International Law Commons^™

The History Of International Adjudication, Mary Ellen O'Connell, Lenore Vanderzee

Book Chapters

This chapter on the history of international adjudication will show that courts and tribunals have been part of international law since the emergence of modern international law with the rise of the state system in the mid-seventeenth century. Courts and their role within international law have also been a persistent part of the theoretical debates about the nature of international law. From an early emphasis on arbitration, support grew for the creation of courts with general compulsory jurisdiction. By the late twentieth century, the theoretical trend shifted toward interest in courts with special subject matter jurisdiction, including human rights, trade, …

State Courts And Transitory Torts In Transnational Human Rights Cases, Chimène Keitner

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Anticipatory Self-Defense And The Israeli-Iranian Crisis: Some Remarks, Charles J. Dunlap Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Protecting Rights And Building Capacities: Challenges To Global Mental Health Policy In Light Of The Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities, Sheila Wildeman

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The World Health Organization (WHO) has in the last decade identified mental health as a priority for global health promotion and international development, to be targeted through promulgation of evidence-based medical practices, health systems reform, and respect for human rights. Yet these overlapping strategies are marked by tensions as the historical primacy of expert-led initiatives is increasingly subject to challenge by new social movements — in particular, disabled persons’ organizations (DPOs). These tensions come into focus upon situating the WHO’s contributions to the analysis of global mental health in light of the negotiation and early stages of implementation of the …

Children And The First Verdict Of The International Criminal Court, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

Child soldiers were a central concern in the first decade of the International Criminal Court; indeed, the court’s first trial, Prosecutor v. Lubanga, dealt exclusively with the war crimes of conscripting, enlisting, and using child soldiers. This article compares the attention that the court has paid to children – an attention that serves the express terms of the ICC Statute – with the relative inattention in post-World War II international instruments such as the statutes of the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals. The article then analyzes the Lubanga conviction, sentence, and reparations rulings. It recommends that the ICC focus attention on …

Corporate Law Tools And The Guiding Principles For Business And Human Rights, Sara Seck

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This paper, written in 2012, provides a summary of the corporate law tools project undertaken as part of the mandate of Professor John Ruggie as Special Representative for Business and Human Rights. The author was one of the co-convenors of a multi-stakeholder consultation on corporate law tools held in 2009 and designed to inform the Ruggie mandate. This paper provides her assessment of the scope and limitations of this project, the extent to which it may have informed aspects of the 2011 UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and an agenda for future research.

Data Protection Principles For The 21st Century, Fred H. Cate, Peter Cullen, Viktor Mayer-Schonberger

Books & Book Chapters by Maurer Faculty

This paper proposes revisions to the OECD Guidelines that include basic changes essential for the protection of individual privacy in the 21st century, while avoiding unnecessary restrictions on uses of personal information that are increasingly important.

The Rights Of Palestinian Refugees And Territorial Solutions In Historic Palestine, Susan M. Akram

Faculty Scholarship

The chapter addresses the territorial implications of the rights of Palestinian refugees in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as measured under international law. The chapter focuses on the central issues, addressing the questions: how do rights of return, property restitution and compensation affect the claims to state territory? Concerning self-determination in the territory of former Palestine, which people are entitled to self-determination -- Palestinians, the Jewish people, Israeli Jews, or Israelis? And over which territory are the 'people' entitled to exercise their self-determination. The main legal principles and sources that provide the framework to address these questions are set out and examined.

China At The Tipping Point? The Tum Against Legal Reform, Carl F. Minzner

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Incorporating Rights: Empire, Global Enterprise, And Global Justice, Erika George

Faculty Scholarship

This Article traces the history and evolution of corporate responsibility under international law to contextualize the developing discourse on business and human rights. It explores the role of private industry in contributing to colonial expansion, slavery, and conflict, and examines the advocacy efforts of abolitionists, anti-imperialism activists, and peace movements to craft reforms and create norms to control corporate conduct. First, the Article outlines the challenge that regulating private commercial power presents for a system of public international law premised on the sovereign power of states. Then, using the example of colonial era European charter companies the Article offers a …

Introduction To The Special Issue On The Arab Spring, Ayodeji Kamau Perrin

Faculty Scholarship

What quickly became known as the "Arab Spring" is a series of protest movements, reform movements, and revolutions (some bloody and some relatively "bloodless") that has been ongoing for more than two years in the majority-Muslim world of the Middle East and North Africa. Arab Spring recalls both the European Revolutions of 1848, dubbed the "Springtime of the Peoples," as well as the Prague Spring of 1968. And the events have drawn comparisons to the post-Soviet revolutions of 1989. The compilation of essays contained in this Special Issue of the Journal of International Law reflects on these events from a …

Persuasion Treaties, Melissa J. Durkee

Scholarly Works

All treaties formalize promises made by national parties. Yet there is a fundamental difference between two kinds of treaty promise. This difference divides all treaties along a fault line: Treaties that govern the behavior of state parties and their agents fall on one side. Treaties in the second category — those I call “persuasion” treaties — commit state parties to changing the behavior of non-state actors as well. The difference is important because the compliance problems for the two sets of treaties sharply diverge. Persuasion treaties merit our systematic attention because they are both theoretically and practically significant. In areas …

A Janus Look At International Criminal Justice, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

Invoking the name of Janus, the Roman god who looked simultaneously at the past and the future, this article examines international criminal justice at a watershed moment, when a number of 20-year-old ad hoc tribunals were winding down even as the International Criminal Court was entering its teen years. First explored are challenges posed by politics – that is, the need to secure cooperation from states and from the U.N. Security Council – and economics – that is, the need to work within budgetary constraints. The article then surveys significant developments in each of a half-dozen international criminal courts and …

International Law In A Time Of Scarcity: An Introduction, Harlan G. Cohen

Scholarly Works

Does international law have the resources to manage, if not solve, this complex global problem of scarcity? Different areas of international law governed by different regimes have their own ways of conceptualizing and managing scarcity. International human rights law may frame the problem as one of individual economic and social rights or as one of the right of indigenous groups. For the most part though, these models from different areas of international law operate in isolation from one another, following their own internal logics.

The problem of scarcity has started to get the attention of international law scholars and experts, …

Due Process In Islamic Criminal Law, Sadiq Reza

Faculty Scholarship

Rules and principles of due process in criminal law--how to, and how not to, investigate crime and criminal suspects, prosecute the accused, adjudicate criminal cases, and punish the convicted--appear in the traditional sources of Islamic law: the Quran, the Sunna, and classical jurisprudence. But few of these rules and principles are followed in the modern-day practice of Islamic criminal law. Rather, states that claim to practice Islamic criminal law today mostly follow laws and practices of criminal procedure that were adopted from European nations in the twentieth century, without reference to the constraints and protections of Islamic law itself. To …

Corporate Law Tools And The Guiding Principles For Business And Human Rights, Sara L. Seck

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

This paper, written in 2012, provides a summary of the corporate law tools project undertaken as part of the mandate of Professor John Ruggie as Special Representative for Business and Human Rights. The author was one of the co-convenors of a multi-stakeholder consultation on corporate law tools held in 2009 and designed to inform the Ruggie mandate. This paper provides her assessment of the scope and limitations of this project, the extent to which it may have informed aspects of the 2011 UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, and an agenda for future research.