Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The International Legal Order And The Rule Of Law, Vivian Grosswald Curran

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This article addresses whether international law today is capable of instituting the rule of law. It offers a renewed look at the internationalists who brought us modern international law, such as Lauterpacht, Cassin and Lemkin. They tenaciously worked at placing the individual’s right to life and to human dignity front and center in international law while also preserving peace among states. Their struggle began in earnest first in the interwar years after the “war to end all wars” (1918 – 1939), and then again in 1945 after yet another, still worse, world war had occurred, devastating Europe, but leaving the …

Doctrinal Reasoning As A Disruptive Practice, Jessie Allen

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Legal doctrine is generally thought to contribute to legal decision making only to the extent it determines substantive results. Yet in many cases, the available authorities are indeterminate. I propose a different model for how doctrinal reasoning might contribute to judicial decisions. Drawing on performance theory and psychological studies of readers, I argue that judges’ engagement with formal legal doctrine might have self-disrupting effects like those performers experience when they adopt uncharacteristic behaviors. Such disruptive effects would not explain how judges ultimately select, or should select, legal results. But they might help legal decision makers to set aside subjective biases.

The Persuasive Authority Of Internationalized Criminal Tribunals, Elena Baylis

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After a period in which it seemed as though hybrid criminal tribunals were waning, proposals for such tribunals are proliferating again. The recent success of the Extraordinary African Chambers in trying Hisséne Habré highlights the resurgent trend toward ad hoc internationalized courts and chambers to try cases of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The international community could make strategic choices in designing this new generation of tribunals to maximize their effectiveness. One way that international courts spread their influence is through their persuasive authority. Even if their decisions are not binding on the concerned national courts, by persuading …

What Internationals Know: Improving The Effectiveness Of Post-Conflict Justice Initiatives, Elena Baylis

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The field of post-conflict or transitional justice has developed rapidly over the last thirty years. The United States, the United Nations, and many other international organizations, governments, and institutions have contributed to hundreds of international criminal trials and rule of law programs. International staff, known as “internationals,” travel among post-conflict states and international criminal tribunals to carry out these initiatives. In addition to being a field of work, post-conflict justice also constitutes an emergent body of legal knowledge, composed of substantive standards, rules of procedure, best practices, and other elements. Just as the programs and institutions of post-conflict justice have …

Function And Dysfunction In Post-Conflict Justice Networks And Communities, Elena Baylis

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The field of post-conflict justice includes many well-known international criminal law and rule of law initiatives, from the International Criminal Court to legal reform programs in Afghanistan and Iraq. Less visible, but nonetheless vital to the field, are the international staff (known as internationals) who carry out these transitional justice enterprises, and the networks and communities of practice that connect them to each other. By sharing information, collaborating on joint action, and debating proposed legal rules within their networks and communities, internationals help to develop and implement the core norms and practices of post-conflict justice. These modes of collaboration are …

The Persistence Of Proximate Cause: How Legal Doctrine Thrives On Skepticism, Jessie Allen

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This Article starts with a puzzle: Why is the doctrinal approach to “proximate cause” so resilient despite longstanding criticism? Proximate cause is a particularly extreme example of doctrine that limps along despite near universal consensus that it cannot actually determine legal outcomes. Why doesn’t that widely recognized indeterminacy disable proximate cause as a decision-making device? To address this puzzle, I pick up a cue from the legal realists, a group of skeptical lawyers, law professors, and judges, who, in the 1920s and 1930s, compared legal doctrine to ritual magic. I take that comparison seriously, perhaps more seriously, and definitely in …

Tribunal-Hopping With The Post-Conflict Justice Junkies, Elena Baylis

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The field of post-conflict justice is characterized in no small part by international interventions into post-conflict settings. International interveners invest substantial resources toward the goals of post-conflict justice, including creating legal accountability for atrocities and rebuilding local and national justice systems that respect human rights and rule of law. The aims of post-conflict justice and the mechanisms by which the international community can contribute to post-conflict legal institutions and processes have been and continue to be studied intensively.

But while the institutions, processes, and goals of post-conflict justice have been carefully scrutinized, another aspect of international interventions into post-conflict justice …

Parallel Courts In Post-Conflict Kosovo, Elena Baylis

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Even as American attention is focused on Iraq's struggle to rebuild its political and legal systems in the face of violent sectarian divisions, another fractured society - Kosovo - has begun negotiations to resolve the question of its political independence. Kosovo's efforts to establish multi-ethnic rule of law in the context of persistent ethnic divisions offer lessons in transitional justice and in managing legal pluralism for Iraq and other states.

In Kosovo today, two parallel judicial systems each claim sole jurisdiction over the province. One system was established by the United Nations administration in Kosovo, while the other system is …

The Rule Of Law: China's Skepticism And The Rule Of People, Pat K. Chew

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The West believes that without formal legal rules (the rule of law), how society operates is not transparent. This opaqueness in how things get done discourages trade, including foreign investment, which in turn makes overall economic development more difficult. Instead of predictable legal rules, the fear is that the void will be filled with unpredictable and arbitrary human indiscretions. Furthermore, the West believes that the absence of the rule of law makes the basic protection of human and civil rights problematic.

However, the Western view of the rule of law is not the only model. Alternative cultural assumptions about the …

Direct Effect Of International Economic Law In The United States And The European Union, Ronald A. Brand

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One of the most important and challenging issues in international law is the manner in which we address the relationship between the individual and the international legal system. The traditional framework, in which we set a "sovereign" government between the individual and the development and application of the rules, is no longer sufficient in all circumstances. The fact that governments feel insecure or threatened by the application of international legal rules in actions brought by individuals is not sufficient reason to preclude that development. The purpose of government is not to perpetuate traditional power structures, it is to provide security …

External Sovereignty And International Law, Ronald A. Brand

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This essay addresses the need to redefine current notions of sovereignty. It returns to earlier concepts of subjects joining to receive the benefits of peace and security provided by the sovereign. It diverges from most contemporary commentary by avoiding what has become traditional second-tier social contract analysis. In place of a social contract of states, this redefinition of sovereignty recognizes that international law in the twentieth century has developed direct links between the individual and international law. The trend toward democracy as an international law norm further supports discarding notions of a two-tiered social contract relationship between the individual and …