International Law Commons^™

"There Is A World Elsewhere": Preliminary Studies On Alternatives To Interest-Based Bargaining, F. Peter Phillips

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

We live in an Age of Reason, which our predecessors were pleased to call an Age of Enlightenment. The laws of physics and molecular chemistry, not the appearance of angels to shepherds, define our social expectations. In economics and in politics, we accept the guidance of a collective rationale, an Invisible Hand that, if it doesn't predict, nevertheless records the aggregate of decisions made by millions of social actors, each expressing not the general welfare but their individual self-interest.

Arbitrating Cultural Property Disputes, Elizabeth Varner

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

Years drag by, vicious allegations fly across the world stage, parties die frustrated. While cultural property disputes are frequently arbitrated internationally, arbitration is not often used in domestic cultural property disputes. One of the paradoxes of cultural property disputes is the need to resolve the issue while not harming the parties' reputation or devaluing the cultural property. While scholars have shown much interest in arbitrating cultural property disputes in the United States, maximizing the potential of arbitration in cultural property disputes has largely been ignored.

Rejecting the acceptability of litigating cultural property disputes in the battlefield of the courtroom, this …

Applying Privilege In International Arbitration: The Case For A Uniform Rule, Rachel Reiser

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

This Note will answer that question by exploring the available means of resolving privilege disputes, with special attention to challenges of attorney-client privilege, and analyzing their practicability and value. Part I will discuss the background of privilege in international arbitration by addressing arbitral discretion, choice of procedural and substantive law, and the multitude of issues surrounding the recognition of privilege. Part II will identify the principles of party expectation and equality and discuss their importance in resolving the privilege problem. It will also set out the competing viewpoints on the practicality of a transnational standard. Finally, Part III will investigate …

From The Periphery To The Centre: China's Participation In Wto Negotiations, Henry S. Gao

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In November 2001, China finally acceded to the World Trade Organization after a marathon accession negotiation that lasted 15 years. As China's accession coincided with the launch of the Doha Round, many commentators predicted that China's participation in the trade negotiations would have significant impacts on the Round. However, this has not proven to be the case. What have been the approaches taken by China in global trade negotiations? Why did China adopt these approaches? How did China's different negotiating approaches affect the dynamics of trade negotiations? These are the questions addressed in this article. The paper argues that China …

Evaluating The Palestinians’ Claimed Right Of Return, Andrew Kent

Faculty Scholarship

This Article takes on a question at the heart of the longstanding Israeli-Palestinian dispute: did Israel violate international law during the conflict of 1947-49 either by expelling Palestinian civilians or by subsequently refusing to repatriate Palestinian refugees? Palestinians have claimed that Israel engaged in illegal ethnic cleansing, and that international law provides a "right of return" for the refugees displaced during what they call al-Nakbah (the catastrophe). Israel has disagreed, blaming Arab aggression and unilateral decisions by Arab inhabitants for the refugees' flight, and asserting that international law provides no right of the refugees to return to Israel. Each side …

Preventing Mass Atrocity Crimes: The Responsibility To Protect And The Syria Crisis, Paul Williams, J. Trevor Ulbrick, Jonathan Worboys

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is a complicated and "emerging norm"' of international law that seeks to provide a means for the international community to prevent mass atrocity crimes occurring within the boundaries of a sovereign state.' Since its emergence in 2001, in the wake of humanitarian tragedies in Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, and Darfur, R2P has been hailed as a way of resolving what one commentator called the "problem from hell."3 Under R2P, however, the use of force is reserved for actions within the UN Charter's Chapter VII framework. As the Syria crisis has demonstrated, this position continues to hinder …

Omar Khadr: Domestic And International Litigation Strategies For A Child In Armed Conflict Held At Guantanamo, Richard J. Wilson

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

This essay explores the intersections and tensions between international human rights law and international humanitarian law as those two doctrinal areas played out in the concrete situation of Omar Khadr, a Canadian child detainee at Guantanamo Bay. Particular focus is given to how issues regarding his youth were addressed by the many tribunals involved: in the multiple venues of courts in the United States and Canada, and in international human rights bodies. The issues on Omar’s youth span many contexts, raising judicial questions regarding the legality of his detention, his treatment and separation from adults while detained, jurisdiction to prosecute …

International Investments Arbitration: Winning, Losing And Why, Susan D. Franck

Contributions to Books

In late 2008, as financial markets were crashing, the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment launched the Columbia FDI Perspectives. The first Perspective, entitled “The FDI recession has begun,” correctly forecast an FDI recession in the following year. From that first Perspective in late 2008 to the end of 2010, the series published thirty-three concise notes on topical FDI-related issues by diverse experts in the field. The purpose of these Perspectives is to inform readers about some of the important issues and trends in the contemporary debate on FDI, and to promote a wide-ranging discussion about the policy implications …

U.S. Foreign Policy And The Arab Spring: Ten Short-Term Lessons Learned, Paul Williams, Colleen Popken

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Different Names For The Same Thing: Domestic Homicides And Dowry Deaths In The Western Media, Jennifer Parker

University of Colorado Law Review

Domestic violence is a global phenomenon that knows no geographic or cultural bounds. Whether they are shot, poisoned, stabbed, or burned, women across the world are dying at the hands of their male partners. Nevertheless, the Western media's portrayal of dowry deaths in India illustrates American society's failure to, or refusal to, connect dowry deaths to the parallel domestic homicides committed in the United States every day. From a postcolonial feminist standpoint, this Note argues that this disjunction is neither accidental nor inconsequential but rather reinforces the United States' hegemonic self-perception as a society in which women's liberation has been …

The Law Of Nations As Constitutional Law, Anthony J. Bellia Jr., Bradford R. Clark

Journal Articles

Courts and scholars continue to debate the status of customary international law in U.S. courts, but have paid insufficient attention to the role that such law plays in interpreting and upholding several specific provisions of the Constitution. The modern position argues that courts should treat customary international law as federal common law. The revisionist position contends that customary international law applies only to the extent that positive federal or state law has adopted it. Neither approach adequately takes account of the Constitution’s allocation of powers to the federal political branches in Articles I and II or the effect of these …

Like Moths To A Flame - International Securities Litigation After Morrison: Correcting The Supreme Court's Transactional Test, Marco Ventoruzzo

Faculty Scholarship

Because of the broad jurisdiction American courts have asserted in cases arising under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, they have been called a Shangri-la for “foreign-cubed” class actions with little connection to the United States. Over the past forty years, the standards used by American courts to determine their jurisdiction in international securities disputes have evolved, culminating in the U.S. Supreme Court’s Morrison decision of 2010. The new transactional test promulgated in Morrison replaced all of its predecessor tests, from a test measuring whether the conduct in question took place in the United States to a test measuring whether …

Introduction, Justin Hughes

Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Constitutional Transformation In The Ecthr: Strasbourg’S Expansive Recourse To External Rules Of International Law, Julian Arato

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Brown Abroad: An Empirical Analysis Of Foreign Judicial Citation And The Metaphor Of Cosmopolitan Conversation, Sheldon B. Lyke

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

This Article generates a data set (twelve courts and thirty-two decisions) of foreign judicial citations to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The purpose of this Article is to learn what happens when a case is deterritorialized and reconstituted in a different national scenario, and to conceptualize how courts around the world use foreign authority. My analysis reveals that few foreign courts used Brown in decisions involving education or race and ethnicity. Foreign courts used the case as a form of factual evidence, as a guide in understanding the proper role of a court …

The Role Of International Law In Intrastate Natural Resource Allocation, Lillian A. Miranda

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

State natural resource development projects have become sites of intense political, social, and cultural contestation among a diversity of actors. In particular, such projects often lead to detrimental consequences for the empowerment, livelihood, and cultural and economic development of historically marginalized communities. This Article fills a gap in the existing literature by identifying and analyzing emerging international law approaches that impact the intrastate allocation of land and natural resources to historically marginalized communities, and thereby, carve away at states' top-down decision-making authority over development. It argues that while international law may have only been originally concerned with the allocation of …

Reflections From The International Criminal Court Prosecutor, Fatou B. Bensouda

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Today I would like to introduce the idea of a new paradigm in international relations, which was introduced by the work of the drafters of the Rome Statute and the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC): this idea is that of law as a global tool to contribute to the world's peace and security. This idea first surfaced with the belief that the power of law has the capacity to redress the balance between the criminals who wield power and the victims who suffer at their hands. Law provides power for all regardless of their social, economic, or political …

Arbitration Of Trust Disputes: Two Bodies Of Law Collide, S. I. Strong

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Once considered nothing more than "mere" estate-planning devices, trusts play a large and growing role in the international economy, holding trillions of dollars of assets and generating billions of dollars of income each year. However, the rising popularity of both commercial and noncommercial trusts has led to an explosion in hostile trust litigation, leading settlors and trustees to search for new and less expensive ways to resolve trust-related disputes.

One possible solution involves use of a mandatory arbitration provision in the trust itself. However, the unique, multiparty nature of trust disputes often makes this sort of arbitration highly controversial.

This …

Dynamics Of Healthcare Reform: Bitter Pills Old And New, Christopher N.J. Roberts

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The United States is at a crossroads--albeit one it has visited several times before. Although the Supreme Court has ruled upon the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the polarizing controversy surrounding national healthcare that began several generations ago is likely to continue into the foreseeable future. In this latest round of national debates, the issue of healthcare has been framed exclusively as a domestic issue. But history shows that the question of national healthcare in the United States has also been an extremely important issue for international law and international politics. To shed light on the …

Ancillary Discovery To Prove Denial Of Justice, Roger P. Alford

Journal Articles

Today foreign investors have a new and powerful weapon to challenge denial of justice. Bilateral investment treaties (BITs) require “fair and equitable treatment” consistent with customary international law, including “the obligation not to deny justice in criminal, civil, or administrative adjudicatory proceedings in accordance with the principles of due process embodied in the principle legal systems of the world.” Those treaties also create a private right of action, empowering investors with the right to initiate international arbitral proceedings directly against the host State. BITs provide the substance and the means for the effective review of judicial behavior. These treaties do …