International Law Commons^™

The Revolution Of The Commercial Space Industry: Why Current Laws Must Be Replaced Before American Business Expands To The Moon And Beyond, Drew M. Fryhoff

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

Space, the final frontier. Resting at the rim of the Earth, an endless void full of opportunity awaits those who are willing to take a leap of faith. Historically, only national space programs have been capable of orchestrating expeditions to outer space. However, American aerospace companies now rival governmental entities in their abilities to operate beyond the Earth’s atmosphere. State-of-the-art developments in aerospace technology have positioned the American commercial space sector to become more productive than national space programs in the years to come. Unfortunately, the potential of the American commercial space sector is severely hindered under the Treaty on …

Enforcing U.S. Foreign Policy By Imposing Unilateral Secondary Sanctions: Is Might Right In Public International Law?, Patrick C.R. Terry

Washington International Law Journal

Following the United States’ unilateral withdrawal from the agreement between the five permanent UN Security Council members, the European Union, Germany, and Iran, that intends to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the United States has re-imposed and tightened its sanctions against Iran. The United States’ renunciation of the agreement, despite the agreement’s UN Security Council approval and verified Iranian compliance, arguably violated international law. Nevertheless, the United States is attempting to compel the other state parties (and others) to follow its policy on Iran by threatening those states’ companies and business executives with economic or even criminal sanctions to …

Designing A Standard Assets Registration System To Reduce Corruption In Afghanistan: What Afghanistan Can Learn From Examining Model Assets Declaration Systems, Zalmay Mallyar

San Diego International Law Journal

Corruption in Afghanistan has emerged as one the greatest challenges to strengthening national and subnational governance and rebuilding a transparent and accountable system public services. One way that corrupt actors in Afghanistan have perpetuated corrupt practices is through hiding assets. Currently, Afghanistan has no specific mechanism or system for implementing or overseeing the declaration of assets—even though it has committed to creating an assets declaration criteria system as a means to fight corruption under Article 154 of the Afghan Constitution, Article 12 of the Anti-Corruption Strategy act, and various international treaties. This paper recommends that that Afghanistan seek to create …

Refocusing The United States’ Perspective Of China And The South China Sea, Gaaret Marinelli

San Diego International Law Journal

There is a shift in world power that can be felt by world leaders and ordinary citizens alike, and its movement will realign the rest of the world. Since its rise to a great world power after World War II, the United States has maintained its position as the world’s predominant leader, both militarily and economically. However, this dominance is threatened by a formidable challenger. A rapidly ascending China is challenging the United States’ military and economic power, but the United States is not adequately positioned to meet this challenge. Some scholars theorize that China and the United States are …

22-1, 2020 Masthead

San Diego International Law Journal

No abstract provided.

China’S Bri In Central Eastern European Countries: “17+1” Connectivity, Divisiveness, Or Pathway To Eu-China Fta?, Ronald C. Brown

San Diego International Law Journal

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) continues to embrace and connect China with European Union (EU) Member countries; the latest in 2019 with Italy, a G-7 member, also joining. EU members participating in the BRI include Poland, Greece, Italy, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Latvia, Portugal, Romania, and Slovakia. While Germany and France lead the EU in trade and investment with China, political winds may be blowing. The EU has noticed that the seventeen Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC) under the “17+1” format, a majority of which are EU members, are capturing greater amounts of Chinese trade under their BRI …

Re-Conceptualizing The International Human Right To Health: An Analysis Of The Trends In Developing And Developed Countries’ Responses To Substance Use Disorders, Leonard Mukosi

San Diego International Law Journal

This Article juxtaposes addiction paradigms seen in the United States of America and Zimbabwe, two countries with diametrically dissimilar political, economic, and social systems. Thus, an insight is provided by this Article into how developing and developed countries are transitioning from punitive to curative approaches in addressing the problem of drug addiction. Positing that addiction is a health condition, this Article recognizes the optimum realization of the addict’s right to health is best met if the required international standards of health are implemented nationally to insure, treat, and evaluate addiction like other chronic illnesses.

Drug addiction is a brain disease …

The Costs Of Squadding Up: Determining The Employment Status Of High-Profile Esports Streamers, Chandler Martin

San Diego International Law Journal

This Comment focuses on the employment relationship of esports competitors signed to high profile teams. Specifically, players who are signed to an esports clan and stream their content live. Section II provides general background about esports, focusing on its rise and structure. This section also outlines some additional, common issues facing players. Next, it looks at South Korea’s esports industry and the steps their government has taken to protect esports players. Lastly, the section concludes with a rationale on why further analysis into the employment status of content creators signed to a clan adds to the existing literature.

Section III …

Remedies For United States-Mexico Cross-Border Incidents, Sebastian A. Navarro

San Diego International Law Journal

Countries that share borders inevitably encounter issues with each other. The United States and Mexico, however, face a uniquely complicated issue: United States federal officers standing in United States territory have shot and killed individuals standing in Mexican territory, generating much tension between the United States and Mexico. Some believe that a remedy for cross-border incidents is best addressed through litigation in United States federal courts, particularly through common law causes of action that afford monetary compensation based on claims of constitutional violations. This issue was recently addressed in part by the United States Supreme Court.

Nonetheless, there are numerous …

Guns-For-Hire: Chinese Mercenaries On The 21st Century Silk Road, Carl H. Peterson Iv

Washington International Law Journal

There has been an increased global use of private military contractors (PMCs) since the large-scale American use of them in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. This has included an increase in Russian and now Chinese PMCs. As China continues to develop its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), it is likely that the world will see an increase in the number of Chinese PMCs used to protect these projects. In this event it is important to bring Chinese PMCs into the PMC industry’s most effective private regulatory bodies, as these bodies are often more effective at ensuring ethical PMC conduct …

Fish Don't Litter In Your House: Is International Law The Solution To The Plastic Pollution Problem?, Taylor G. Keselica

Pace International Law Review

This article addresses the complex issue of plastic pollution—focusing on ocean plastics. Specifically, this article examines the ocean plastics problem, critiques current binding and non-binding international environmental law surrounding ocean plastics, hazardous wastes, and pollution, and proposes a more effective solution to the ocean plastics problem. Section I provides a basic history of the creation of plastics and discusses plastics as they are used today. Section II considers the concerns surrounding ocean plastics, focusing on impacts of plastic on marine ecosystems as well as human health effects. Section III, IV, and V discuss the ongoing attempts to address the ocean …

Right To Health In Gats: Can The Public Health Exception Pave The Way For Complementarity?, Swati Gola

Pace International Law Review

This paper demonstrates how a right to health approach in the interpretation of the public health exception outlined in GATS Article XIV(b) can bring about a harmonious application of international human rights and international trade law regimes. Focusing on the interpretive value of the right to health for the public health exception in GATS, it examines whether a WTO Member, who has committed itself under GATS to fully liberalize all service sectors that have implications for health (e.g., hospital and other healthcare services), still retains the regulatory space to undertake measures to fulfill their right to health obligations and can …

An Australian Conundrum: Genomic Technology, Data, And The Covidsafe App, David Morrison, Patrick T. Quirk

Pace International Law Review

This paper examines the difficulties that have arisen in Australia in the use of its contact-tracing app. We examine the privacy implications around the use of the app, the wider economic imperative, and the balancing of those concerns against the health threat of the COVID-19 pandemic. We posit that default options are superior in times of emergency and rather than begging for the adoption of lifesaving technology, we suggest that the evidence gathered by behavioral economists provides an apposite and powerful alternative worthy of consideration.

The Rise Of Transnational Commercial Courts: The Astana International Financial Centre Court, Ilias Bantekas

Pace International Law Review

The proliferation of international commercial courts aims to boost income from legal services and serve as a catalyst for newly found rules of law and thus attract investor confidence. The latter is the underlying purpose for the creation of the Astana International Financial Centre (AIFC) and its Court. The Court’s legal framework is set out in the tradition of its competitors in the Gulf and similarly employs an impressive lineup of former senior judges from the United Kingdom. It is a unique experiment because it strives to create a balance between maintaining a judicial institution of the highest caliber while …

Compulsory Licensing Of Climate Engineering Patents: How Embracing Technology- And Research-Sharing Strategies Brings Us One Step Closer To Solving Climate Change, Buzz Hardin

Arkansas Law Review

The impact of climate change spans the globe and includes increasingly severe and dangerous climate events, including coastal flooding, extreme heat and wildfires, reduced crop yield, and decreased food security. In the United States, if the proper steps toward mitigating or reversing the effects of climate change are not taken, it is very likely that the United States will experience substantial damage to its economy, the health of its citizens, and the environment. In response to the challenges presented by climate change, the number of inventions in the field of climate engineering, or “geoengineering,” has skyrocketed over the past several …

The Impact Of Cultural Heritage On Japanese Towns And Villages, Yuichiro Tsuji Dr.

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law

In 1954, when historically significant clays and clay pots were found in the Iba district of Shizuoka prefecture, the city applied to the prefectural education committee for a historic site designation. The committee granted this designation to the city..

However, in 1973 the education committee lifted its permission to promote development around the location. Historians have sought revocation of this decision under the Administrative Case Litigation Act (ACLA), but the Supreme Court has denied standing. By denying standing, the Japanese Supreme Court allows the prefecture to destroy a historical site.

First, this paper seeks to discuss the doctrine of standing …

Who Upholds Your Human Rights When You Are “Stateless?” Why Couldn’T The Un Protect The Rohingya’S Human Rights?, Hyochan Lee

Student Theses and Dissertations

In 2017, genocide in Myanmar took place against the stateless minority Rohingya Muslims. Why couldn’t the UN protect the Rohingya’s human rights? The international community's efforts to oppose these violations against the stateless people have been only passive. Then, who upholds your human rights when you are stateless? Using chronology, historical institutionalism, and process tracing analyses, this thesis (1) evaluates the UN’s legal regime’s systemic design and capabilities in protecting human rights; then (2) identifies the design flaws of our international human rights regime; and lastly, (3) develops a recommendation to protect all people, stateless or not. Based on both …

Common Article 1 And The Duty To "Ensure Respect", Michael N. Schmitt, Sean Watts

International Law Studies

Common Article 1 to the four 1949 Geneva Conventions requires Parties to those instruments to “respect and to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances.” The provision is a corollary to the general international legal obligation of States to honor their treaty commitments, expressed classically in the maxim pacta sunt servanda.

Yet, academics and private organizations now use Common Article 1 as a vehicle to reimagine States’ enforcement obligations under the Geneva Conventions. Reinterpreting the article beyond its original meaning, they claim the article includes an “external” obligation—a duty on the part of all States to use …

Chevron Abroad, Kent Barnett, Lindsey Vinson

Notre Dame Law Review

This Article presents our comparative findings of how courts in five other countries review agency statutory interpretation. These comparisons permit us to understand and participate better in current debates about the increasingly controversial Chevron doctrine in American law, whereby courts defer to reasonable agency interpretations of statutes that an agency administers. Those debates concern, among other things, Chevron’s purported inevitability, functioning, and normative propriety. Our inquiry into judicial review in Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia provides useful and unexpected findings. Chevron, contrary to some scholars’ views, is not inevitable because only one of these countries …

Health Insurance And The Undocumented Immigrant, Anja Diercks

Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to perform a comparative analysis on how seven different countries (USA, South Africa, Germany, England, Canada, France and Singapore) organize their healthcare system to cope with the issue of undocumented immigrants and whether or not these systems in place were “fair.” The thesis will also explore the possible ways the United States could change to be more inclusive and fairer in the world of healthcare and health insurance for the undocumented immigrant. A study on what fairness means both in ethical and economical terms is done to suggest a new basis of a fair …

Justice As Message Symposium: What We See When We See Law … Through The Eyes Of Dame Laura Knight, Diane Marie Amann

Scholarly Works

The eye cannot help but be drawn to the cover of Justice as Message, the new analysis by Carsten Stahn of, to quote the subtitle, Expressivist Foundations of International Criminal Justice. On the high-gloss paper jacket we see a tableau of blacks and browns and olive drab, accented only by the purple of a lawyer’s robe and the teal of a dossier perched on the bar behind him. In front, we see that the bench is buried in paper – paper that turns to ashes as the back wall gives way to a vision of buildings in ruin …

Autonomous Cyber Weapons And Command Responsibility, Russell Buchan, Nicholas Tsagourias

International Law Studies

Autonomous cyber weapons have made their way onto the battlefield, raising the question of whether commanders can be held criminally responsible under command responsibility when war crimes are committed. The doctrine of command responsibility has a long history in international criminal law and comprises three core elements: the existence of a superior-subordinate relationship, the commander’s knowledge of the crime, and the commander’s failure to prevent or repress the subordinate’s criminal actions. This article unpacks the content of these elements and applies them to autonomous cyber weapons by treating them as being analogous to soldiers since they operate within an organized …

An Umbrella Of Autonomy: The Validity Of The Hong Kong Protests, Ciera Lehmann

Senior Honors Theses

Hong Kong has been fighting for democracy and to retain its autonomy from China, and the world has been watching. Over time, Hong Kongers have seen Beijing blatantly tighten its grip before time was up for the fifty-year agreement since the handover in 1997. In 2014, and again in 2019, hundreds of thousands of citizens filled the streets to participate in pro-democracy demonstrations with the protests only gaining momentum and influence. While there has mostly been support for Hong Kong’s independence movement, there has been argument that Beijing’s actions are completely justified. Should Hong Kong remain autonomous from China, and …

The Stellenbosch Consensus On Legal National Responses To Public Health Risks: Clarifying Article 43 Of The International Health Regulations, Roojin Habibi, Steven J. Hoffman, Gian Luca Burci, Thana Cristina De Campos, Danwood Chirwa, Margherita Cinà, Stéphanie Dagron, Mark Eccleston-Turner, Lisa Forman, Lawrence O. Gostin, Benjamin Mason Meier, Stefania Negri, Gorik Ooms, Sharifah Sekalala, Allyn Taylor, Alicia Ely Yamin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The International Health Regulations (IHR), of which the World Health Organization is custodian, govern how countries collectively promote global health security, including prevention, detection, and response to global health emergencies such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Countries are permitted to exercise their sovereignty in taking additional health measures to respond to such emergencies if these measures adhere to Article 43 of this legally binding instrument. Overbroad measures taken during recent public health emergencies of international concern, however, reveal that the provision remains inadequately understood. A shared understanding of the measures legally permitted by Article 43 is a necessary step in …

The Human Dimension Of Peace And Aggression, Chiara Redaelli

International Law Studies

Since the adoption of the Charter of the United Nations, the current international legal framework has drastically changed. In its traditional understanding, aggression is “the supreme international crime” aimed at protecting sovereignty and the territorial integrity of states. On the other hand, the U.N. Charter endorses an understanding of peace in the negative sense, that is, as mere absence of war. As human rights have gained momentum, they have helped reshape the legal landscape, a phenomenon referred to as the humanization of international law. How do peace and aggression fit within the humanized legal framework? This article will investigate the …

The Stellenbosch Consensus On The International Legal Obligation To Collaborate And Assist In Addressing Pandemics: Clarifying Article 44 Of The International Health Regulations, Margherita Cinà, Steven J. Hoffman, Gian Luca Burci, Thana Cristina De Campos, Danwood Chirwa, Stéphanie Dagron, Mark Eccleston-Turner, Lisa Forman, Lawrence O. Gostin, Roojin Habibi, Benjamin Mason Meier, Stefania Negri, Gorik Ooms, Sharifah Sekalala, Allyn Taylor, Alicia Ely Yamin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The International Health Regulations (IHR), of which the World Health Organization is custodian, govern how countries collectively promote global health security, including prevention, detection, and response to potential global health emergencies such as the ongoing covid-19 pandemic. While Article 44 of this binding legal instrument requires countries to collaborate and assist each other in meeting their respective obligations, recent events demonstrate that the precise nature and scope of these legal obligations are ill-understood. A shared understanding of the level and type of collaboration legally required by the IHR is a necessary step in ensuring these obligations can be acted upon …

Construction Of A Dispute-Resolution Framework Under The International Judicial System For The Settlement Of The Inter-Korean Conflict Over The Northern Limit Line: Operating The Advisory Proceedings Of The International Court Of Justice, Hyun Jin Kim

Maurer Theses and Dissertations

To construct a dispute-resolution framework for the inter-Korean conflict over the Northern Limit Line (“NLL Conflict”) under the international judicial system, this dissertation proposes an advisory proceeding of the International Court of Justice (“ICJ”) as the most promising alternative. It has proven difficult to draw a negotiated solution to this decades-long conflict, despite each of the respective State parties involved in the NLL Conflict presenting various arguments and claims about the valid legal status of the NLL. In this context, this dissertation examines the ICJ’s contribution to the resolution of international disputes, particularly controversy over the question of laws, through …

U.S. War Crimes And Accountability With The International Criminal Court: A Critique, Johanna M. Leffler

Senior Honors Projects

JOHANNA LEFFLER (International Studies, French)

U.S. War Crimes and Accountability with the International Criminal Court: A Critique

Sponsor: Kristin Johnson (Political Science)

Throughout my undergraduate career I have studied a variety of subjects within international affairs. The fall of my 2019-2020 year while studying abroad at The Institute for Political Studies of Rennes, France, was where I studied a particularly thought-provoking subject, Mondialisation et Droit de l’Homme (Globalization and Human Rights). We studied the evolution of international law, the justice institutions which uphold it, and how modern globalization impacts human rights. The subject matter and discussion with my international classmates …

Global Apathy And The Need For A New, Cooperative International Refugee Response, Emily Gleichert

Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy

While an increasing number of nations move toward isolationist, nationalist policies, the number of refugees worldwide is climbing to its highest levels since World War II. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is the international body tasked with protecting this population. However, the office’s traditional solutions for refugees – local integration, resettlement in a third country, and voluntary repatriation – have mostly eluded refugees who spend an average of twenty years in exile. The limitations UNHCR’s structure imposes on the office, specifically in its ability to fund its operations and compel nations to act, have contributed to its …

Pogg And Treaties: The Role Of International Agreements In National Concern Analysis, Gib Van Ert

Dalhousie Law Journal

Canada’s international treaty obligations have featured prominently in Privy Council and Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence on Parliament’s power to make laws for the peace, order and good government of Canada (POGG). How treaties ought properly to be used in determining Parliament’s POGG jurisdiction is a constitutionally fraught question. The federal executive cannot be permitted to extend Parliament’s legislative jurisdiction by making promises to foreign states. Yet the existence of treaty obligations is undoubtedly relevant to the question of whether a given subject has become a matter of national concern. In the upcoming Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act references, the …