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Law Library Blog (January 2026): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

The Special International Peace Zone: From History, Through Practice, Toward An End To Armed Conflict In Ukraine, Tom W. Bell

Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law

This paper presents the special international peace zone as both an observed and ideal institution. Such a zone quells military conflict in an area over which sovereigns make conflicting territorial claims. It operates through an interim administration, governed by its own rules, independent of any single sovereign. Past examples include the Free City of Danzig (1920-39), the Free Territory of Trieste (1947-54), and United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (1999-2008). Despite proven successes, these zones have suffered from an undue reliance on multi-national organizations—first the League of Nations and now the United Nations. Warring sovereigns seldom agree about the …

The Application Of Comparative Law In Public International Law Research, Lê Thị Anh Đào, Adrianna N. Globokar

Akron Law Student Publications

Comparative law analyses the similarities and differences between legal systems, often across different countries or jurisdictions, and examines how those systems operate. Public international law, by contrast, governs the conduct of actors subject to international law, primarily sovereign states, and international organisations, through legal frameworks and principles. Although comparative law and international law are traditionally treated as distinct areas of study, this paper explores the potential benefits of adopting a comparative approach to public international law. Insights from comparative law can deepen the public’s understanding of public international law and advocate for the establishment of “comparative public international law” as …

The International Legal Obligations Of Signatories To An Unratified Treaty, Martin A. Rogoff

Maine Law Review

There are currently two major international agreements of the United States which have been signed by the parties and transmitted by the President to the Senate for its advice and consent: the Treaty with the Soviet Union on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, known as SALT II, and the Agreement with Canada on East Coast Fishery Resources and the accompanying Treaty to Submit to Binding Dispute Settlement the Delimitation of the Maritime Boundary in the Gulf of Maine Area. Both agreements were signed after lengthy and complex negotiations. Both agreements are extremely detailed and represent a delicate balancing of …

Fragmentation Of International Cybercrime Law, Mailyn Fidler

Law Faculty Scholarship

Cybercrime is global. But legal approaches to combating cybercrime have been fragmented. The first such multilateral legal mechanism, the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, was launched in 2001 and positioned by its primarily Western drafters as a global instrument. But it has struggled to achieve full international uptake. Instead, many states have used regional organizations to create their own legal mechanisms addressing cybercrime and cybersecurity threats. More recently, the UN Convention on Cybercrime has emerged as an alternative to this fragmented landscape. But the emergence and significance of this “convergent” option cannot be understood without the context of the deep fragmentation …

The Legality Of Nuclear-Weapons Sharing Arrangements Under International Law: United States-Nato And Russia-Belarus, Anthony J. Colangelo

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This Essay argues that certain nuclear sharing agreements between nuclear and non-nuclear powers are legal under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This topic is highly important as Russia has announced its stationing of nuclear weapons in Belarus and Belarus has signaled its intent to use them.

Law Library Blog (January 2025): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

The Click-And-Commit World Order, Melissa (M.J.) Durkee

Scholarship@WashULaw

This essay explores the rise of a new model of global governance: the “click-and-commit world order,” characterized by digitally mediated pledging platforms through which a wide array of actors—states, corporations, cities, NGOs, and individuals—publicly commit to addressing global problems through non-binding promises. In contrast to traditional treaty-making, these pledging platforms offer a decentralized, voluntary framework for international cooperation that relies on public declarations rather than negotiated obligations.

Within the U.N. system, this mode of governance developed within the United Nations Global Compact and the Paris Climate Agreement, where bottom-up pledges were institutionalized within formal and informal international structures. The internet …

Posteriores Priores: An Unconstitutional Congressional Role In Treaty Termination, Donna D. Mckeage

Maine Law Review

The Supreme Court recently decided a case involving an apparent conflict between a treaty provision and a subsequent act of Congress. A Japanese subsidiary corporation, Sumitomo Shoji America, Inc., claimed a provision of the Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation of 1953 between the United States and Japan exempted it from the prohibition against discrimination embodied in title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Court did not reach this issue because it found Sumitomo Shoji America, Inc. to be a United States corporation and unable, therefore, to invoke the provisions of the treaty. The issue raised in …

The Provisional Application Of International Agreements, Martin A. Rogoff, Barbara E. Gauditz

Maine Law Review

The last few decades have seen a tremendous increase in the number of international agreements concluded by states and international organizations. The pace of concluding international agreements is accelerating and will most likely continue to accelerate at an increasing rate. The growing reliance on international agreements by the members of the world community is of course a response to rapidly expanding international interactions and interdependencies. Until the latter part of the nineteenth century, international agreements dealt primarily with political matters: peace treaties, treaties of alliance and friendship, neutrality treaties, and treaties settling territorial claims. Today, international agreements deal not only …

Has Russia Killed Article 2(4)? Evaluating The Effectiveness Of The Prohibition Of The Use Of Force In The Conduct Of International Affairs, Dr. Graham Melling

San Diego International Law Journal

The February 24, 2022 invasion of Ukraine by Russia represents an unambiguous breach of the United Nations Charter´s prohibition of the use of force. The significance of the prohibition of the use of force between States cannot be overstated and is recognised in practice and legal doctrine as being “one of the core values of the international community”. However, argument has been made that the United Nations Charter´s rules prohibiting the use of force are no longer relevant to the conduct of international affairs, especially involving major powers. It could be argued that by their conduct States have repudiated the …

The Goldilocks Dilemma In Terminating Treaties: The Case Study Of Brexit And Trade, Catherine Fabiano

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

Treaties are an essential source of international law, and they are permitted to be terminated. The rules governing termination, namely the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, highlight two main goals of treaties: the stability and flexibility of agreements. Brexit highlights these goals and illustrates the tensions that arise. When parties terminate their treaties, they are ultimately stuck in a goldilocks dilemma. Essentially, the parties have to balance a combination of factors to achieve just the right outcome. The United Kingdom and the European Union were caught in this goldilocks dilemma which Brexit depicts. In the end, the …

What's Next: How And Why States Strengthen Treaties Through Deepening Commitments, Joseph Maestas

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

States take many post-ratification actions with most designed to weaken the application of the treaty against the state. However, nearly all treaties offer ways for states to strengthen it: deepening commitments. Deepening commitments are optional post-ratification actions that allow a state to strengthen and shape implementation of the treaty. This dissertation examines deepening commitments through analysis the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Rome Statute), and the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW).

In Chapter 2, through a typology and process tracing cases, I argue that states influence international law …

The Eu-China Cai And The Uyghur Challenge In The Context Of China's Domestic Law Barriers To International Labor And Human Rights Standards, Ronald C. Brown

American University Business Law Review

While China engages in world commerce as a global player and is signatory to international labor and human rights standards, at the same time it uses treaty reservations and its own domestic laws to limit and undermine the full application of those standards. Concern from Western governments and global human rights groups regarding China’s longstanding treatment of the Uyghur people has resulted in a freeze in negotiations for the EU-China Comprehensive Investment Agreement (CAI). This was also a result of China’s failure to ratify or implement relevant United Nations (U.N.) covenants and International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions and placing reservations …

A Draft Treaty On Crimes Against Humanity Draws More Engagement From States, Leila Nadya Sadat

Scholarship@WashULaw

The world’s first treaty on crimes against humanity inched closer to reality as the U.N. General Assembly’s Sixth (Legal) Committee recently wrapped up the last of a series of “resumed sessions” before States decide this October whether to proceed to formal negotiations on the document. Significantly more States and regional groups intervened during the most recent session, held last month, than in 2023, and the number that support the draft increased. Representatives of civil society also were present in much higher numbers, issuing a “Joint Statement in Support of Progress toward a Crimes Against Humanity Treaty” from more than 400 …

Treaties As A Tool For Native American Land Reparations, Hannah Friedle

Northwestern Journal of Human Rights

"The only compensation for land is land."¹

Hundreds of treaties signed. Hundreds of treaties broken. The juvenile United States grew in size as independent Native nations ceded their territory through treaties. Thirsting for more land, the United States broke its promises and continued its manifest destiny westward. And what of tribes’ treaty rights to land? Some Native nations received financial compensation for treaty violations. But money is crumbs to many whose traditional homelands are still colonized.

Tribes are entitled to the land promised to them under treaties—instruments supposedly carrying the force of federal law. Land reparations are a partial …

Internally Displaced Persons: Ordeals And Analyses Of The Possible Regimes Of Legal Protection Frameworks, Olawale Ogunmodimu

St. Mary's Law Journal

This present global community is complicated because of anxiety and uncertainty. It is thoroughly interconnected yet intricately partitioned. Pivotally, one could argue that the centrality to this global anxiety is identity and belonging. People want to identify with and belong to a political system, territory, and culture. It seems that there is a present world that mirrors the political emergence of the interwar period that had nationalism on the rise. There is hostility to non-citizens globally, whether as refugees, internally displaced peoples (IDPs), or immigrants seeking to join new political communities. This Article explains the difficulties that ensue from being …

La Relación Entre El Derecho Internacional Y El Derecho Interno En El Sistema Constitucional De Los Estados Unidos, Robert S. Barker

Barker Papers

A pesar de las amplias palabras de la Corte, la aplicaci6n de Derecho Internacional por los tribunales de los Estados Unidos es un tema complicado. Su propósito es el de identificar los principios mas importantes de la integracion y la separacion de Derecho Internacional y derecho interno en los Estados Unidos.

Theorizing Responsibility In The Investor State Dispute Resolution System, Kristen Boon

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

The Investor-State Dispute System (“ISDS”) permits investors to sue states when their investments are injured. The system was designed to protect investors and impose responsibilities on states; it is uncontroversial to say that the ISDS system is one-sided. But a chorus of voices is now asking: should investors have responsibilities too? The narrative is one of injustice, driven by the perception that states have signed on to a system that has left them with large financial exposure to investors. This viewpoint has been reinforced, in the eyes of some, by the influence of big business, and by state losses …

Rurality As An Intersecting Axis Of Inequality In The Work Of The U.N. Treaty Bodies, Amanda Lyons

Washington and Lee Law Review

Rurality intersects with other identities, power dynamics, and structural inequalities—including those related to gender, race, disability, and age—to create unique patterns of human rights deprivations, violations, and challenges in rural spaces. Therefore, accurately assessing human rights and duties in rural spaces requires attention to the dynamics of rurality in a particular context, the unique nature of diverse rural identities and livelihoods, the systemic forces operating in and on those spaces, and the intersections with other forms of structural discrimination and inequality.

Although much of the work of the U.N. treaty bodies has in fact addressed human rights situations in rural …

Incomplete International Investment Law -- Applying The Incomplete Contract Theory, Tae Jung Park

University of Cincinnati Law Review

There is a puzzle in the field of international investment law: many negotiating countries fail to complete their International Investment Agreements (“IIA”) and postpone the renegotiations for completion as well. The literature on IIAs has neglected to consider the existence, causes, and solutions of this phenomenon. This study employs the incomplete contract theory to explain the causes and solutions surrounding this phenomenon.

Enforcing Interstate Compacts In Federal Systems, Michael Osborn

Indiana Journal of Constitutional Design

The central goal of a federal system is for local government units to retain degrees of independence, specifically over matters of importance to that local unit. A logical corollary to that independence is the ability for local units to negotiate and contract with other local units on matters of importance. Therefore, it is not surprising that almost every federal system allows, either implicitly or explicitly, member states to form binding compacts with other states, the union government, or municipalities.1 Some federal democracies even allow member states to compact with foreign governments. Furthermore, almost every federal constitution includes a provision outlining …

Power, Exit Costs, And Renegotiation In International Law, Timothy Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars have long understood that the instability of power has ramifications for compliance with international law. Scholars have not, however, focused on how states’ expectations about shifting power affect the initial design of international agreements. In this paper, I integrate shifting power into an analysis of the initial design of both the formal and substantive aspects of agreements. I argue that a state expecting to become more powerful over time incurs an opportunity cost by agreeing to formal provisions that raise the cost of exiting an agreement. Exit costs - which promote the stability of legal rules - have distributional …

Coming Debates To Advance New Treaty On Crimes Against Humanity Will Require Skillful Leadership, Leila Nadya Sadat, Akila Radhakrishnan

Scholarship@WashULaw

The resolution adopted recently at the United Nations General Assembly’s legal committee on draft articles for a treaty on crimes against humanity creates a two-year process for debate and discussion of the proposal within the committee. This opens the door for the possible adoption of a new, critically needed, global treaty on crimes against humanity within the next three or four years. Such a treaty would close several gaps in the legal architecture of atrocity crimes — particularly the legal obligation to prevent crimes against humanity, a duty not imposed by complementary regimes, including the Rome Statute of the International …

On Crimes Against Humanity, Protect The Un Sixth Committee’S Integrity With Action, Leila Nadya Sadat, Akila Radhakrishnan

Scholarship@WashULaw

Enthusiasm for negotiating and adopting a new global treaty on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity has been growing since the issuance of a model draft treaty 16 years ago, particularly after the United Nations International Law Commission (ILC) submitted a final set of draft articles to the General Assembly on Aug. 5, 2019. Although paragraph 42 of the ILC’s report recommended the “elaboration of a convention by the General Assembly or by an international conference of plenipotentiaries on the basis of the draft articles,” progress on this important treaty has stalled in the U.N. General Assembly’s Sixth …

International Law: Corpus Linguistics And Ordinary Meaning, Eric Talbot Jensen, James Lee Rex

Faculty Scholarship

The application of corpus linguistics to clarify ambiguity or provide insight in legal interpretation is quickly gaining recognition within the United States, especially among the judiciary. However, very little has been done to assess its application to international law, particularly as a means of assisting international courts and tribunals. In the international legal system—where ambiguity inevitably arises from the great diversity of linguistic and cultural systems throughout the world—the norm for understanding contested terms within a treaty or agreement is to look for the “ordinary meaning to be given to the terms of the treaty in their context and in …

The Illegally Traded Elephant In The Room: Species Terrorism & Combating Illegal Wildlife Trade, Áine Dillon

Pace International Law Review

The illegal wildlife trade has been a dilemma for decades

and remains prevalent globally – international intervention is

required now. While most countries participate in the Convention

on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild

Fauna and Flora (“CITES”), not all countries have the same approaches

to combating the illegal wildlife trade. Unique approaches

can be beneficial because each illegally traded species

requires a different response, and countries with limited resources

can also participate. However, the lack of a unified response

hinders the global fight against the illegal wildlife trade.

While traditional methods to combat crime, such as passing

laws, …

Securing Secrets: The Need For A Treaty Addressing State-Sponsored Economic Espionage, Jaylin Johnson

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Is Climate Change A Threat To International Peace And Security?, Mark Nevitt

Michigan Journal of International Law

The climate-security century is here. Both the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”) and the U.S. Fourth National Climate Assessment (“NCA”) recently sounded the alarm on climate change’s “super-wicked” and destabilizing security impacts. Scientists and security professionals alike reaffirm what we are witnessing with our own eyes: The earth is warming at a rapid rate; climate change affects international peace and security in complex ways; and the window for international climate action is slamming shut.

Against Balancing: Revisiting The Use/Regulation Distinction To Reform Liability And Compensation Under Investment Treaties, Jonathan Bonnitcha, Emma Aisbett

Michigan Journal of International Law

Investment treaties generate mutual benefits for host states and foreign investors to the extent that they discipline opportunistic conduct by host states. Investment treaties do not necessarily generate mutual benefits insofar as they constrain states’ ability to respond to new information or to change their policy priorities. In a companion paper, we use the tools of law and economics to formalize and clarify the relationship between problems of opportunism on the one hand, and new information and shifts in policy priorities on the other. On this basis, we develop a proposal to reform the legal principles that govern liability and …