International Law Commons^™

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 …

Nature Or Nurture? Judicial Lawmaking In The European Court Of Justice And The Andean Tribunal Of Justice, Laurence R. Helfer, Karen J. Alter

Faculty Scholarship

Are international courts power-seeking by nature, expanding the reach and scope of international rules and the courts’ authority where permissive conditions allow? Or, does expansionist lawmaking require special nurturing? We investigate the relative influences of nature versus nurture by comparing expansionist lawmaking in the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the Andean Tribunal of Justice (ATJ), the ECJ’s jurisdictional cousin and the third most active international court. We argue that international judges are more likely to become expansionist lawmakers where they are supported by substate interlocutors and compliance constituencies, including government officials, advocacy networks, national judges, and administrative agencies. This …

A Tale Of Two Judges : A Judge Advocate’S Reflections On Judge Gonzales’S Apologia, Charles J. Dunlap Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

This is a response to - and reflection about - Judge Alberto Gonzales's essay in the Texas Tech Law Review entitled "Waging War Within the Constitution" 42 Tex. Tech. L. Rev. 843 (2010). It argues that national security law policy in an era of complex challenges is best designed when the expertise of the widest number of knowledgeable practictioners is brought to bear in a principled and fearless manner.

Withdrawing From International Custom, Curtis A. Bradley, Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

Treaties are negotiated, usually written down, and often subject to cumbersome domestic ratification processes. Nonetheless, nations often have the right to withdraw unilaterally from them. By contrast, the conventional wisdom is that nations never have the legal right to withdraw unilaterally from the unwritten rules of customary international law (CIL), a proposition that we refer to as the “Mandatory View.” It is not obvious, however, why it should be easier to exit from treaties than from CIL, especially given the significant overlap that exists today between the regulatory coverage of treaties and CIL, as well as the frequent use of …

International Soft Law, Andrew T. Guzman, Timothy L. Meyer

Faculty Scholarship

Although the concept of soft law has existed for years, scholars have not reached consensus on why states use soft law or even whether “soft law” is a coherent analytic category. In part, this confusion reflects a deep diversity in both the types of international agreements and the strategic situations that produce them. In this paper, we advance four complementary explanations for why states use soft law that describe a much broader range of state behavior than has been previously explained.

First, and least significantly, states may use soft law to solve straightforward coordination games in which the existence of …

Does Lawfare Need An Apologia?, Charles J. Dunlap Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

Few concepts in international law are more controversial than lawfare. This essay contends that lawfare is best appreciated in the context of its original meaning as ideologically neutral description of how law might be used in armed conflict. It emphasizes that although law may be manipulated by some belligerents for nefarious purposes, it can still serve to limit human suffering in war. In discussing the current state of the concept of lawfare, the essay reviews several contentious areas, and recognizes the concerns of critics. The paper concludes that lawfare is still a useful term, and is optimized when it is …

Enforcing International Corrupt Practices Law, Paul D. Carrington

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay strives to advance the current international movement to
deter the transnational corrupt practices that have long burdened the global economy and weakened governments, especially in “developing” nations. Laws made in the last decade to address this longstanding global problem have not been effectively enforced. Described here are the moderately successful efforts in the United States since 1862 to reward private citizens serving as enforcers of laws prohibiting corrupt practices. It is suggested that this American experience might be adapted by international organizations to enhance enforcement of the new public international laws.

Stepping Stone Or Stumbling Block: Incrementalism And National Climate Change Legislation, Rachel Brewster

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the effects of incremental domestic legislation on international negotiations to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Mitigating the effects of climate change is a global public good, which, ultimately, only an international agreement can provide. The common presumption (justified or not) is that national legislation is a step forward to an international agreement. This Article analyzes how national legislation can create a demand for international action but can also preempt or frustrate international efforts. The crucial issue, which has been largely ignored thus far, is how incremental steps at the domestic level alter international negotiations. This paper identifies four …

Rethinking International Women's Human Rights Through Eve Sedgwick, Darren Rosenblum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Thanks to Janet Halley and Jeannie Suk for organizing this amazing workshop. Since the death of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, I have wanted to honor her memory, and this panel is the perfect venue. Sedgwick's foundational understandings of sexuality, gender, and identity set the stage for much of my work and that of those I admire.

My own work looks at how the state regulates gender in the "public" sphere. I attempt to challenge the tensions and intersections among international and comparative notions of equality and identity. Group identity constructions vary across cultural lines and conflict with liberal notions of …

Forward, Daniel T. Murphy

Law Faculty Publications

Introduction to Symposium issue, "A Collision of Authority: The U.S. Constitution and Universal Jurisdiction."

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 …

The Structure Of Terrorism Threats And The Laws Of War, Matthew C. Waxman

Faculty Scholarship

This article considers a major debate in the American and European counterterrorism analytic community – whether the primary terrorist threat to the West is posed by hierarchical, centralized terrorist organizations operating from geographic safe havens, or by radicalized individuals conducting a loosely organized, ideologically common but operationally independent fight against western societies – and this debate’s implications for both jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Analysis of how the law of armed conflict might be evolving to deal with terrorism should engage in more nuanced and sophisticated examination of how terrorism threats are themselves evolving. Moreover, the merits of …

Book Reviews And Libel Proceedings, Lori Fisler Damrosch, Bernard H. Oxman, Richard B. Bilder, David D. Caron

Faculty Scholarship

The American journal of International Law has been informed of the initiation in France of penal proceedings against the editor in chief of the European journal of International Law (EJIL), by virtue of a complaint filed by an author of a book reviewed on a Web site affiliated with the Ejll.1 We share the concerns of other professional societies regarding the potential of such litigation for chilling academic discourse. 2 We also take this opportunity to explain the practice of the AJIL concerning communications from authors who object to book reviews published in our pages, and to state our position …

A Lucky Child: A Memoir Of Surviving Auschwitz As A Young Boy, Lori Fisler Damrosch

Faculty Scholarship

Many readers of this Journal would readily identify the young boy in lederhosen, hands tightly clasped by his mother, who is in turn enfolded in the father's embrace – all three smiling on what is perhaps the child's third birthday – in the cover photograph of the American edition of the book under review. In this memoir he is Tommy, Tom, Tomek, or Tommyli; in later life he is known to us (and recognized worldwide) as Thomas Buergenthal, judge of the International Court of justice since 2000 and honorary president of the American Society of International Law from 2001 to …

Cost Awards In International Commercial Arbitration: Proposed Guidelines For Promoting Time And Cost Efficiency, Robert H. Smit, Tyler B. Robinson

Faculty Scholarship

This article offers specific guidelines for awarding costs in international commercial arbitration where the source of the arbitral tribunal’s authority to allocate costs – be it the parties’ arbitration agreement, applicable institutional arbitration rules, or otherwise – vests the tribunal, as is typically the case, with discretion. The guidelines proposed in this article are designed to encourage party choices that enhance international arbitration’s goals of time and cost effectiveness. Predictable (yet flexible) guidelines that serve international arbitration’s unique qualities should in turn serve to maximize the appeal of international commercial arbitration over its alternatives. It is anticipated that these guidelines …

International Issues: Which Country's Law Applies When Works Are Made Available Over The Internet, Jane C. Ginsburg

Faculty Scholarship

My topic is International Implications, a topic that would not exist but for the Internet. When access to archival materials was on a physical basis, patrons came to the archive and consulted the material on site; the material did not leave the archive, much less get sent overseas. Even digitized materials, if consulted on site, do not present the problems that arise if the archives puts this material on a website, which is accessible around the world, that ubiquity being the default condition ofthe Internet.

Let us consider some problems that might arise and which have international consequences. First of …

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.