International Law Commons^™

The Media As Participants In The International Legal Process, Monica Hakimi

Faculty Scholarship

We know what we know about current international events through the media. The media (with their instantaneous transmission of images and sound across great distances) inform us of everything from the train bombings in Madrid and London, to human rights abuses in Darfur, to the fall of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Yet the media do not simply communicate raw information; they selectively filter, define and give shape to the events that they cover — in terms of what is happening, whether it is appropriate, and how relevant international actors should and do respond. The media thus are the nerves of the …

The Dual Model Of Balancing: A Model For The Proper Scope Of Balancing In Constitutional Law, Iddo Porat

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Champagne, Feta, And Bourbon: The Spirited Debate About Geographical Indications, Justin Hughes

Articles

Geographical Indications (GIs) are terms for foodstuffs that are associated with certain geographical areas. The law of GIs is currently in a state of flux. Legal protection for GIs mandated in the TRIPS Agreement is implemented through appellations law in France and through certification mark systems in the United States and Canada. This Article first examines the state of GIs throughout the world. The author then turns to the continuing debate between the European Union and other industrialized economies over this unique form of intellectual property. The European Union claims that increasing GI protection would aid developing countries, but, in …

Our International Constitution, Sarah H. Cleveland

Faculty Scholarship

This Article seeks to challenge and redirect contemporary debate regarding the role of international law in constitutional interpretation based upon an examination of historical Supreme Court practice. The Article has three goals: It first marshals the weight of evidence regarding the Supreme Court's historical use of international law in constitutional analysis, to rebut the claim that the practice is new. It then analyzes the ways that the Court has used international law from a legitimacy perspective, and finally draws lessons from the historical practice to offer preliminary suggestions- regarding the normatively appropriate use of international law.

The Impact Of Eu Unfair Contract Terms Law On U.S. Business-To-Consumer Internet Merchants, Jane K. Winn, Mark Webber

Articles

This article focuses on the application of European Union unfair contract terms law to retail Internet transactions that U.S. businesses might engage in with European consumers. It compares attitudes toward consumer protection regulation in the U.S. and the EU to provide some context within which the specific provisions of unfair contract terms law can be understood.

While many lawyers and legal academics in the U.S. who study the development of online markets are aware of the profound differences in U.S. and EU information privacy laws, the magnitude of the divergence in consumer electronic contracting law is not as widely recognized. …

Lawyering Across Multiple Legal Orders – Rethinking Legal Education In Comparative And International Law, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Scholarship

I appreciate the opportunity to briefly introduce a new course Columbia Law School is offering to first year students for the first time this spring semester. The course, which I will be co-teaching with my colleague George Bermann, is called "Lawyering in Multiple Legal Orders." The title reflects the basic "philosophy" of the course, namely that legal practitioners today will invariably work in more than one legal order. This notion is not unfamiliar to lawyers practicing in federal systems, such as the United States. By the end of the first semester students have a basic understanding of the federalist system …

Does One Need To Be An International Lawyer To Be An International Environmental Lawyer?, Daniel M. Bodansky

Scholarly Works

The question I want to address is whether one can now say that IEL [International Environmental Law] represents a distinct field. Of course, it is a distinct field in the sense that it addresses a distinct set of problems and has developed a wide body of primary rules in response. However, is it a distinct field in the stronger sense of having its own characteristic methodologies and techniques?

Book Review: Gary Botting, Extradition Between Canada And The United States (Ardsley: Transnational Publishers, 2005), Robert Currie

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Both domestic and international laws regarding the extradition of fugitive criminal offenders are in a state of flux throughout the world. The current legal landscape reflects tension between the interest of state authorities in promoting “security,” on the one hand, and increasing recognition that human rights obligations are at play, on the other. Gary Botting’s book, Extradition Between Canada and the United States, successfully addresses this tension by way of a detailed examination of what is probably the most integrated extradition partnership outside the European Union.

Climate Change And The Use Of The Dispute Settlement Regime Of The Law Of The Sea Convention, Meinhard Doelle

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This article explores the connection between obligations to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under the climate change regime and obligations to protect the marine environment under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Within the context of the state of the science on the links between climate change and the marine environment, the article considers whether the emission of greenhouse gases as a result of human activity constitutes a violation of various obligations under the UNCLOS. Having identified a number of possible violations, the article proceeds to consider the application of the binding dispute settlement process …

Sentencing For The 'Crime Of Crimes': The Evolving 'Common Law' Of Sentencing Of The International Criminal Tribunal For Rwanda, Robert D. Sloane

Faculty Scholarship

Absent much prescriptive guidance in its Statute or other positive law, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has been developing, in effect, a 'common law' of sentencing for the most serious international crimes: genocide and crimes against humanity. While it remains, as the Appeals Chamber has said, premature to speak of an emerging 'penal regime', and the coherence in sentencing practice that this denotes, this comment offers some preliminary reflections on the substantive law and process of sentencing as it has evolved through ICTR practice. Above all, I argue, sentencing must, but has not yet, become an integral part …

Kitzmiller And The "Is It Science?" Question, Jay D. Wexler

Faculty Scholarship

When Judge John E. Jones, III, a United States District Court judge appointed by President George W. Bush, ruled that the Dover school board's intelligent design (ID) policy violated the Establishment Clause, ID opponents were ecstatic. They had good reason to be. The opinion was a comprehensive and complete victory for ID opponents. The decision held that the policy was an unconstitutional endorsement of religion when viewed both from a reasonable Dover student's perspective as well as from the perspective of a reasonable adult in the Dover community. It also held that the policy was adopted for a religious purpose, …

The Procedural Soft Law Of International Arbitration, William W. Park

Faculty Scholarship

The conference organizers set me the daunting task of exploring arbitration's “non-national instruments,” which is to say the guidelines of professional groups and non-governmental organizations related to evidence, conflicts of interest, ethics and the organization of arbitral proceedings. Frequently these procedural standards build on the lore of international dispute resolution as memorialized in articles, treatises and learned symposium papers. These guidelines represent what might be called “soft law,” in distinction to the harder norms imposed by arbitration statutes and treaties, as well as the procedural framework adopted by the parties through choice of pre-established arbitration rules.

The growth of procedural …

Supremacy And Diplomacy: The International Law Of The U.S. Supreme Court, Harlan G. Cohen

Scholarly Works

In 2003-2004, a Presidential campaign year dominated by debates about international affairs and international law, the U.S. Supreme Court took an unusual number of cases of international import. The Court considered the Alien Tort Claims Act and the future of human rights suits in U.S. courts, the applicability of the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act to claims involving Nazi-stolen artwork, the applicability of American antitrust law to foreign anticompetitive activity, and the legality of the Guantanamo detentions. A great deal of ink has been spilled analyzing the individual impacts of each of these cases. What has been less considered is how …

International Law In Black And White, Daniel M. Bodansky

Scholarly Works

Is the study of international law an art or a science? Can the role of international law be explained by general rules, with predictive value? Or does it require the exercise of judgment, in order to account for the richness and complexity of international life? Traditionally, international lawyers have gravitated to the latter view, analyzing issues in an essentially ad hoc and eclectic manner. In their controversial new book, THE LIMITS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner argue forcefully for a more scientific approach, relying on the methodology known as rational choice theory. The article examine the book's …

A Negative Proof Of International Law, Peter J. Spiro

Scholarly Works

Important legal scholars have launched assaults against both the consequence and legitimacy of international law. These challenges are useful by way of testing international law's theoretical underpinnings, which, in the modern period at least, have never been very secure. With THE LIMITS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner have done a service to those who put more faith in international law as a meaningful quantity. Especially in these the field's early renaissance years, understandings of international law should be considerably strengthened by the attack. Though I doubt the authors would thus conceive of their project, THE LIMITS OF …

Transnational Criminal Law And Procedure: An Introduction, Sadiq Reza

Faculty Scholarship

What is “transnational” criminal law? One possibility is foreign criminal law, meaning the scope and substance of what is deemed criminal behavior in other lands and the theories that ostensibly justify punishing for such behavior, indeed deeming it criminal in the first place. Another is foreign criminal procedure, the “how” of foreign criminal law’s “what” and “why”: the rules and practices of investigating crime, prosecuting suspected criminals, and adjudicating criminal cases in other lands or systems. More common meanings, judging from articles in U.S. law reviews, are comparative criminal law and comparative criminal procedure, though these might differ from their …