International Law Commons^™

"Lawfare" In The War On Terrorism: A Reclamation Project, Melissa A. Waters

Scholarship@WashULaw

In the nine years since Major General Charles Dunlap first coined the term, “lawfare” has strayed considerably from its non-partisan, ideologically neutral origins. Nowhere is this clearer than in the war on terror, where the term is often used as a pejorative label by political pundits who decry as “lawfare” virtually any attempt to apply the rule of law to the conduct of the United States’ war on terror. This essay considers the prospects for reclaiming “lawfare” as a useful term in the war on terror. It explores various conceptions of the term, noting that a more ideologically neutral usage …

Book Review Of Universities And Copyright Collecting Societies, Benjamin J. Keele

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Responsibility To Peace: A Critique Of R2p, Mary Ellen O'Connell

Journal Articles

The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 led to the doctrine of R2P, which envisages the use of force in defence of human rights. But as the Kosovo conflict demonstrates, nothing is more destructive of human rights than war. The protection and promotion of human rights should be done through lawful and non-lethal means. This essay argues that citizens and states have a responsibility to peace as much as to human rights because human rights can only flourish in a condition of peace. This essay seeks to restore peace to its proper place in the discussion of international politics and …

Discovery From Non-Parties (Third-Party Discovery) In International Arbitration, Charles O. Verrill Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

International arbitration rules and many arbitration laws usually provide procedures that permit tribunals to order parties to disclose documents and other materials to the other parties.1 More complex are the rules that determine opportunities to obtain discovery from persons that are not party to the arbitration (third-party discovery). This article will review third-party discovery under the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) and the provisions of the US Code s.1782 that authorise US courts to act in aid of actions before foreign tribunals. Section 1782 has unique interest at this time because it figured prominently in the EU antitrust investigation of Intel …

Embedded International Law And The Constitution Abroad, Sarah H. Cleveland

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay explores the role of "embedded" international law in U.S. constitutional interpretation, in the context of extraterritorial application of the Constitution. Traditional U.S. understandings of the Constitution's application abroad were informed by nineteenth-century international law principles of jurisdiction, which largely limited the authority of a sovereign state to its geographic territory. Both international law and constitutional law since have developed significantly away from strictly territorial understandings of governmental authority, however. Modern international law principles of jurisdiction and state responsibility now recognize that states legitimately may exercise power in a number of extraterritorial contexts, and that legal obligations may apply …

The Status Of Private Military Contractors Under International Humanitarian Law, Won Kidane

Faculty Articles

One of the serious problems that the new administration faces is undoubtedly the regulation and use of private military contractors in "the war on terror." The private military industry is largely unregulated at the national level. Its status under international law is also poorly understood. This article assesses the legal status of this industry, characterizes the various functions, demonstrates the difficulty of regulating the industry as a unitary entity, and identifies the appropriate set of international standards that the new administration and Congress as well as the larger international legal community could employ in evaluating regulatory options.

The Terrorism Bar To Asylum In Australia, Canada, The United Kingdom, And The United States: Transporting Best Practices, Won Kidane

Faculty Articles

The contemporary threat of terrorism that the Western world faces is primarily from so-called “aliens.” As such, the laws that are meant to combat terrorism necessarily involve the regulation of the admission and exclusion of aliens. This type of regulation is traditionally the purview of immigration law. Although the link between national security and immigration is by no means contemporary, the existing level of intersection between antiterrorism laws and immigration is essentially a post- 9/11 phenomenon.

The reason for this phenomenon is that the 9/11 attacks were planned and executed by aliens. Although there has not been a terrorist attack …

Law Of Geography And The Geography Of Law: A Post-Colonial Mapping, Tayyab Mahmud

Faculty Articles

This article examines the relationship between law and geography through the prisms of colonialism and neoliberal Empire. Using two novels set in nineteenth and twenty-first century India, respectively, it evaluates the so-called first law of geography, namely that "everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things." It argues that the formative and enduring relationship between global systems of domination and modern law has created a geolegal space that has a global dimension. This geolegal space creates norms and subjectivities that are intimately related to spatially distant forces and projects. Emergence and consolidation of …

Corporate War Crimes: Prosecuting Pillage Of Natural Resources, James G. Stewart

All Faculty Publications

Pillage means theft during war. Although the prohibition against pillage dates to antiquity, pillaging is a modern war crime that can be enforced before international and domestic criminal courts. Following World War II, several businessmen were convicted for the pillage of natural resources. And yet modern commercial actors are seldom held accountable for their role in the illegal exploitation of natural resources from modern conflict zones, even though pillage is prosecuted as a matter of course in other contexts. This book offers a doctrinal road-map of the law governing pillage as applied to the illegal exploitation of natural resources by …

Immigration As Invasion: Sovereignty, Security, And The Origins Of The Federal Immigration Power, Matthew Lindsay

All Faculty Scholarship

This Article offers a new interpretation of the modern federal immigration power. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Supreme Court and Congress fundamentally transformed the federal government’s authority to regulate immigration, from a species of commercial regulation firmly grounded in Congress’ commerce authority, into a power that was unmoored from the Constitution, derived from the nation’s “inherent sovereignty,” and subject to extraordinary judicial deference. This framework, which is commonly referred to as the “plenary power doctrine,” has stood for more than a century as an anomaly within American public law. The principal legal and rhetorical rationale for the …

Implementing The Standby Letter For Credit Convention With The Law Of Wyoming, James J. White

Articles

For the first time in American practice, we propose to implement a convention by a federal adoption of law previously enacted by the states – from Wyoming to New York – to implement the Convention on Independent Guarantees and Standby Letters of Credit (“Convention”).1

State Bystander Responsibility, Monica Hakimi

Articles

International human rights law requires states to protect people from abuses committed by third parties. Decision-makers widely agree that states have such obligations, but no framework exists for identifying when states have them or what they require. The practice is to varying degrees splintered, inconsistent, and conceptually confused. This article presents a generalized framework to fill that void. The article argues that whether a state must protect someone from third-party harm depends on the state's relationship with the third party and on the kind of harm caused. A duty-holding state must take reasonable measures to restrain the abuser. That framework …

Leveraging Asylum, James C. Hathaway

Articles

I believe that the analysis underlying the leveraged right to asylum is conceptually flawed. As I will show, there is no duty of non-refoulement that binds all states as a matter of customary international law and it is not the case that all persons entitled to claim protection against refoulement of some kind are ipso facto entitled to refugee rights. These claims are unsound precisely because the critical bedrock of a real international legal obligation-namely, the consent of states evinced by either formal commitments or legally relevant actions -does not yet exist.

Human Rights For Hedgehogs?: Global Value Pluralism, International Law, And Some Reservations Of The Fox, Robert D. Sloane

Faculty Scholarship

This essay, a contribution to the Boston University Law Review’s symposium on Ronald Dworkin’s forthcoming book, Justice for Hedgehogs, critiques the manuscript’s account of international human rights on five grounds. First, it is vague: it fails to offer much if any guidance relative to many of the most difficult concrete issues that arise in the field of international human rights law and policy - precisely the circumstances in which international lawyers might benefit from the guidance that moral foundations supposedly promise. It is also troubling, and puzzling given Dworkin’s well-known commitment to the right-answer thesis, that his account of human …

Richard Burchill On Synergies In Minority Protection: European And International Law Perspectives. Edited By Kristin Henrard And Robert Dunbar. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 462pp., Richard Burchill

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Synergies in Minority Protection: European and International Law Perspectives. Edited by Kristin Henrard and Robert Dunbar. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 462pp.

Christina M. Cerna On Universal Periodic Review Of Human Rights: Towards Best Practice. Edited By Purna Sen. London: Commonwealth Secretariat, 2009. 138pp., Christina M. Cerna

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Universal Periodic Review of Human Rights: Towards Best Practice. Edited by Purna Sen. London: Commonwealth Secretariat, 2009. 138pp.

Migrant Workers In Saudi Arabia, Sarah Jessup

Human Rights & Human Welfare

One of the wealthiest countries in the Middle East, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is also one of the largest exporters of oil, and as such, one of the most influential in the region. Despite this, more than 50 per cent of the work force (nearly 6 million people) in the Saudi Arabia are migrant workers (FIDH, 2003, 3). They contribute billions of dollars each year to their home countries through remittances. With such a large population hailing from outside the Kingdom, it would seem that transnational migrants would have a larger voice in the rights and freedoms they are …

The Materialization Of Human Trafficking In The Middle East And Impediments To Its Eradication, Mindy Mann

Human Rights & Human Welfare

As a continental hub that connects Asia, Africa, and Europe, the Middle East offers a strategic location for the trafficking of persons from poor to richer states. Extreme poverty, coupled with the corporate and royal wealth of the Gulf States, creates a regional dichotomy in which Middle Eastern states serve as ‘source,’ ‘transit,’ and ‘destination’ countries for human trafficking. Discrepancies in defining human trafficking within the region, as well as the controversial and illicit nature of the practice, cause research to be sparse and with very few first-hand sources. Nevertheless, this paper examines available literature on the subject and addresses …

The Loss Of Egypt’S Children, Cindy Ragab

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Under the fierce rays of the desert sun, in the heat of the summer, young children are forced to remove pests from cotton crops for eleven hours per day, search for recyclable goods among animals and the pungent stench of city dumps, and are sold to elderly male tourists through temporary marriages by their parents. This is the hideous reality for millions of child laborers in Egypt. Child labor is a manifestation of the pains of extreme poverty on the world’s most vulnerable population. Childhood is lost. Children are forced to take on responsibilities that in normal circumstances push adults …

Income Inequality And Poverty In Iran, Katie Susman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Income inequality is a hindrance to the global fulfillment of human rights, as acknowledged in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Middle East North Africa (MENA) region is experiencing a steady increase of economic disparity. The impact of the global economic environment and the 2008 recession has brought to the forefront the region’s economic reliance on the rest of the world. As a result, a triple “food-fuel-financial” crisis has emerged. This will undoubtedly affect the most impoverished part of the population and could potentially exacerbate the gap between the poor and the rich.