International Law Commons^™

Genocide Denial And The Law: A Critical Appraisal, Paul Behrens

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

Genocide denial carries particular relevance for international law: it is the negation of international crimes, and it can prepare the ground for new crimes of this kind. But its criminalization raises concerns as well. The danger of a clash with human rights, particularly with the freedom of ex- pression, cannot be dismissed lightly. This article explores reasons for and repercussions of the criminalization of denial. It also investigates alterna- tives, including the use of truth and reconciliation, and evaluates methods that focus on direct confrontation of the deniers.

The Responsibility To Protect And Land-Locked States' Access To The Sea: An Analogy, Halil Rahman Basaran

Buffalo Human Rights Law Review

No abstract provided.

Ripe For Refinement: The State’S Role In Interpretation Of Fet, Mfn, And Shareholder Rights, Lise Johnson

Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment Staff Publications

Over recent years, many states have taken steps to refine and modernize their investment treaties. These reforms, however, are typically only included in newer treaties or model agreements. States continue to be exposed to claims, litigation, and potential damages under older “old-style” agreements. These risks are particularly acute given that tribunals have often permitted investors to “treaty shop” to obtain more favorable protections, and have also permitted investors to use the most-favored nation (MFN) provision to “import” more investor-friendly (or at least less clear) provisions from other treaties.

This working paper discusses one strategy states can use to try to …

The Age Of ‘Depoliticisation’ And ‘Dejuridification’ And Its ‘Logic Of Assembling’: An Essay Against The Instrumentalist Use Of Comparative Law’S Geopolitics, Luca Siliquini-Cinelli

Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Review

While comparative law has become a key discipline, its instrumentalist use has turned out to be a powerful weapon: it is the ‘pen’ by which the identity of and differences in law’s geopolitics are continually written and rewritten. Given its attractive functionalist essence, comparative law is gaining increasing international credit as a way of developing newer theories of sovereignty and governance in a framework in which law is conceived of less as a set of rules and more as a symbolic vestimentum of global soft power. The present contribution critically investigates the relationship between distortive views of comparative law’s geopolitics …

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

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Unpunished Insults -- The Looming Cyber Barbary Wars, Matteo G. Martemucci Col.

Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law

No abstract provided.

Kiobel, Bauman, And The Presumption Against The Extraterritorial Application Of The Alien Tort Statute, Ross J. Corbett

Northwestern Journal of Human Rights

No abstract provided.

A Call For The Eu To Assume Jurisdiction Over Extraterritorial Corporate Human Rights Abuses, Jodie A. Kirshner

Northwestern Journal of Human Rights

No abstract provided.

Speech-Conditioned Funding And The First Amendment: New Standard, Old Doctrine, Little Impact, Heather Blakeman

Northwestern Journal of Human Rights

No abstract provided.

International Humanitarian Law And North Korea: Another Angle For Accountability, Morse Tan

Marquette Law Review

Throughout the last twenty years, the international focus on North Korea has predominantly been on its security issues while there is a paucity of scholarship exploring the legal implications of North Korea’s grave human rights violations. This Article attempts to bridge this void through international humanitarian law, which applies to North Korea’s continued hostilities and defiance on the Korean peninsula and around the world.

This Article further analyzes international law in relation to North Korea’s repeated irresponsible military provocations against South Korea, the United States, and the world. It looks at such actions through an international humanitarian law lens, which …

Optimizing Reservoir Operations To Adapt To 21st Century Expectations Of Climate And Social Change In The Willamette River Basin, Oregon, Kathleen M. Moore

Publications

Reservoir systems in the western US are managed to serve two main competing purposes: to reduce flooding during the winter and spring, and to provide water supply for multiple uses during the summer. Because the storage capacity of a reservoir cannot be used for both flood damage reduction and water storage at the same time, these two uses are traded off as the reservoir fills during the transition from the wet to the dry season. Climate change, population growth, and development in the western US may exacerbate dry season water scarcity and increase winter flood risk, creating a need to …

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

Michigan Journal of International Law

The ICC is well known in international legal circles. Indeed, everyone who knows anything about international law knows that the ICC is the acronym for the International Criminal Court, the body charged with prosecuting international crimes around the globe. Created in 2002, the ICC was intended to “put an end to impunity” for the perpetrators of international crimes” and to affirm “that the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole must not go unpunished.”1 Imagine, however, a world where the “ICC” instead was an acronym for the International Compensation Court. That is, what if the …

Inciting Genocide With Words, Richard A. Wilson

Michigan Journal of International Law

During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, observers emphasized the role of media propaganda in inciting Rwandan Hutus to attack the Tutsi minority group, with one claiming that the primary tools of genocide were “the radio and the machete.” As a steady stream of commentators referred to “radio genocide” and “death by radio” and “the soundtrack to genocide,” a widespread consensus emerged that key responsibility for the genocide lay with the Rwandan media. Mathias Ruzindana, prosecution expert witness at the ICTR, supports this notion, writing, “In the case of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the effect of language was lethal . …

Law Of War Developments Issue Introduction, David Glazier

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Boundless War: Challenging The Notion Of A Global Armed Conflict Against Al-Qaeda And Its Affiliates, Andrew Beshai

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

The U.S. military response to the 9/11 attacks has expanded into a “global war” without a definite geographic scope. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have executed attacks in several countries including Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen under the “global war” paradigm. This Article challenges the concept of a global armed conflict, instead favoring the “epicenter-of-hostilities” framework for determining the legality of military action against Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and other terrorist groups. This approach, rooted in established international law, measures the existence of specific criteria in each nation where hostile forces are present to determine if an armed conflict in …

The Legal Status Of Employees Of Private Military/Security Companies Participating In U.N. Peacekeeping Operations, Mohamad Ghazi Janaby

Northwestern Journal of Human Rights

No abstract provided.

Nexus Redux, Anjum Gupta

Indiana Law Journal

Pursuant to its obligations under international law, the U.S. government has agreed to provide protection to individuals who fear persecution in their home countries for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. This protection in the United States takes the form of asylum, and the asylum statute states that the United States will protect individuals from persecution that occurred or will occur “on account of” one of those grounds. The Supreme Court has stated that in order to meet the “on account of” or “nexus” requirement, an asylum applicant must provide some evidence, …

Self-Determination And Secession Under International Law: The New Framework, Milena Sterio

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

This Article argues toward the necessity to develop a new international law framework on secession. The development of such a normative framework is necessary in order to address various secessionist situations around the globe and to replace the resolution of secessionist struggles through politics of the Great Powers with true legal norms.

This Article first analyzes several examples of successful and failed secessions in recent history. Next it focuses on existing international law on the subject matter of secession and concludes that existing norms are insufficient and indefinite. Finally, it develops a new proposed framework on secession, which attempts to …

Big Fish, Small Ponds: International Crimes In National Courts, Elizabeth B. Ludwin King

Indiana Law Journal

The principle of complementarity in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court anticipates that perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity will be tried in domestic courts unless there is no state with jurisdiction willing or able to do so. This Article examines the situation where a state might be willing to engage in meaningful local justice but temporarily lacks the capability to do so due to the effects of the conflict. It argues that where the state submits a detailed proposal to the International Criminal Court (ICC) outlining the steps necessary to gain or regain the …

Autonomous Weapons And Accountability: Seeking Solutions In The Law Of War, Kelly Cass

Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review

Autonomous weapons are increasingly used by militaries around the world. Unlike conventional unmanned weapons such as drones, autonomous weapons involve a machine deciding whether to deploy lethal force. Yet, because a machine cannot have the requisite mental state to commit a war crime, the legal scrutiny falls onto the decision to deploy an autonomous weapon. This Article focuses on the dual questions arising from that decision: how to regulate autonomous weapon use and who should be held criminally liable for an autonomous weapon’s actions. Regarding the first issue, this Article concludes that regulations expressly limiting autonomous weapon use to non-human …