging Global Justice: Assessing The International Criminal Court, Diane Orentlicher

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Inter-American System, Diego Rodriguez-Pinzon

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Is There A New World Court?, Douglass Cassel

Journal Articles

I am pleased to introduce our conference on Human Rights and the Law of War: New Roles for the World Court? Why this conference? And why now? Our conference is prompted by two contrasting phenomena: The caseload of the ICJ seems to have been transformed in the post-Cold War period. The World Court is now busier than ever. It has more cases, increasingly involving questions of human rights or ongoing armed conflict. Yet these three inter-related phenomena—increased caseload, and more cases involving human rights or armed conflict—have been little analyzed or studied. Our purpose is to contribute to public and …

Introduction To The Symposium Issue On The Americanization Of International Dispute Resolution, Mary Ellen O'Connell

Journal Articles

With the end of the Cold War and the emergence of the United States as the world's only superpower, we have heard expressions of concern about the great weight of American influence in so many aspects of international life. One area of concern is America's influence on the law and processes of international dispute resolution (IDR). Of all the practice areas in IDR, practitioners and scholars of international arbitration have had the most detailed discussions on this theme to date. Their greatest worry is the growing tendency toward American litigation style in a process that is neither American nor litigation. …

Proposals To Expel Palestinians From The Occupied Territories As Catalyst For A Civil Adjudication Campaign, Catherine A. Rogers

Faculty Scholarship

I begin in Part II with a brief sketch of the history of stated policies to expel Palestinians from what is now Israel and the Occupied Territories, and then examine recent proposals that have been made and actions that have been taken to implement modern re-articulations of those historic policies. In Part III, I then review the grounds on which international law proscribes mass expulsions of indigenous and occupied peoples. While international law governing this issue is clear in its application and has been overwhelmingly endorsed by the larger international community, international law seems to have little influence on Israel's …

An International "Truth Commission": Utilizing Restorative Justice As An Alternative To Retribution, Carrie J. Niebur Eisnaugle

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

A restorative justice paradigm emphasizes healing relationships between offenders, their victims, and the community in which the offense took place. It rejects retribution as a response to crime, focusing instead on the needs of all parties involved. This Note discusses the necessity for, and possible benefits of, using restorative justice principles when responding to international crimes and conflicts. Prosecution, war, and other violent means remain the most common responses to crime and conflict today. Such retributive reactions often lead to further violence rather than healing and peace. Using restorative justice principles to address crime and conflict, as was done in …

The Natural Law Basis Of Legal Obligation: International Antitrust And Opec In Context, Joel B. Moore

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) stabilizes petroleum prices to promote the economic prosperity of its member nations for which oil is a substantial export. Price stabilization influences the price of petroleum around the world, impacting the economies of developed and developing countries. Under U.S. antitrust jurisprudence, the OPEC quota agreements that stabilize prices would likely be declared illegal, and other countries might also declare price fixing to be illegal under their respective competition laws.

Several U.S. Senators have recently proposed that price fixing should be illegal under international law as well. This Note avoids a superficial analysis …

Multilateral Management As A Fair Solution To The Spratly Disputes, Wei Cui

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The Spratlys are a scattered group of islands in the South China Sea over which China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei have made conflicting jurisdictional claims. Although there has been significant academic discussion of this dispute, the Author argues that much of it is hampered by a discourse obsessed with the regional balance of power and security-related strategies that are only tenuously related to each nation's specific legal claims in the Spratlys. In this Article, the Author suggests that a more productive approach to the Spratly disputes is one focused on finding a solution that is "fair" to all …

The Exercise Of Contract Freedom In The Making Of Arbitration Agreements, Thomas E. Carbonneau

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The privatization and contractualization of arbitration, while they empower parties and unburden public institutions, should not eliminate completely the basis for the public regulation of the process. The string of "one-off' arbitrations, gathered together, has consequences upon the public interest in the orderly administration of adjudicative relations in both domestic and international law. The use of arbitration does have a bearing upon the substantive content of legal rights. Judicial vigilance should not only ward off the flagrant abuses of process and procedure in arbitration, but it should also establish an "interests of justice" limitation upon the operation of the process …

The Specificity Of International Arbitration: The Case For Faa Reform, William W. Park

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Arbitration by its nature is polycentric: one might more accurately speak of arbitrations in the plural. A wide variety of disputes are included in one category, implicating differences related to the sophistication of the parties, the character of the disputes, and the public interests at stake. The current legal framework for arbitration conducted in the United States attempts to squeeze all types of arbitration into the Procrustean bed of a single set of standards for judicial review.

The United States should seriously consider eliminating judicial discretion to review the substantive merits of awards in international cases. The domestically nourished doctrine …

The Culture Of Arbitration, Tom Ginsburg

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The relationship between "legal culture" and the practice of international arbitration has received increasing attention in recent years. Many see arbitration as a meeting point for different legal cultures, a place of convergence and interchange wherein practitioners from different backgrounds create new practices. Some have suggested that this process has led to an emergent "international arbitration culture" fusing together elements of the common law and civil law traditions. Others see arbitration as a locus of conflict among traditions or as competition among various players.

This comment contests the view that the current state of convergence in arbitration is properly considered …

Taking Stock Of Nafta Chapter 11 In Its Tenth Year, Jack J. Coe, Jr.

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) came into force on January 1, 1994. Its Eleventh Chapter establishes substantive guarantees and an arbitral mechanism by which qualifying investors may seek damages for breach of those guarantees. The much-discussed investor-state arbitration apparatus was first invoked in September 1996, and since then has been resorted to several times against each NAFTA state. Many cases have concluded, while others are nearing completion. Though a mature jurisprudence has by no means emerged, substantive trends have been established and several of Chapter l's distinctive features, strengths, and weaknesses have been illuminated.

NAFTA's investor-state docket has …

American Judges And International Law, A. M. Weisburd

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This article addresses an issue with which federal courts have been forced to deal with increasing frequency: How ought a judge go about determining the content of customary international law? The article seeks to demonstrate, using the example of the treatment of the concept of "jus cogens" by the courts of appeals, that federal courts have come to rely on doubtful sources in addressing questions of international law. More specifically, it sets out to show that courts frequently do not rely on the actual practice of governments to determine the content of customary international law, which would seem to be …

How We Should Think About The Constitutional Status Of The Suspected Terrorist Detainees At Guantanamo Bay, Akash R. Desai

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, the United States has held suspected terrorist detainees captured during the military campaign in Afghanistan indefinitely at the United States military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Among those currently detained are members of the al-Qaeda terrorist group and the Taliban. Currently the detainees are in the peculiar situation of generally being outside the scope of protections offered by both the international humanitarian law and the Unites States criminal law regimes.

This Note examines the extraterritorial scope of the United States Constitution as it applies to the suspected terrorist detainees at Guantanamo Bay. …

Remarks On Jonathan I. Charney, Jeffrey Schoenblum

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

I have been asked to speak for 10 to 15 minutes about a very dear friend and colleague of 25 years, Jon Charney, specifically about his contribution to Vanderbilt Law School. It is difficult to encapsulate any professor's contribution over the course of 30 years in mere minutes. This is especially difficult in Jon Charney's case, because in my opinion, Jon made an extraordinary, extensive, and enduring contribution that has earned him a place in the pantheon, among the giants in the history of this Law School.

This might seem an odd assertion to those who were acquainted with Jon. …

Jonathan I. Charney--Mourning And Celebration, Louis Henkin

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Here, today, I wish to speak with you about Jon Charney, his good life, and his remarkable achievements. On this occasion I am pleased to add that I knew Jon Charney "professionally" before he began on the road to eminence. I was "present at the creation," as Jon Charney took his first steps toward becoming a world authority on the international Law of the Sea, and an eminent, prominent, lawyer and scholar in international law generally.

Jonny was still a law student when he spent a summer as my research assistant, when both of us learned that there was an …

Jonathan I. Charney: An Appreciation, W. Michael Reisman

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Jonathan Charney was one of the leading international legal scholars of his generation. He was the authority on the Law of the Sea and his magisterial four-volume work on international maritime boundaries quickly became the "vade mecum" for anyone involved in virtually any aspect of the Law of the Sea. But Law of the Sea was only a part of his awesome oeuvre. He wrote authoritatively on the use of force and humanitarian intervention; self-determination; customary international law and, in particular, soft law; international environmental law, international tribunals and jurisdiction, technology, and constitutional law. All of his work was marked …

An Appreciation Of Jonathan I. Charney, Lori F. Damrosch

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Jon Charney preceded me into the academic world by a dozen years and already had a well-established reputation in international law when I was a brand-new law teacher. At the time we met in 1984, Jon was tackling some of the most ambitious topics in the theory and practice of international law, and he reached out to others for collegial engagement on those subjects. From the mid-1980s, he and I worked together on three collaborative books and on many projects for the American Society of International Law and the American Journal of International Law.

Among the themes that preoccupied Jon …

The American Influence On International Arbitration, Roger P. Alford

Journal Articles

It is indisputable that the international arbitration world is an identifiable epistemic community that transcends national borders, and whose members are shaped by their own experience. Increasingly, that experience reflects an American influence, be it heritage, training, affiliation, or client base. In these remarks, Professor Alford addresses three issues related to the Americanization of international arbitration. The first is whether international arbitration has, in fact, only recently become Americanized. He posits instead that there is always an ebb and flow to the level of the United States' involvement in international arbitration. During the drafting and signing of the 1958 New …

Assessing International Criminal Adjudication Of Human Rights Atrocities, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

These remarks were presented on January 5, 2001, as part of a panel on international criminal adjudication at a conference entitled "Into the 21st Century: Reconstruction and Reparations" in Cape Town, South Africa.

The United States joined a number of countries that rushed to sign the treaty to establish the International Criminal Court. They included states like Yemen, Iran, and Israel. These three, along with the United States, were among the few that had refused to vote in favor of the treaty when it was adopted at a diplomatic conference in Rome in 1998. By the end of 2000, 139 …

El Acuerdo Sobre Arbitraje Comercial Internacional Del Mercosur: Un Analisis Critico, Horacio A. Grigera Naón

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Resolving Sovereignty-Based Conflicts: The Emerging Approach Of Earned Sovereignty, Paul Williams

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Earned Sovereignty: The Road To Resolving The Conflict Over Kosovo's Final Status, Paul Williams

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

The Inter-American Human Rights System: Activities From Late 2000 Through October 2002, Richard J. Wilson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

International Law Issues In Death Penalty Defense, Richard J. Wilson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.