International Law Commons^™

Red-Teaming Nlw: A Top Ten List Of Criticisms About Non-Lethal Weapons, David A. Koplow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Critics of non-lethal weapons (NL W) have asserted numerous complaints about the concepts, the Department of Defense research and development efforts, and the pace of innovation in the field. These critiques challenge the cost of the programs, their consistency with international law, the adverse public reaction to some of the devices, and the dangers of proliferation, among other points. This article summarizes the various assessments, in form of a "top ten list" of criticisms, and evaluates their weight. The author concludes that some of these points of objection have merit, but overall, the NLW enterprise is worthy of continuation and …

Standing For Human Rights Abroad, Evan J. Criddle

Faculty Publications

When may states impose coercive measures such as asset freezes, trade embargos, and investment restrictions to protect the human rights of foreign nationals abroad? Drawing inspiration from Hugo Grotius’s guardianship account of humanitarian intervention, this Article offers a new theory of states’ standing to enforce human rights abroad: under some circumstances, international law authorizes states to impose countermeasures as fiduciary representatives, asserting the human rights of oppressed foreign peoples for the benefit of those peoples. The fiduciary theory explains why all states may use countermeasures to vindicate the human rights of foreign nationals abroad despite the fact that they do …

They Had Nothing, Charles Wilkinson

Publications

No abstract provided.

Introduction, S. James Anaya

Publications

No abstract provided.

Report Of The Special Rapporteur On The Rights Of Indigenous Peoples On The Situation Of Indigenous Peoples In The Republic Of The Congo, S. James Anaya

Publications

No abstract provided.

Report Of The Special Rapporteur On The Rights Of Indigenous Peoples On Extractive Industries And Indigenous Peoples, S. James Anaya

Publications

No abstract provided.

From Prosecutorial To Reparatory: A Valuable Post-Conflict Change Of Focus, Nancy Amoury Combs

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Just War Tradition And International Law Against War: The Myth Of Discordant Doctrines, Mary Ellen O'Connell

Journal Articles

The international law regulating resort to armed force, still known by the Latin phrase, the jus ad bellum, forms a principal substantive subfield of international law, along with human rights law, international environmental law, and international economic law. Among theologians, philosophers, and political scientists, just war theory is a major topic of study. Nevertheless, only a minority of scholars and practitioners know both jus ad bellum and just war theory well. Lack of knowledge has led to the erroneous view that the two areas are in conflict. This article responds to this misapprehension, explaining the deep compatibility of international law …

Making Peace With Your Enemy: Nelson Mandela And His Contributions To Conflict Resolution, Jean R. Sternlight, Andrea Schneider, Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Robert Mnookin, Richard Goldstone, Penelope Andrews

Articles & Chapters

This is a transcription of the tenth anniversary celebration of the Saltman Center for Conflict Resolution at the William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The event was held in honor of NelsonMandela, and included a panel discussion about his contributions to the dispute resolution field.

Panelists included Dean Penelope Andrews of the University of Cape Town Faculty of Law, Prof. Carrie Menkel-Meadow of the U.C. Irvine School of Law, Prof. Robert Mnookin of Harvard Law School, and Judge Richard Goldstone, a former member of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.

An introduction was made by …

Information Operations Under International Law: A Delphi Study Into The Legal Standing Of Cyber Warfare, Kenneth Gualtier

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The ever-growing interconnectivity of industry and infrastructure through cyberspace has increased their vulnerability to cyber attack. The lack of any formal codification of cyber warfare has led to the development of contradictory state practices and disagreement as to the legal standing of cyber warfare, resulting in an increased risk of damage to property and loss of life. Using the just war theory as a foundation, the research questions asked at the point at which cyber attacks meet the definition of use of force or armed attack under international law and what impediments currently exist in the development of legal limitations …

The Limits Of Judicial Mechanisms For Developing And Enforcing International Environmental Norms: Introductory Remarks, Nienke Grossman, Jacqueline Peel

All Faculty Scholarship

International courts and tribunals have played a key role in the development of principles and norms of international environmental law. Over the last two decades, such bodies have been asked to resolve a growing number of disputes that involve environmental issues. The types of issues considered by international courts and tribunals have also expanded in scope and complexity. For instance, disputes concerning environmental matters may involve claims of state responsibility, law of the sea questions, human rights issues, or trade and investment aspects.

White Paper: Options For A Treaty On Business And Human Rights, Anita Ramasastry, Douglass Cassell

Articles

The United Nations Human Rights Council decided in June 2014 to establish an Intergovernmental Working Group to “elaborate an international legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises.” The first meeting of the Working Group took take place in Geneva in July 2015. The Council did not further specify what sort of instrument should be drafted. The Center for Human Rights of the American Bar Association and the Law Society of England and Wales asked the present authors to prepare a “White Paper” on possible options for a treaty …

Formalism And Distrust: Foreign Affairs Law In The Roberts Court,, Harlan G. Cohen

Scholarly Works

When it comes to foreign relations, the Roberts Court has trust issues. As far as the Court is concerned, everyone — the President, Congress, the lower courts, plaintiffs — has played hard and fast with the rules, taking advantage of the Court’s functionalist approaches to foreign affairs issues. This seems to be the message of the Roberts Court foreign affairs law jurisprudence. The Roberts Court has been active in foreign affairs law, deciding cases on the detention and trial of enemy combatants, foreign sovereign immunity, the domestic effect of treaties, the extraterritorial reach of federal statutes, the preemption of state …

Cross-Fertilisation Of Procedural Law Among International Courts And Tribunals: Methods And Meanings, Chiara Giorgetti

Law Faculty Publications

The proliferation of international courts and tribunals has resulted in interesting instances of cross-fertilisation of procedural law among international courts. This chapter provides a framework to assess specific techniques of cross-fertilisation, used in support of specific conclusions reached by the deciding tribunal Techniques used include general references to decisions by other tribunals, specific citations to one or more decisions by other international courts and tribunals and references to a standard adopted by other international courts and tribunals explained in a dissenting or separate opinion and differing from the conclusion supported by the majority of the deciding tribunal. Continuous instances of …

Gendering The Compliance Agenda: Feminism, Human Rights And Violence Against Women, Megan Louise Pearce

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

The article argues that while the due diligence standard in international human rights law has been a significant step forward in addressing violence against women, it has not yet delivered real change. The gap between legal promise and reality persists, and the article contends that addressing this gap requires integrating feminist insights into compliance theories. By applying feminist critiques to these theories, the article seeks to illuminate why the due diligence standard has been ineffective in eliminating violence against women and to highlight areas for future research.

The Future Of International Mediated Settlement Agreements: Of Conventions, Challenges And Choices, Eunice Chua

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In 2002, UNCITRAL developed the Model Law on International Commercial Conciliation.1 Although at that stage there was a strong effort to develop a uniform enforcement mechanism, the ultimate conclusion was that because of the great variance in the technicalities of domestic procedural laws, harmonisation by way of uniform legislation was not feasible (UNCITRAL 2004: 55). Eventually, Article 15 merely provided that: If the parties reach and sign an agreement settling a dispute, that settlement agreement is binding and enforceable … [the enacting State inserts a description of the method of enforcing settlements agreements or refers to provisions governing such enforcement].

Ctc And International Research And Information Systems, Ruth Bird, Penny A. Hazelton, Kyle Brown

Articles

There is a long history of creating digital libraries of legal materials in general and of international legal materials in particular. This article highlights the history of several noteworthy examples of earlier digital libraries. It then describes the creation of the Cape Town Convention Academic Project digital library. Finally, the article applies lessons learned from the histories of the earlier libraries to analyse issues the Cape Town Convention library may face in the future.

Agricultural Biotechnology: Drawing On International Law To Promote Progress, J. Janewa Oseitutu

Faculty Publications

In Bowman v. Monsanto, the Supreme Court declined to apply the principle of exhaustion to limit the patentee’s ability to control the reproduction of self-replicating inventions. This decision was justified from a patent law perspective on the basis that patent holder has a right to prevent others from making the invention. But what happens when we take other perspectives into account? For instance, a farmer might have human rights or other rights that may need to be balanced against the patentee’s right. Since globalized intellectual property standards were established through international agreements and much of the resistance to intellectual property …

The Political Economy And Legal Regulation Of Transnational Commercial Surrogate, Cyra Akila Choudhury

Faculty Publications

This Article breaks new ground by closely reading the emerging ethnographic accounts of surrogacy to establish that current feminist frames are incomplete. It incorporates the political economy of surrogacy, the economic relationship of surrogacy to the Indian state, and the political economy of surrogates’ families, which have all been missing from the current dialogue. The Article concludes that the benefits of surrogate labor outweigh its disadvantages and develops a new framework — of surrogacy as labor — that will, for the first time, protect the surrogate as worker.Surrogacy, as a fairly open regulatory field, provides feminists with a unique opportunity …

The Law And Politics Of The Charles Taylor Case, Charles Chernor Jalloh

Faculty Publications

This article discusses a rare successful prosecution of a head of state by a modern international criminal court. The case involved former Liberian president Charles Taylor. Taylor, who was charged and tried by the United Nations-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone (“SCSL”), was convicted in April 2013 for planning and aiding and abetting war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious international humanitarian law violations. He was sentenced to 50 years imprisonment. The SCSL Appeals Chamber upheld the historic conviction and sentence in September 2013. Taylor is currently serving his sentence in Great Britain. This article, from an insider who …

Las Madres De Plaza De Mayo, Then And Now: A Comparative Analysis Of Its Fractured Factions And Lasting Sybolism In Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sondra Anton

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

I conducted research on three different factions of the original Madres de Plaza de Mayo cause in Buenos Aires, Argentina: Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo, Madres de Plaza de Mayo Línea Fundadora, and Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. Through interviews and archival research, I have completed a comparison of the three groups. I have concluded that although their original cause of demanding the whereabouts of their disappeared children united them, they are now deeply fragmented among one another due to their differing opinions of how to achieve justice in post-Dirty War Argentina. Furthermore, it is interesting to note the …

“Online Pharmacy Regulation: How The Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act Can Help Solve An International Problem”, Bob Schultz

San Diego International Law Journal

There is an unaddressed anomaly with respect to regulating online pharmacies when compared with traditional pharmacies. Online pharmacies serve the same ends as traditional brick and mortar pharmacies, i.e., to bring medication to consumers as a part of a profitable business. The raison d’étre of traditional pharmacy regulation—to protect consumers —should logically apply to online sources of the same inherently dangerous pharmaceuticals. However, traditional pharmacies are regulated, while online pharmacies have long eluded effective regulation and now constitute a lawless source of purchase and abuse that is far from real physician control, effective standards, or accountability....
This Comment will establish …

Foreign Relations Law And The Purported Shift Away From "Exceptionalism", Curtis A. Bradley

Faculty Scholarship

In prior writings, I coined the term “foreign relations exceptionalism” to refer to the view that the federal government’s foreign affairs powers are subject to a different, and generally more relaxed, set of constitutional restraints than those that govern its domestic powers. In a recent article in the Harvard Law Review, The Normalization of Foreign Relations Law, the authors contend that during the past twenty-five years there has been a revolutionary shift away from foreign relations exceptionalism, that this “normalization” trend is likely to continue, and that this development should be welcomed and encouraged. This essay points out various conceptual …

Transnationalizing Comparative Law, Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

Comparative law will not die in the 21st century, but nor can it remain unchanged. Comparative law as we have it today still retains its roots in 1900: it is focused on states, on positive law, and on a scientific approach. Comparative law in the age of transnationalism will have to transnationalize: it must move beyond the state, it must move beyond positive law, and it must endorse cultural approaches. We must retain our critique of legal nationalism, but we must add our critique of uncritical legal universalism.

Protecting Equine Welfare And International Consumers Of Horse Meat: A Proposal For The Renewal Of Horse Slaughter In The United States, Natalie Anderson

San Diego International Law Journal

This Comment will address how the de facto ban on horse slaughter and the shift in destination of American horses bound for harvesting has had unintended negative consequences for equine welfare and for the safety of international consumers of horse meat. Part II analyzes the role of the horse in American history, and how this has shaped horse slaughter legislation and the international trade of American horse meat. Part III examines regulations and guidelines for the humane transportation, handling, and slaughter of horses in the United States, Canada and Mexico, and demonstrates how poorly-framed legislation, a lack of formal agreements …

Using The Ability To Host World Events As Incentive To Procure Voluntary Anti-Discrimination Legal Reform, Brett M. Crowell

San Diego International Law Journal

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) have the power to effect global change. Countries vie for the honor of hosting world events such as the Olympic Games and the World Cup because of the prestige and the economic and political gains those events provide. The IOC and FIFA can and should use the incentive of hosting one of these events to procure legal reform in myriad humanitarian equality issues such as sexual orientation, gender, and race. These organizations can prompt this change by requiring that host countries uphold a set of minimum legal standards …

The Hague Principles, The Cisg, And The 'Battle Of Forms', Peter Winship

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This paper considers the relation of the Hague Principles on Choice of Law in International Commercial Contracts to the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) when parties to an international contract of sales refer during negotiations to their standard terms and these standard terms include choice-of-law terms that conflict.

Self-Interest Or Self-Inflicted? How The United States Charges Its Service Members For Violating The Laws Of War, Chris Jenks

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

This chapter explores the aspects of self-interest implicated by the US military prosecuting its own service members who violate the laws of war under different criminal charges than it prosecutes enemy belligerents who commit substantially similar offences. The chapter briefly explains how the US asserts criminal jurisdiction over its service members before turning to how the US military reports violations of the laws of war. It then sets out the US methodology for charging such violations as applied to its service members, and compares this methodology to that applied to those tried by military commissions. The chapter then discusses the …

Concept And Contract In The Future Of International Law, John Linarelli

Scholarly Works

This is an article written for a symposium on Joel Trachtman’s book, The Future of International Law. I first deal with the contractarian features of Trachtman’s approach to understanding international law. Using the tools of new institutional economics and constitutional economics, Trachtman seeks to describe the features of an international legal system. This is positive political theory or at least relates substantially to the methods of positive political theory. I explore a different approach, one connecting to normative political theory. In its ambitious sense, my approach would see international law as a form of moral argument, but in its modest …

Complicity In Business And Human Rights, James G. Stewart

All Faculty Publications

These remarks, delivered on April 9, 2015 at the American Society of International Law’s Annual Conference, address the context of complicity discussions in public international law generally then their significance and scope in Business and Human Rights in particular. The Panel on which I delivered this talk was one of the first to discuss the topic of complicity across different fields, including International Criminal Law, the Alien Tort Statute, Business and Human Rights and the Public International Law of State Responsibility. In my comments, I offer five initial points contextualizing these discussions for the field of public international law writ …