International Law Commons^™

Lessons For The Treaty Process From The International Law Commission And International Environmental Law, Sara L. Seck

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The chapter examines Amnesty case studies in order to document the state practice identified and the gaps that need to be filled. The chapter will then consider the work of the ILC in its progressive codification of the law on prevention and loss allocation with respect to transboundary harm arising from hazardous activities, culminating in draft Articles8 and draft Principles,9 respectively, in 2001 and 2006. The modest claim of this chapter is that as the key United Nations body responsible for the progressive development and codification of international law, the work of the ILC should surely be of relevance to …

Testing International Legal Regimes: The Advent Of Automated Commercial Vessels, Aldo Chircop

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

International shipping is on the eve of a new era where remotely controlled and partially or fully automated and unmanned Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) will be carrying international trade. The regulation of navigation and shipping in the contemporary international law of the sea and international maritime law are premised on human presence and control onboard ships. Provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, 1982 and several maritime conventions will need to be revisited to determine how MASS may be accommodated, and where not possible, what further legal development may be needed. Recently, the IMO …

The Quest For Justice For Victims Of Terrorism: International Law And The Immunity Of States In Canada And The United States, Karinne Lantz

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The paper begins with an overview of international law and the principle of state immunity, which is included to provide a necessary introduction for readers who are unfamiliar with these topics. Part two assesses the practice of Canada and the United States by examining the legislated exceptions to state immunity that allows claims against foreign states that sponsor terrorism, as well as the decision in Tracy (Appeal). Part three returns to international law and explores the decision of the ICJ in Jurisdictional Immunities. This examination calls into question whether, through Tracy (Appeal), Canada has violated Iran’s right to …

Plata O Plomo: Effect Of Mexican Transnational Criminal Organizations On The American Criminal Justice System, Mark M. Mcpherson

St. Mary's Law Journal

Abstract forthcoming

International Lobbying Law, Melissa J. Durkee

Scholarly Works

An idiosyncratic array of international rules allows nonstate actors to gain special access to international officials and lawmakers. Historically, many of these groups were public-interest associations like Amnesty International. For this reason, the access rules have been celebrated as a way to democratize international organizations, enhancing their legitimacy and that of the rules they produce. But a focus on the classic public-law virtues of democracy and legitimacy produces a theory at odds with the facts: The international rules rules also offer access to industry and trade associations like the World Coal Association, whose principal purpose is to lobby for their …

Multilateralism’S Life-Cycle, Harlan G. Cohen

Scholarly Works

Does multilateralism have a life-cycle? Perhaps paradoxically, this essay suggests that current pressures on multilateralism and multilateral institutions, including threatened withdrawals by the United Kingdom from the European Union, the United States from the Paris climate change agreement, South Africa, Burundi, and Gambia from the International Criminal Court, and others, may be natural symptoms of those institutions’ relative success. Successful multilateralism and multilateral institutions, this essay argues, has four intertwined effects, which together, make continued multilateralism more difficult: (1) the wider dispersion of wealth or power among members, (2) the decreasing value for members of issue linkages, (3) changing assessment …

Strengthening The Southern African Development Community: A Critique Of The International Labor Organization's Development Assistance In Swaziland And Zimbabwe, Desiree Leclercq

Scholarly Works

Insufficient labor policies contribute to poverty, while those poverty conditions contribute to limited employment opportunities and labor rights abuses. Traditional multilateral lending institutions, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, provide development aid but tend to treat labor policies as incompatible with efficient market functioning. The International Labor Organization (ILO), on the other hand, provides development assistance specifically targeting labor policies. Unlike traditional lending institutions, the ILO's assistance imposes no conditions. Instead, the ILO's mandate requires it to design its programs in consultation with the recipient country's government and social partners.

This article studies the ILO's assistance …

In Defense Of Territorial Jurisdiction, Cody Jacobs

Faculty Scholarship

As the story is traditionally told, the minimum contacts test introduced in International Shoe v Washington freed personal jurisdiction from the dark age of territorialism and gave courts the flexibility to expand the scope of personal jurisdiction to keep pace with modern society. While scholars have critiqued the minimum contacts test on a number of grounds, the narrative that the Territorial Model was inherently problematic—and that Shoe was a step in the right direction— has gone largely unchallenged.

This Article challenges that narrative and argues for a return to the Territorial Model. While Shoe is traditionally cast as a step …

Victims And Press After War: Tensions Between Privacy, Historical Truth And Freedom Of Expression, Vivian Newman-Pont, Maria P. Angel, Maria Ximena Davila

Scholarly Works

The drive to conduct this research was born out of the tension that developed on May of 2017 in the context of the journalistic coverage of the exhumations of those who died in the Bojayá massacre.   Thus, this document has the purpose of asking and answering, from a socio-legal perspective, the following question: How can the events related to the armed conflict and to the transition to peace be narrated without violating the right to privacy of the victims? Or, how can a journalist record a dramatic event or recount an injuste that moves readers while respecting the limits of …

Conclusions: The Value Of An Innovation Framework For International Law, Sara L. Seck, Alastair Neil Craik

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The concluding chapter to Global Environmental Change and Innovation in International Law provides an assessment of the value of an innovation framework for further scholarship in the field of international environmental law. The authors note that thinking more systematically about how international law structures innovation and how innovation within law arises has potential to generate new insights into the role of law in the development of sustainable transitions and may provoke greater attention to the sources and processes of legal transformations themselves. Identifying the constraints to legal innovation, particularly in the context of increasingly complex system demands, was identified as …