Lovric: Deference to the Legislature in WTO Challenges to Legislation

Daniel Lovric has published Deference to the Legislature in WTO Challenges to Legislation (Kluwer Law International 2009). Here's the abstract:

Challenges to domestic legislation before international tribunals are a growing phenomenon in public international law. Consequently, in the field of global trade, the degree of deference given by WTO tribunals to domestic legislatures in challenges to their legislation is an area of increasing importance to practitioners, government officials and academics.

This timely work takes a new perspective on the way domestic law is treated at the international level. Using techniques of domestic constitutional law, it examines how international tribunals have treated challenges to legislation. The particular focus is WTO tribunals, but the book also draws on experiences from other international adjudicators, such as the European Court of Human Rights. Drawing from these examples, the author examines how international tribunals have (or have not) deferred to the opinions of the domestic legislature, and the legal techniques they've used in doing so. The treatment is detailed and comprehensive, contrasting and summarizing the relevant WTO case law.

Darge: Kriegsverbrechen im nationalen und internationalen Recht: Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Bestimmtheitsgrundsatzes

Tobias Darge has published Kriegsverbrechen im nationalen und internationalen Recht: Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Bestimmtheitsgrundsatzes (Springer 2010). Here's the abstract:

Die durch das Römische Statut des Internationalen Strafgerichtshofes angestoßenen Entwicklungen im Völkerstrafrecht führen dazu, dass auch auf der nationalen Ebene Rechtsgrundlagen zur Verfolgung von Verbrechen gegen das Völkerrecht notwendig werden. Das neue deutsche Völkerstrafgesetzbuch steht dabei vor der Herausforderung, einerseits das geltende Völkerstrafrecht in nationales Recht zu transponieren, sich dabei aber andererseits im vorgegebenen Rahmen des Grundgesetzes zu halten, namentlich was die Einhaltung des Bestimmtheitsgrundsatzes betrifft. Der Autor geht der Frage nach, wie dieser Balanceakt im besonders komplexen Recht der Kriegsverbrechen gelungen ist. Er entwickelt Auslegungsgrundsätze und wendet diese auf als problematisch erkannte Tatbestände an.

New Issue: Journal du Droit International

The latest issue of the Journal du Droit International ("Clunet") (Vol. 137, no. 1, Janvier-Février-Mars 2010) is out. Contents include:

• Doctrine
• Isabelle Barrière Brousse, Le Traité de Lisbonne et le droit international privé
• Marie Ganthous, La valeur internationale de la Constitution à la lumière de la Résolution 1757 (2007) créant le Tribunal spécial pour le Liban (TSL)
• Vélérie Varnerot, La transnationalisation du droit de brevet de médicaments : l'approche ADPIC- moins à rebrousse-poil
• Variétés
• Patrick Patelin & Geraldine Mirelman, La gouvernance d'entreprise en droit argentin

Hobér, Magnusson, & Öhrström: Between East and West: Essays in Honour of Ulf Franke

Kaj Hobér, Annette Magnusson & Marie Öhrström have published Between East and West: Essays in Honour of Ulf Franke (Juris Publishing 2010). The table of contents is available here.

Bodansky: Climate Change and Human Rights: Unpacking the Issues

Daniel Bodansky (Univ. of Georgia - Law) has posted Climate Change and Human Rights: Unpacking the Issues (Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Global warming is expected to contribute to many human wrongs: disease, malnutrition, flooding of coastal communities. But does every human wrong violate a human right? Should we conceptualize climate change not only as an environmental problem – the preeminent one of our time – but also as a human rights violation? Proposals to treat climate change as a human rights problem raise many fundamental questions. Theoretically, what does it mean to conceptualize climate change in human rights terms? How would a human rights approach differ from treating climate change as an environmental or economic or scientific problem? Descriptively, what does human rights law say about climate change and, conversely, what does climate change law say about human rights? Normatively, does it make sense to approach climate change as a human rights issue? What are the pros and cons? This brief introduction to a symposium issue of the Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law on climate change and human rights seeks to map out the overarching distinctions and questions.

Workshop: Brunnée

Jutta Brunnée (Univ. of Toronto - Law) will give a talk today at the University of Georgia School of Law International Law Colloquium Series on "An Interactional Theory of International Legal Obligation."

Call for Submissions: Eyes on the ICC

Eyes on the ICC has issued a call for submissions for its forthcoming volume. Here's the call:

Eyes on the ICC is the first peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal dedicated exclusively to the work of the International Criminal Court and international criminal law.

The journal, published annually by the Council for American Students in International Negotiations, invites quality submissions for its 7th volume from practitioners, scholars, jurists, and professionals in fields related to international criminal law and policy. Occasionally, exceptional student work will be accepted. Manuscripts are accepted on a rolling basis until July 15, 2010.

Manuscripts must be computer-generated and submitted electronically via e-mail to the Managing Editor, Ms. Yasmin Tabi at yasmin@americanstudents.us, or via Berkeley Electronic Press’s ExpressO submission service, at http://law.bepress.com/expresso.

Each submission should contain an abstract, the author’s CV, appropriate contact information and a cover letter to the editor assuring that the manuscript has not been submitted or published elsewhere. Articles and Notes may range in length from 25 to 80 pages, double-spaced, and book reviews from 1,000 to 2,500 words. Submissions should adhere closely to the Chicago Manual of Style and cite sources in legal format according to the Harvard Blue Book.

Authors are encouraged to seek comments on their manuscripts from colleagues within their discipline. The journal invites commentary on the quality of its submissions, whether by private correspondence or published letter.

Correspondence not directly related to the submission process should be addressed to the Editor-in-Chief, Mr. Bernhard Kuschnik at bernhard@americanstudents.us.

Tiefenbrun: Decoding International Law: Semiotics and the Humanities

Susan Tiefenbrun (Thomas Jefferson School of Law) has published Decoding International Law: Semiotics and the Humanities (Oxford Univ. Press 2010). Here's the abstract:

Violations of international law and human rights laws are the plague of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. People's inhumanity to people escalates as wars proliferate and respect for human rights and the laws of war diminish. In Decoding International Law: Semiotics and the Humanities, Professor Susan Tiefenbrun analyzes international law as represented artfully in the humanities.

Mass violence and flagrant violations of human rights have a dramatic effect that naturally appeals to writers, film makers, artists, philosophers, historians, and legal scholars who represent these horrors indirectly through various media and in coded language. This reader-friendly book enables us to comprehend and decode international law and human rights laws by interpreting meanings concealed in great works of art, literature, film and the humanities. Here, the author adopts an interdisciplinary method of interpretation based on the science of signs, linguistics, stylistics, and an in-depth analysis of the work's cultural context. This book unravels the complexities of such controversial issues as terrorism, civil disobedience, women's and children's human rights, and the piracy of intellectual property.

It provides in-depth analyses of diverse literary works: Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent and the movie Hotel Rwanda (both representing terrorism); Martin Luther King's Letter from Birmingham Jail; two documentary films about women and family law in Iran, Divorce Iranian Style and Two Women; Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (women's human rights and human trafficking in China); Uzodinma Iweala's Beasts of No Nation (shedding light on child soldiering and trafficking in Africa), and much more.

Jacobs: Puzzling Over Amnesties: Defragmenting the Debate for International Criminal Tribunals

Dov Jacobs (European Univ. Institute) has posted Puzzling Over Amnesties: Defragmenting the Debate for International Criminal Tribunals (in The Fragmentation of International Criminal Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Amnesties have been in debate for some time now in international circles.From an international law perspective, it should be pointed out something that is sometimes lost in the vast literature on the topic in international legal discussions: there is virtually no mention of amnesties in international documents. As we will see, in the dense web of human rights and international humanitarian law treaties, there is an explicit mention of amnesties in only one provision: an additional protocol to the Geneva Conventions relating to non-international armed conflict. This is mostly true of international criminal law. Even if some international(ized) tribunals include provisions on amnesties, justified by a particular local situation, the Statute of the International Criminal Court makes no mention of them. This leads to the somewhat peculiar situation that entire theories are constructed on the place of a concept in a legal order that makes hardly any reference to that concept in its constitutive documents. Despite this, or maybe because of this, amnesties have come up in relation to various fields of international law (human rights, international humanitarian law, and international criminal law) and in relation to various concepts of international law (most notably the duty to prosecute). This has created a risk of fragmentation on the issue that might threaten the unity of the concept. To take stock of this fragmented situation, we have chosen not to embark on a general theory on amnesties. Rather, we will try to answer a simple question: how must international criminal tribunals deal with amnesties for international crimes? The advantage of such a specific question is that it will focus the discussion, while still allowing us to draw a picture of the fragmented debate on amnesties in international.

The paper aims at defragmenting the debate on amnesties by decomposing the various levels at which it is discussed. First of all it looks at amnesties as perceived in various areas of international law, specifically human rights law and international humanitarian law. It then looks at how different international criminal tribunals have dealt with the question of amnesties. It then considers vertical fragmentation (national courts vs International courts) and pluridisciplinary fragmentation (perceptions from law, sociology, philosophy and political science). In a final section, the article proposes to see what are the relevant aspects of the debate specifically for international tribunals and suggests that we should move away from issues of legality to consider issues of recognition, which make the debate far more easy to solve.

Melloh: Einheitliche Strafzumessung in den Rechtsquellen des ICC-Statuts

Florian Melloh has published Einheitliche Strafzumessung in den Rechtsquellen des ICC-Statuts (Duncker & Humblot 2010). Here's the abstract:

Florian Melloh legt in der vorliegenden Publikation die Grundlagen für eine einheitliche Strafzumessung im ICC-Statut. Er berücksichtigt dabei Gedanken der Gleichbehandlung und des Entscheidungsprozesses. Diese verweisen auf normative Mechanismen in den Rechtsquellen des ICC-Statuts: Der Autor belegt und vereint eine Völkerstraftheorie als Rechtfertigung von Strafe und Strafmaß, weist eine Strafzumessungsmethode nach und bestimmt die Bezugspunkte der Strafe. Weiterhin zeigt er wesentliche Strafzumessungsumstände auf, verdichtet Verhältnismäßigkeit und Graduierung zu einer Strafstruktur und beleuchtet die Strafzumessungsinformation im Prozess. Er befürwortet Richtlinienurteile, lehnt aber Strafzumessungsrichtlinien ab. Darüber hinaus erschließt er die Pflicht und den Umfang zur Begründung der Strafe und zur richterlichen Kontrolle der Strafzumessungsentscheidung. Florian Melloh schließt die Publikation mit dem Ausblick auf eine mögliche Strafstruktur im ICC-Statut ab.

New Volume: Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law

The latest volume of the Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law (Vol. 11, 2008) is out. Contents include:

• Th. A. van Baarda, Moral ambiguities underlying the laws of armed conflict: a perspective from military ethics
• Dan Kuwali, Protect responsibly: the African Union's implementation of Article 4(H) intervention
• Ola Engdahl, The status of peace operation personnel under international humanitarian law
• Ray Murphy & Declan Gannon, Changing the landscape: Israel's gross violations of international law in the occupied Syrian Golan
• James P. Benoit, Mistreatment of the wounded, sick and shipwrecked by the ICRC study on customary international humanitarian law
• Current Developments
• Benjamin To, The year in review
• Amna Guellali & Enrique Carnero Rojo, International criminal courts round-up
• Nina H. B. Jørgensen, The extraordinary chambers in the courts of Cambodia and the progress of the 'Khmer Rouge trials'
• Nout van Woudenberg & Wouter Wormgoor, The Cluster Munition Convention: around the world in one year

Besson & Tasioulas: The Philosophy of International Law

Samantha Besson (Univ. of Fribourg - Law) & John Tasioulas (Univ. of Oxford - Philosophy) have published The Philosophy of International Law (Oxford Univ. Press 2010). Contents include:

• Benedict Kingsbury & Benjamin Straumann, State of Nature versus Commercial Sociability as the Basis of International Law: Reflections on the Roman Foundations and Current Interpretations of the International Political and Legal Thought of Grotius, Hobbes and Pufendorf
• Amanda Perreau-Saussine, Immanuel Kant on International Law
• Allen Buchanan, The Legitimacy of International Law
• John Tasioulas, The Legitimacy of International Law
• Thomas Christiano, Democratic Legitimacy and International Institutions
• Philip Pettit, Legitimate International Institutions: A Neo-Republican Perspective
• Samantha Besson, Theorizing the Sources of International Law
• David Lefkowitz, The Sources of International Law: Some Philosophical Reflections
• Andreas Paulus, International Adjudication
• Donald Regan, International Adjudication: A Response to Paulus - Courts, Custom, Treaties, Regimes, and the WTO
• Timothy Endicott, The Logic of Freedom and Power
• Jean Cohen, Sovereignty in the Context of Globalization: A Constitutional Pluralist Perspective
• James Crawford & Jeremy Watkins, International Responsibility
• Liam Murphy, International Responsibility
• Joseph Raz, Human Rights without Foundations
• James Griffin, Human Rights and the Autonomy of International Law
• John Skorupski, Human Rights
• Will Kymlicka, Minority Rights in Political Philosophy and International Law
• Jeremy Waldron, Two Conception of Self Determination
• Thomas Pogge, The Role of International Law in Reproducing Massive Poverty
• Robert Howse & Ruti Teitel, Global Justice, Poverty and the International Economic Order
• James Nickel & Daniel Magraw, Philosophical Issues in International Environmental Law
• Roger Crisp, Ethics and International Environmental Law
• Jeff McMahan, The Laws of War
• Henry Shue, Laws of War
• Thomas Franck, Humanitarian Intervention
• Danilo Zolo, Humanitarian Militarism?
• David Luban, Fairness to Rightness: Jurisdiction, Legality, and the Legitimacy of International Criminal Law
• Antony Duff, Authority and Responsibility in International Criminal Law

Conference: Fourteenth Investment Treaty Forum Public Conference

The British Institute of International and Comparative Law will host the Fourteenth Investment Treaty Forum Public Conference on May 7, 2010. The theme is: "Do not pass Go: Jurisdictional and other objections available to respondent State." The program is not yet available. Here's the idea:

The aim of this ITF Public Conference is to review and analyse important developments in recent cases on jurisdiction by investment treaty tribunals. These developments include illegality (Fraport), fraud (El Salvador) and other instances of an investor's misconduct. Other topics for consideration will also include piercing the corporate veil (TSA Spectrum), unmeritorious and abusive claims (Phoenix), restrictive dispute resolution provisions (old China and Soviet BITs e.g. Tza Yap Shum and Renta 4) and the ongoing debate about what type of investments should not benefit from treaty protection. The speakers will discuss how and why these restrictions have affected the jurisdiction of tribunals.

Ohlin: A Meta-Theory of International Criminal Procedure: Vindicating the Rule of Law

Jens David Ohlin (Cornell Univ. - Law) has posted A Meta-Theory of International Criminal Procedure: Vindicating the Rule of Law (UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs, Vol. 14, pp. 77-120, 2010). Here's the abstract:

International criminal procedure is in a second phase of development, moving beyond the common law/civil law dichotomy and searching for its sui generis theory. The standard line is that international criminal procedure has an instrumental value: it services the general goals of international criminal justice and allows punishment for violations of substantive international criminal law. However, international criminal procedure also has an important and often overlooked intrinsic value not reducible to its instrumental value: it vindicates the Rule of Law. This vindication is performed by adjudicating allegations of criminal violations that occurred during periods of anarchy characterized by the absence of domestic procedural law. This suggests a theoretical insight: the anti-impunity norm and its concern with punishment should be read in tandem with a meta-theory that emphasizes that international criminal procedure has an irreducibly intrinsic value because it returns legal process to procedural vacuums. The present literature generally ignores this non-consequentialist value. In addition to this theoretical reorientation, several practical consequences follow, including a revised understanding of the principle of legality, the importance of local procedures, the use of guilty pleas and plea bargaining, and in absentia trials. Although the meta-theory does not dictate which of these procedural devices should be used, it does provide a new standard with which to evaluate them.

Conference: BIICL Tenth Annual WTO Conference

On May 19-20, 2010, the British Institute of International and Comparative Law will host its tenth annual WTO conference. The program is available here. Here's the idea:

This will be the Tenth Annual WTO Conference and an apt time to consider past developments and predict future directions in WTO law. This annually held Conference is aimed at discussing topical issues and new developments in the WTO case law as well as putting them into the broader international legal and economic context. The objective of the conference is to analyse the impact of latest developments and look to potential future changes. The speakers are a mix of experienced WTO practitioners including leading lawyers, academics and WTO judges and officials.

New Issue: Global Governance

The latest issue of Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Institutions (Vol 16, no. 2, April-June 2010) is out. Contents include:

• The Goldstone Report on the Gaza Conflict: An Agora
• Tom Farer, Introduction
• Dinah PoKempner, Valuing the Goldstone Report
• Ed Morgan, The UN's Book of Judges
• Richard Falk, The Goldstone Report: Ordinary Text, Extraordinary Event
• Nigel S. Rodley, Assessing the Goldstone Report
• Tom Farer, Concluding Remarks
• Global Insights
• Fred Tanner, Addressing the Perils of Peace Operations: Toward a Global Peacekeeping System
• Christian Lotz, International Norms in Statebuilding: Finding a Pragmatic Approach
• Special Focus: Postwar Mediation in UN Peace Operations: The Role of the Special Representatives of the Secretary-General
• Timothy D. Sisk, Introduction: The SRSGs and the Management of Civil Wars
• Katia Papagianni, Mediation, Political Engagement, and Peacebuilding
• Marie-Joëlle Zahar, SRSG Mediation in Civil Wars: Revisiting the "Spoiler" Debate
• Cedric de Coning, Mediation and Peacebuilding: SRSGs and DSRSGs in Integrated Missions

New Issue: Journal of International Law and International Relations

The latest issue of the Journal of International Law and International Relations (Vol. 5, no. 2, Summer 2009) is out. This is a special issue on "Borders and Boundaries: Secession in the 21st Century." Contents include:

• Clifton van der Linden, Secession: Final Frontier for International Law or Site of Realpolitik Revival?
• Thomas D. Grant, Regulating the Creation of States: From Decolonization to Secession
• Miodrag A. Jovanović, Can Constitutions Be of Use in Solving Secessionist Conflicts?
• Zohar Nevo & Tamar Megiddo, Lessons From Kosovo: The Law of Statehood and Palestinian Unilateral Independence
• Nino Kemoklidze, The Kosovo Precedent and the ‘Moral Hazard’ of Secession
• Shauna Labman, Globalizing Rights and Going Wrong: The Right Path to Refugee Protection?

New Issue: World Trade Review

The latest issue of the World Trade Review (Vol. 9, no. 1, January 2010) is out. Contents include:

• Special Issue: Sixth report of the American Law Institute project on World Trade Organization Case Law covering 2008
• Lance Liebman, Foreword
• Henrik Horn & Petros C. Mavroidis, Introduction
• Simion A.B. Schropp & David Palmeter, Commentary on the Appellate Body Report in EC–Bananas III (Article 21.5): waiver-thin, or lock, stock, and metric ton?
• Thomas J. Prusa & Edwin Vermulst, Guilt by association: US – Measures Relating to Shrimp from Thailand and US – Customs Bond Directive for Merchandise Subject to Anti-Dumping/Countervailing Duties
• Chad P. Bown & Niall Meagher, Mexico–Olive Oil: Remedy without a cause?
• Meredith Crowley & Robert Howse, US–Stainless Steel (Mexico)
• Bernard Hoekman & Joel Trachtman, Continued suspense: EC–Hormones and WTO disciplines on discrimination and domestic regulation Appellate Body Reports: Canada/United States – Continued Suspension of Obligations in the EC – Hormones Dispute, WT/DS320/AB/R,WT/DS321/AB/R, adopted 14 November 2008
• William J. Davey & André Sapir, United States – Subsidies on Upland Cotton Recourse to Article 21.5 by Brazil, WT/DS267/AB/RW (2 June 2008)
• Jasper Wauters & Hylke Vandenbussche, China – Measures Affecting Imports of Automobile Parts
• Paola Conconi & Jan Wouters, Appellate Body Report, India – Additional and Extra-Additional Duties on Imports from the United States (WT/DS360/AB/R, adopted on 17 November 2008)
• Frieder Roessler, India – Additional and Extra-Additional Duties on Imports from the United States

Blin: Regards croisés sur le règlement des différends de l’Organisation mondiale du commerce (OMC)

Olivier Blin has published Regards croisés sur le règlement des différends de l’Organisation mondiale du commerce (OMC) (Bruylant 2009). The table of contents is available here. Here's the abstract:

Pour la plupart des observateurs, le système de règlement des différends de l’Organisation mondiale du commerce (OMC), fortement juridictionnalisé et dont la procédure est quasi automatique, constitue l’élément essentiel du système commercial multilatéral issu des accords de Marrakech de 1994. Véritable «bras armé » de l’OMC, ce dispositif original -mi-diplomatique, mi-juridique- s’est en effet avéré décisif pour assurer l’application effective des règles applicables aux échanges internationaux; en outre, largement utilisé par l’ensemble des Membres de l’OMC, son fonctionnement a donné naissance à une importante « jurisprudence » intéressant les États bien sûr, mais également les opérateurs économiques privés.

C’est à ce système qu’a été consacrée la demi-journée d’étude organisée par l’Institut de recherche de droit européen, international et comparé (IRDEIC), avec l’Institut des Études internationales et du développement (IEID), à l’Université de Toulouse I Sciences Sociales le 1er décembre 2006 ; cette manifestation, réunissant des praticiens et des universitaires s’intéressant au «droit de l’OMC» avait pour ambition d’offrir divers éclairages sur un système qui apparaît incontestablement comme l’aspect le plus dynamique du fonctionnement de l’OMC depuis plus de 14 années maintenant. L’occasion était ainsi également offerte aux participants d’étudier diverses tendances plus générales du droit international économique.

New Issue: Journal of the History of International Law

The latest issue of the Journal of the History of International Law / Revue d'histoire du droit international (Vol. 12, no. 1, 2010) is out. Contents include:

• Michel Morin, Des nations libres sans territoire? Les Autochtones et la colonisation de l'Amerique francaise du XVIe au XVIIIe siecle
• Elizabeth Chadwick, Merchant Ship Conversion in Warfare, the Falklands (Malvinas) Conflict and the Requisition of the QE2
• Amnon Altman, Tracing the Earliest Recorded Concepts of International Law. (5) The Near East 1200330 BCE

New Issue: Goettingen Journal of International Law

The latest issue of the Goettingen Journal of International Law (Vol. 2, no. 1, 2010) is out. Contents include:

• Special Issue: Strategies for Solving Global Crises – The Financial Crisis and Beyond
• Roman Goldbach, Thorsten Hasche, Jörn Müller & Stefan Schüder, Global Governance of the World Financial Crisis?
• Julia Becker, Marcus Höreth & Jared Sonnicksen, The National Environmental Premium in Germany: A Rapid Reaction to the Financial Crisis at the Expense of Democracy?
• Luca Schicho, Pride and Prejudice: How the Financial Crisis Made Us Reconsider SWFs
• Régis Bismuth, The Independence of Domestic Financial Regulators: An Underestimated Structural Issue in International Financial Governance
• Stefan Handke, Yes, We Can (Control Them)! – Regulatory Agencies: Trustees or Agents?
• Laurissa Mühlich, South-South Regional Monetary Cooperation: Mere Myth or New Opportunity for Financial Stability?
• Franziska Müller, Storming, Norming, Performing – Implications of the Financial Crisis in Southern Africa
• Jakob Wurm, Who Guards the Guardians: Legal Implications for the Operation of International Financial Institutions in Times of Financial Crisis
• Maria Agius, Dying a Thousand Deaths: Recurring Emergencies and Exceptional Measures in International Law
• An Hertogen, An Unusual Suspect? Monetary Sovereignty and Financial Instability
• Stefan Kirchner, Effective Law-Making in Times of Global Crisis – A Role for International Organizations
• Mariusz Golecki, The Snake and the Tail – Theory of Derivatives’ Regulation and the Asymmetry of the Global Financial Crisis
• Babette Never, Regional Power Shifts and Climate Knowledge Systems in (Global) Climate Governance
• Marianne Ojo, Beyond the Financial Crisis: Addressing Risk Challenges in a Changing Financial Environment
• Florian Süssenguth, The Productive Semantics of the Crisis
• Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, Lending and Sovereign Insolvency: A Fair and Efficient Criterion to Distribute Losses among Creditors

Rieter: Preventing Irreparable Harm: Provisional Measures in International Human Rights Adjudication

Eva Rieter has published Preventing Irreparable Harm: Provisional Measures in International Human Rights Adjudication (Intersentia 2010). Here's the abstract:

International human rights adjudicators, while facing urgent cases, have used provisional measures in order to prevent irreparable harm, e.g. to order States to halt an expulsion, the execution of a death sentence, destruction of the natural habitat, or to ensure access to health care in detention or protection against death threats.

In the practice of the various adjudicators the traditional concept of provisional measures has undergone a process of humanisation. This book addresses the question how such provisional measures can be made as persuasive as possible. Apart from the Inter-American Court, none of the human rights adjudicators motivate or publish their provisional measures. Yet this book analyses their (best) practices and obstacles, determines the underlying rationale for their use of provisional measures and establishes the core of the concept of provisional measures that all adjudicators have in common. It argues that clarity on what belongs to the core of the concept, and on what does not belong to the concept at all, enhances the persuasive force of provisional measures.

The practices of the international adjudicators made accessible in this book may prove useful in the ongoing cross-fertilization occurring among these adjudicators. Moreover, the analysis provided allows individual victims, their counsel, NGOs as well as international institutions to address more effectively urgent human rights cases.

New Volume: Chinese (Taiwan) Yearbook of International Law and Affairs

The latest volume of the Chinese (Taiwan) Yearbook of International Law and Affairs (Vol. 25, 2007) is out. Contents include:

• Yann-huei Song, Prompt Release of Fishing Vessels: The Hoshinmaru and Tomimaru Cases (Japan v. Russian Federation) and the Implications for Taiwan
• Dafydd Fell, Adapting to the New System: Taiwanese Political Parties’ Legislative Candidate Selection in 2008 in Comparative Perspective
• Hsu-hua Chou, Coalition-Building as Taiwan’s Strategic Option in the WTO Lawmaking Negotiations
• Mario Esteban, The Diplomatic Battle between Beijing and Taipei in Latin America and the Caribbean
• Kevin Chun-Ming Chen, Free Trade Agreement between the Republic of China (Taiwan), the Republic of El Salvador and the Republic of Honduras
• Kuang-Wei Chueh, A Comparative Study of Fair Use between Taiwan and the United States and Future Legislative Suggestions to Taiwan

Conference: International Investment and ADR: Preventing and Managing Investment Treaty Conflict (Reminder)

As noted previously, the Washington and Lee University School of Law and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development are sponsoring a Joint Symposium on "International Investment and ADR: Preventing and Managing Investment Treaty Conflict" today in Lexington, Virginia. For those unable to attend, the live conference proceedings will be streamed, and remote participation is possible through Twitter (#wluadr) and Facebook. On the conference website, there are rapporteur reports (prepared by W&L students) that summarize the pre-conference brainstorming discussions.

Workshop: Posner

Eric Posner (Univ. of Chicago - Law) will give a talk today at the Duke University School of Law Global Law Workshop on "Foreign Affairs Legalism: A Critique."

Romaniuk: Multilateral Counter-Terrorism: The Global Politics of Cooperation and Contestation

Peter Romaniuk (City Univ. of New York - Political Science) has published Multilateral Counter-Terrorism: The global politics of cooperation and contestation (Routledge 2010). Here's the abstract:

Contemporary terrorism is a global phenomenon requiring a globalized response. In this book Peter Romaniuk aims to assess to what extent states seek multilateral responses to the threats they face from terrorists. Providing a concise history and a clear discussion of current patterns of counter-terrorist co-operation, this book: analyses a wide spectrum of institutions from the United Nations and its various bodies to military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies; explains the full range of cooperative counter-terrorist activities and the patterns across them, from the use of intelligence and military force to criminal law measures, financial controls and diplomacy; examines under what conditions states cooperate to suppress terrorism; and evaluates how existing international institutions been affected by the US-led "global war on terror," launched after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The book contests that the whilst there are several notable examples of successful counterterrorism cooperation, past and present, this work suggests that the broader trend can only be understood if we accept that across the domains of counter-terrorism policy, cooperation often resembles a competition for influence over outcomes.