Suchergebnisse

Good afternoon. I am Monica Hakimi. I am from the University of Michigan Law School, and it is my pleasure to moderate this panel on the recent invasion in Ukraine. The invasion has caused me, as I suspect it has caused many of you, a great deal of horror, sadness, and fear. We hope to spend the hour today interrogating the question of what the invasion means for jus ad bellum, in particular, and for the international legal order more generally.

International lawyers are used to having their discipline dismissed. A conspicuous strand of thought in U.S. foreign policy circles — known as realist — posits that international law does not matter. Realists of course recognize that states and other global actors speak the language of international law. But they view this discourse as cheap talk or epiphenomenal. They contend that state decisions on the international plane are animated not by the dictates of international law but by material interests and power. States act consistently with international law insofar as they have independent reasons for acting that way. If those reasons dry up, states, especially powerful states, can just violate the law; because the international legal system lacks centralized enforcement agents, any repercussions for the violation will be determined not by law but by the participants' own interests and power relations. International law is again irrelevant. The realist position goes to the heart of the enterprise, so international relations and legal scholars have devoted enormous energy to refuting it. There is now an expansive literature on the efficacy of international law. Most of this work measures international law's efficacy in terms that realists can appreciate, by asking whether international law helps to achieve specific policy outcomes — for example, reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, trade restrictions, or incidents of torture. The analysis ultimately turns on the facts. But it also entrenches a particular view of what makes international law worthwhile. It suggests that international law matters insofar as it advances the material outcomes that it itself prescribes.

AbstractThis article argues that a form of legal regulation is embodied in decisions at the UN Security Council that condone but do not formally authorize specific military operations. Such decisions sometimes inflect or go beyond what thejus ad bellumpermits through its general standards—that is, under the prohibition of cross-border force and small handful of exceptions. Recognizing that this form of regulation is both part of the law and different in kind from regulation through the general standards should change how we think about thejus ad bellum.

Abstract: "This article argues that a form of legal regulation is embodied in decisions at the UN Security Council that condone but do not formally authorize specific military operations. Such decisions sometimes inflect or go beyond what the jus ad bellum permits through its general standards - that is, under the prohibition of cross-border force and small handful of exceptions. Recognizing that this form of regulation is both part of the law and different in kind from regulation through the general standards should change how we think about the jus ad bellum." (Seite 151)

This is the panel on the use of defensive force against non-state
actors. We thought we would use the campaign against the Islamic State in
Iraq and Syria, ISIS, to take stock on where we are on the question of when,
if ever, states may use defensive force against non-state actors in other
states.

The United States is more than fifteen years into a fight against terrorism that shows no sign of abating and, with the change in administration, appears to be intensifying. Other Western democracies that have historically been uneasy about U.S. counterterrorism policies have, in recent years, shifted toward those policies. And armed nonstate groups continue to commit large-scale acts of violence in multiple distinct theaters. The legal issues that these situations present are not entirely new, but neither are they going away. Recent publications, like the three works under review, thus provide useful opportunities to reflect on and refine our thinking on them.

AbstractWhat unites states and other global actors around a shared governance project? How does the group—what I will call an "international community"—coalesce and stay engaged in the enterprise? A frequent assumption is that an international community is cemented by its members' commonalities and depleted by their intractable disagreements. This article critiques that assumption and presents, as an alternative, a theory that accounts for the combined integration and discord that actually characterize most global governance associations. I argue that conflict, especially conflict that manifests in law, is not necessarily corrosive to an international community. To the contrary, it often is a unifying force that helps constitute and fortify the community and support the governance project. As such, international legal conflict can have systemic value for the global order, even when it lacks substantive resolution. The implications for the design and practice of international law are far-reaching.

As many readers are aware, Bond v. United States is a quirky case. The federal government prosecuted under the implementing legislation for the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) a betrayed wife who used chemical agents to try to harm her husband's lover. The wife argued that, as applied to her, the implementing legislation violated the Tenth Amendment. She thus raised difficult questions about the scope of the treaty power and of Congress's authority to implement treaties through the Necessary and Proper Clause. The Bond Court avoided those questions with a clear statement rule: "we can insist on a clear indication that Congress meant to reach purely local crimes, before interpreting the statute's expansive language in a way that intrudes on the police power of the States." This resolution betrays the Court's ambivalence about the appropriate limits of the treaty power and about the Court's own capacity to define those limits.

Abstract: "What unites states and other global actors around a shared governance project? How does the group - what I will call an "international community" - coalesce and stay engaged in the enterprise? A frequent assumption is that an international community is cemented by its members' commonalities and depleted by their intractable disagreements. This article critiques that assumption and presents, as an alternative, a theory that accounts for the combined integration and discord that actually characterize most global governance associations. I argue that conflict, especially conflict that manifests in law, is not necessarily corrosive to an international community. To the contrary, it often is a unifying force that helps constitute and fortify the community and support the governance project. As such, international legal conflict can have systemic value for the global order, even when it lacks substantive resolution. The implications for the design and practice of international law are far-reaching." (Seite 317)