Rule of Law Commons^™

The United States And International Law: The United Nations Finds A Home, Mark Weston Janis

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

An essay is presented on the relationship between the U.S. and the United Nations (UN) as of July 2011, focusing on the commitment of the U.S. to international law and international organization, as well as a historical overview of the UN and its facilities in the U.S. John F. Murphy's book "The United States and the Rule of Law in International Affairs" is also mentioned.

Post-Wto China Tax Law System Reform And The Rule Of Law: Progress And Prospects, Tianlong Hu

SJD Dissertations

A close examination of China's accession commitments reveals that effective economic reform and trade liberalization call for substantiations from a matching legal infrastructure reform. For example, taxpayers' rights protection should be viewed in terms of broader political and civil rights reform. Indeed, a number of the values featured in the WTO principles and the rule of law framework encourage China's further integration into both the global trade network and the international human rights regime. This is particularly evident in the Chinese tax law context. WTO principles and the rule of law requirements must be introduced and evaluated together in tax …

Rethinking North America: Why Nafta's Laissez Faire Approach To Integration Is Flawed, And What To Do About It, Stephen Zamora

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

An essay is presented on the status of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as of July 2011, focusing on the strong support shown to the international law by European countries as compared to the U.S., as well as the role of regional trade agreements such as NAFTA in furthering the globalization movement. John F. Murphy's book "The United States and the Rule of Law in International Affairs" is also mentioned.

Deviations From The International Rule Of Law: An Historical Footnote, Arthur T. Downey

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

The article discusses the international rule of law as of July 2011, focusing on a historical overview of international affairs including the use of privateer maritime forces, the efforts of the U.S. to codify the international law in regards to maritime warfare, and the impact of the Crimean War on the development of the rule of international law. John F. Murphy's book "The United States and the Rule of Law in International Affairs" is also mentioned.

Profiling Originalism, Jamal Greene, Nathaniel Persily, Stephen Ansolabehere

Faculty Scholarship

Originalism is a subject of both legal and political discourse, invoked not just in law review scholarship but also in popular media and public discussion. This Essay presents the first empirical study of public attitudes about originalism. The study analyzes original and existing survey data in order to better understand the demographic characteristics, legal views, political orientation, and cultural profile of those who self-identfy as originalists. We conclude that rule of law concerns, support for politically conservative issue positions, and a cultural orientation toward moral traditionalism and libertarianism are all significant predictors of an individual preference for originalism. Our analysis …

An Emerging Norm - Determining The Meaning And Legal Status Of The Responsibility To Protect, Jonah Eaton

Michigan Journal of International Law

The responsibility to protect, from its recent nativity in the 2001 report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), is the latest round in an old debate pitting the principle of nonintervention in the internal affairs of states against allowing such intervention to prevent gross and systematic violations of human rights. Advocates for the concept see it as an important new commitment by the international community, injecting new meaning into the tragically threadbare promise to never again allow mass atrocities to occur unchallenged. ICISS offered the concept of responsibility to protect as a new way to confront …

An Expectation Of Empathy, Steve Leben

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Those Who Ignore The Successes Of The Past Suffer Recurrent, Intensifying Crises, William K. Black

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Elections And Government Formation In Iraq: An Analysis Of The Judiciary's Role, Charles P. Trumbull Iv, Julie B. Martin

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In 2005, the people of Iraq ratified a permanent Constitution, a significant milestone in the journey from Saddam Hussein's authoritarian rule to democratic governance. Among the Constitution's fundamental guarantees are the separation and balance of powers, the selection of Parliament through regular and periodic popular election, and an independent judiciary empowered as the authority on constitutional interpretation. Iraq's commitment to democracy and the Constitution was put to the test five years later with the first parliamentary election under the new Constitution. The run-up to the elections was marred by political disputes, violence, and legal challenges, as Iraqis argued over controversial …

Rule Of Law In Haiti Before And After The 2010 Earthquake, James D. Wilets, Camilo Espinosa

Intercultural Human Rights Law Review

When discussing the myriad challenges facing Haiti in the wake of the devastating 2010 earthquake, it is difficult to prioritize the needs of a country where basic needs such as shelter and basic medical care compete for long-term needs such as education, good governance, and economic reconstruction and growth. The current immediate and emergent needs of Haiti in the face of its national calamity have been well identified by international aid bodies and national leaders, and there has been a considerable literature on those needs. What is of equal importance in the long run, however, is building a solid foundation …

The New Second Circuit Local Rules: Anatomy And Commentary, Jodi Balsam

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Foreign Official Immunity After Samantar, Chimene I. Keitner

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

In Samantar v. Yousuf, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSLA) does not govern the immunity of foreign officials from legal proceedings in U.S. courts. Part I of this symposium contribution seeks to put in sharper focus exactly what is, and what is not, in dispute following Samantar. Part II presents three challenges to common assumptions about conduct-based immunity, which I consider under the headings of personal responsibility, penalties, and presence. Under the heading of personal responsibility, I emphasize that state responsibility and individual responsibility are not mutually exclusive. Under penalties, I argue that …

Prosecuting The Informant Culture, Andrew E. Taslitz

Michigan Law Review

Alexandra Natapoff, in her outstanding new book, Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice, makes a compelling case for reform of the system by which we regulate police use of criminal informants. Indeed, as other writers have discussed, law enforcement's overreliance on such informants has led to a "snitching culture" in which informant snitching replaces other forms of law enforcement investigation (pp. 12, 31, 88-89). Yet snitches, especially jailhouse snitches, are notoriously unreliable.

Private International Law, The Rule Of Law, And Economic Development, David P. Stewart

Villanova Law Review (1956 - )

The article discusses private international law as of July 2011, focusing on the principles of civil law systems, conflict of laws, and jurisdiction. The concept of international judicial assistance, as laid out by the Hague Conference on Private International Law, is also examined. The United Nations Commission on International Trade Law's role as a leader in the field of international commercial arbitration is mentioned.

Promoting Social Justice Values And Reflective Legal Practice In Chinese Law Schools, Brian K. Landsberg

McGeorge School of Law Scholarly Articles

No abstract provided.

The Limits Of Process, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article presents four major objections to Jeremy Waldron’s claim that for “Rule of Law” to exist it we must move beyond basic formal requirements that laws be general and knowable rules we can all comply with, towards substantive requirements that when the law imposes its censorial and punitive will upon us, it is applied in a way that acknowledges our intelligence and respects our individual dignity. After challenging Waldron’s claim, the author suggests that if Rule of Law theorizing is intended to capture our ideals of law, then the three paradigms of Rule of Law scholarship that Waldron has …

The Rule Of Law As A Law Of Standards, Jamal Greene

Faculty Scholarship

Justice Antonin Scalia titled his 1989 Oliver Wendell Holmes Lecture at Harvard Law School The Rule of Law as a Law of Rules. The lecture posed the sort of dichotomy that has become a familiar feature of Justice Scalia's jurisprudence and of his general approach to judging. On one hand are judges who recognize that the only legitimate means by which they may adjudicate cases in a democracy is to seek to do so through rules of general application. On the other hand are those judges who generally prefer to adopt an all-things considered balancing approach to adjudication. This latter …

Separation Of Law And State, Talia Fisher

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In the framework of the jurisprudential literature, the law-state bond is assumed as a given. Points of dispute emerge only at more advanced stages of the discussion, with respect to such questions as the duty to obey state law or the appropriate extent of state intervention in social relations. This Article will be devoted to a reconsideration of the presupposition of the law-state link and to challenging the state's status vis-à-vis the law-both in its role as the producer of legal norms and its capacity as the arbiter of disputes.

The Article opens with a comparative elucidation of the Hobbesian …

Secessions, Coups, And The International Rule Of Law: Assessing The Decline Of The Effective Control Doctrine, Brad R. Roth

Law Faculty Research Publications

Attempted secessions (for example, Kosovo and Somaliland) and coups d'état (for example, Madagascar and Honduras in 2009) prompt contestation over whether or not legal status is to be conferred on local exercises of de facto authority. International legal standing has traditionally been established by victory in a trial by ordeal: a region initially integral to an existing state successfully establishes itself as an independent sovereign unit only where its secession movement creates - usually by decisive victory in an armed struggle -facts on the ground that appear irreversible; an insurgent faction successfully establishes itself as a government where it overthrows …

Promise Against Peril: Of Power, Purpose, And Principle In International Law, Robert C. Hockett

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

I take two recent monographs on international law – Mary Ellen O’Connell’s "The Power and Purpose of International Law," and Eric Posner’s "The Perils of Global Legalism," as case studies in a more general inquiry into the role of the "rule of law" ideal in domestic and international law. I argue that international and domestic law alike give varyingly explicit and effective expression to the rule of law ideal, and that the task before us is accordingly steadily to improve their effectiveness in so doing, not to pretend that there is no role for this ideal to play in interpreting …