Suchergebnisse

A deeply researched, fully updated edition of The National Security Constitution that explores the growing imbalance of institutional powers in American foreign affairs and national security policy

Will Donald trump international law? Since Trump's administration took office in January 2017, this question has haunted almost every issue area of international law. This work, by one of our leading international lawyers - a former Legal Adviser of the U.S. State Department, former Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, and former Yale Law Dean - argues that President Trump has thus far enjoyed less success than many believe, because he does not own the pervasive 'transnational legal process' that governs these issue areas. This text shows how those opposing Trump's policies in his administration's first two years have successfully triggered transnational legal process as part of a collective counterstrategy akin to Muhammad Ali's famous 'rope-a-dope.'

Is President Donald Trump destroying the global order? The conventional wisdom is yes. But this book argues that he is having much less success than is commonly recognized because our international relations are embedded in a legal order that he poorly understands, and does not control.

What was distinctive about this event is that it is not just the use of force for aggression. This is the use of blatant war crimes as a tool of naked aggression. The Russians started war crimes from day one, indiscriminate shelling from afar. We now see, in Bucha, that when they got up close, they tortured people; they bound them; in the case of women, they raped them; they summarily executed them; and they threw them into mass graves. This is one of the most blatant combinations of atrocity and aggression we have seen in many decades.

The legality of unilateral humanitarian intervention raises three questions:

I am delighted to speak here at Vanderbilt regarding the U.S. Government's perspective on Foreign Official Immunity after Samantar v. Yousuf.' In the Samantar case, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that the immunity of foreign government officials sued in their personal capacity in U.S. courts, including for alleged human rights violations, is not controlled by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976, but rather, by immunity determinations made by the Executive Branch. Let me break my topic today into three parts: first, the world of foreign official immunity as it existed before the Samantar case; second, the Supreme Court's decision in Samantar and its implications; and third, the State Department's "New Samantar Process," which has been emerging since the Supreme Court's decision--focusing, in particular, on distinguishing what we call Samantar issues from non-Samantar issues, the effect of a State Department suggestion of immunity, and the effect of State Department silence with respect to a foreign official's claim of immunity.

I appear today solely to comment upon Mr. Gonzales's positions regarding three issues on which I have both legal expertise and government experience: the illegality of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; the scope of the president's constitutional powers to authorize torture and cruel treatment by U.S. officials; and the applicability of the Geneva Conventions on the Laws of War to alleged combatants held in U.S. custody.

What did the United States Supreme Court mean when it famously said, "International law is part of our law, and must be ascertained and administered by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction, as often as questions of right depending upon it are duly presented for their determination"? Perhaps the Court was suggesting that, in an interdependent world, United States courts should not decide cases without paying "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind," in the memorable words of the Declaration of Independence. The framers and early Justices understood that the global legitimacy of a fledgling nation crucially depended upon the compatibility of its domestic law with the rules of the international system within which it sought acceptance. Their recognition seems both prudent and sensible. Even today, for any nation consciously to ignore global standards not only would ensure constant frictions with the rest of the world, but also would diminish that nation's ability to invoke those international rules that served its own national purposes.