International Law Commons^™

Enforcing International Human Rights Law Against Corporations, Barnali Choudhury

All Papers

International human rights law is generally thought to apply directly to states, not to corporations since the latter is not a subject of international law. Some domestic courts are, however, enforcing these norms against corporations in domestic settings. Canadian courts have, for instance, recognized that corporations can be liable for breach of customary international law norms while UK courts have enforced international human rights norms indirectly against corporations relying on a combination of domestic corporate and tort law.

At the same time, some states are choosing to enforce international human rights norms against corporations using regulatory initiatives. These initiatives, known …

Victim Protection And The Dynamic Situation Of Human Trafficking: Indonesia Experience, Nathalina Naibaho

Indonesian Journal of International Law

Human trafficking is a global issue. It can arise in the context of national and/or transnational acts and are regulated by national and transnational criminal law mechanisms. However, in trafficking in person cases there are links between human trafficking and other related crimes such as drugs trafficking. Meanwhile, Indonesia has enacted laws which provide mandatory protection for victims of human trafficking. It also has mandatory drug laws which, in some cases, subject to the death penalty. This legislative conflict together with investigative and prosecutorial failure risks the conviction of human trafficked victims who are used as drug dealers in organized …

Poland's Rule Of Law Snowball: The Increasing Severity Of The Rift Between Poland And The European Union, Ronan A. Nelson

San Diego International Law Journal

This Comment will analyze one of the most recent bouts between the EC and Poland in their ongoing struggle over the image of European democracy, rule of law, and national sovereignty: the European Court of Justice’s June 2021 decision in Commission v. Poland. The EU’s conceptions of western democracy and rule of law, including strict adherence to the impartiality of a judicial branch, created the EC’s legal theory for taking a stand against Poland’s autocratic government. However, Poland’s ultimate sovereignty, brought to heightened attention thanks to its far-right leadership, stands in stark opposition to the perceived overreach of the …

Prioritizing Regional Wildlife Conservation By Rejuvenating The Western Hemisphere Convention On Nature Protection, Shade Streeter, David Hunter, William Snape Iii

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

Last year, parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (“CBD”), representing nearly every nation, signed a milestone agreement committing, among other things, to conserve thirty percent of Earth’s lands and oceans to stave off the rapid diminution of the planet’s biodiversity. Implementing these global commitments will require not only strong domestic measures, but also enhanced regional cooperation targeting the conservation of the region’s migratory wildlife and shared resources. Although the United States is the sole major holdout from the CBD, it can still reassert its leadership in regional wildlife conservation by rejuvenating the Convention on Nature Protection and Wildlife Preservation …

Unclos, Undrip & Tartupaluk: The Grim Tale Of Hans Isle And Graense, Christopher Mark Macneill

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

“Inuit have lived in the Arctic from time immemorial.” The Arctic, in the face of climate change, has become a hot spot for exploration, resource extraction, and increased shipping and scientific activity. “[The] Inuit . . . have had a common and shared use of the sea area and the adjacent coasts” among their own communities, and contemporaneously with the world. This vast circumpolar Inuit Arctic region includes land, sea, and ice stretching from eastern Russia (Chukotka region) across the Berring Strait, to Alaska, the Canadian Arctic, and Greenland, representing an Inuit homeland known as Nunaat. Hans Isle, a small …

The Great Climate Migration: A Critique Of Global Legal Standards Of Climate-Change Caused Harm, Mariah Stephens

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

Approximately 2.4 billion people, or about forty percent of the global population, live within sixty miles (one hundred kilometers) of a coastline. The United Nations (“U.N.”) determined that “a sea level rise of half a meter could displace 1.2 million people from low-lying islands in the Caribbean Sea and the Indian and Pacific Oceans, with that number almost doubling if the sea level rises by two metres.” The U.N. also reports that “sudden weather-related hazards” have internally displaced an annual average of 21.5 million people since 2008. Within the next few decades, this number is likely to continue to increase. …

The Future Of Crypto-Asset Mining: The Inflation Reduction Act And The Need For Uniform Federal Regulation, Liz Guinan

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

Crypto-asset mining is energy-intensive and environmentally harmful, presenting challenges and opportunities for federal, state and local governments, regulators, and society as a whole. As of December 2021, the United States has thirty-eight percent of the global crypto network hash rate, which is the total amount of computational power used to mine and process crypto transactions, making the United States the world’s largest crypto-asset mining industry. The total electricity consumption of crypto-asset mining in the United States is estimated to be around 121.36 terawatt-hours (“TWh”) per year, which is equivalent to the electricity consumption of approximately 10.9 million households in the …

Editors' Note, Rachel Keylon, Meghen Sullivan

Sustainable Development Law & Policy

For more than two decades, the Sustainable Development Law and Policy Brief (“SDLP”) has published works analyzing emerging legal and policy issues within the fields of environmental, energy, sustainable development, and natural resources law. SDLP has also prioritized making space for law students in the conversation. We are honored to continue this tradition in Volume XXIII.

The Dark Matter Of Federal Indian Law: The Duty Of Protection, Matthew L.M. Fletcher

Maine Law Review

The United States and every federally recognized tribal nation originally entered into a sovereign-to-sovereign relationship highlighted by the duty of protection, an international customary law doctrine in which a larger, stronger sovereign, America in this case, agrees to “protect” the small, weaker sovereign, in this case, tribal nations. America agreed to this in exchange for massive, occasionally unquantifiable amounts of land and resources, as well as the power to control the external sovereign relations of the protected sovereign. The smaller sovereigns received protected reservation lands, hunting and fishing rights, small cash infusions, and the vague promise of protection. What tribal …

Are The Imposed Principles Standard? A Review Of Imposing Standards: The North-South Dimension To Global Tax Politics By Martin Hearson, Opeyemi Bello

Dalhousie Law Journal

The publication of Martin Hearson’s book, Imposing Standards: The North-South Dimension to Global Tax Politics, coincided with heated international discussions of the most substantial policy proposals in the field of international taxation in the last century.1 Hearson’s work provides insights on how the developed countries exerted control over the negotiations of the double taxation agreement (DTA) regime, which is the basis of the current international taxation framework. It explains how the negotiations resulted in a framework that works well for the developed countries, but does not substantially address the tax revenue needs of the developing countries. The publication of the …

Book Review: Derviš M. Korkut: A Biography—Rescuer Of The Sarajevo Haggadah, Ehlimana Memišević

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

At the beginning of 2020, the Sarajevo-based publishing house El-Kalem, released a biography of Derviš M. Korkut, a Bosniak hero, to whom Yad Vashem posthumously awarded Righteous among the Nations on December 14, 1994.

Winston Churchill's words, with which the author begins the biography—that the Balkans produce more history than they can handle—best describe the difficult times in which Korkut lived. For Korkut and his fellow Bosnians, these difficult times lasted from the beginning of the 20th century to its very end.

The book is based on exhaustive archival research and reconstructs Korkut’s life very precisely, while the concise overview …

Neutralizing Secularism: Religious Antiliberalism And The Twentieth-Century Global Ecumenical Project, Rabiat Akande

Articles & Book Chapters

A marked feature of the contemporary U.S. constitutional landscape is the campaign by an Evangelical- Catholic coalition against the idea of secularism, understood by this alliance to mean the exclusion of religion from the state and its progressive marginalization from social life. Departing from the tendency to treat this project as a national phenomenon, this article places it within a longer global genealogy of an earlier international Christian ecumenical effort to combat secularism. The triumph of that campaign culminated in the making of Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, now considered the paradigmatic international legal provision on …

Fostering Resilience Within Ecological Civilization: Contributions Of Environmental Law, Nicholas A. Robinson

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

My presentation will examine water, to illustrate the questions that Ecological Civilization presents. I shall address five points: (1) Often proposals for attaining Ecological Civilization raise issues relevant to environmental law, but do not examine the roles that environmental law can serve; (2) environmental law is essential to resolving unsustainable water management issues; (3) scientific studies indicate that trends in global environmental degradation limit the time available for implementing reforms to attain Ecological Civilization; (4) environmental legal systems for environmental impact assessment (EIA) can accelerate efforts to attain Ecological Civilization; and (5) For Ecological Civilization to ensure a firm foundation …

Masthead

UC Law SF International Law Review

No abstract provided.

From The Editor-In-Chief, Monica Ratajczak

UC Law SF International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sovereign Debt Denunciation A Nd Unilateral Insolvency Under International Law: When Is It Lawful?, Ilias Bantekas

UC Law SF International Law Review

Central to our understanding of sovereignty should be the competence of states to determine how their debts are restructured or denounced when the debts considered are odious or illegal. Sovereignty, in this sense, is tantamount to self-determination and the corresponding obligations of states that are absent on the part of creditors when entering into a debt agreement or restructuring process. States owe duties under international law to their own people. Hence, the sanctity of international agreements, whether treaties or contracts, entered by states cannot override these compelling and humancentered state obligations. Otherwise, such agreements would be valued more than human …

Extraterritorial Application Of Antitrust Law, International Comity, And Scope Of Remedies: Considering The Nature Of The Product And Service In Addition To The Effect In The Relevant Market, Annie Soo Yeon Ahn

UC Law SF International Law Review

This Article proposes that the nature of the product and service, including the importance to the country’s industry and consumers and the level of government regulation, should be closely considered for analyzing international comity and deciding the scope of remedies in antitrust cases. These factors should be considered in addition to the effect in the relevant market when determining whether there is an extraterritorial application of antitrust law under the Foreign Trade Antitrust Improvements Act. Specifically, the nature of the product and service, including the importance to the country’s industry and consumers and the level of government regulation, should be …

Combatting The Uyghur Genocide Via The Wto’S Public Morals Exception, Connor Stanford Moldo

UC Law SF International Law Review

No abstract provided.

Carajás Corridor In Brazil: Could An Sea Have Reconciled Shared-Use Infrastructure And Environmental Protection?, Perrine Toledano, Martin Dietrich Brauch

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment

The 998km Carajás railway corridor connects the world’s largest iron ore mine, operated by private mining company Vale S.A. (Vale) in Brazil’s northern state of Pará (PA), to the company’s maritime terminal in São Luís, the capital of the northeastern state of Maranhão (MA). Carajás is one of the few integrated railway corridors financed by a mining company that, apart from transporting the iron ore that made the infrastructure investments viable, also transports general cargo and operates passenger services along the corridor. This corridor was born from the Brazilian government’s plans in the mid1950s that foresaw the iron ore reserves …

Masthead & Table Of Contents

Dalhousie Law Journal

No abstract provided.