Bell: An Economic Analysis of Territorial Sovereignty in International Law

Abraham Bell (Univ. of San Diego - Law) has posted An Economic Analysis of Territorial Sovereignty in International Law (in Research Handbook on the Economics of Public International Law, Eugene Kontorovich ed., forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

The laws of territorial sovereignty are among the earliest to have been developed in modern international law, and are among the most important. While this would seem to indicate the potential attractiveness of normative economic analyses of the laws of territorial sovereignty, there is unfortunately little scholarship on territorial sovereignty law that utilizes the insights of economic analysis. This essay aims to begin filling that gap by utilizing insights from a related field of private law: property. The doctrines of territorial sovereignty bear a strong resemblance to the laws of property in municipal law. Territorial sovereignty, like property; contains rules of acquisition, transfer, and abandonment. It uses chains of title to evaluate claims, and adopts standard property maxims such as nemo dat quod non habet, (one cannot transfer what one does not have). The Essay presents several areas of research in the field of property law that can fruitfully be incorporated into economic analysis of territorial sovereignty, and suggests the means for incorporating the insights. Unfortunately, economic analysis of property law can only partially fill the gaps in analysis of territorial sovereignty. Many of the concerns of the law of territorial sovereignty differ significantly from those of property. The Essay, thus, considers future potential directions for research, and concludes with observations on the limitations of the analogy between property and territorial sovereignty.

Büthe & Cheng: Private Transnational Governance of Economic Development: International Development Aid

Tim Büthe (Duke Univ. - Political Science) & Cindy Cheng (Duke Univ. - Political Science) have posted Private Transnational Governance of Economic Development: International Development Aid. Here's the abstract:

This paper examines the role of private actors in international development aid, focusing on four new actors or actors who have in recent years taken on new roles: (1) transnational aid NGOs as a channel of delivery for public (governmental) development aid; (2) transnational aid NGOs as development agenda-setters; (3) foundations and corporations as sources of development aid; (4) transnational aid NGOs as private providers of privately funded aid. For each of them, we discuss the sources of their power and influence and examine how ideas about development and aid have shaped the rise of these new players, identifying throughout promising and important areas for future research. In the final section, we consider peer-to-peer development aid and other innovative attempts to solve pervasive accountability problems in development aid. The paper was written as a chapter for the forthcoming Handbook on Global Economic Governance (Routledge), for which is has been accepted for publication in 2013. The posted version is the pre-copyedit manuscript.

Abbott, Green, & Keohane: Organizational Ecology and Organizational Strategies in World Politics

Kenneth W. Abbott (Arizona State Univ. - Law), Jessica F. Green (Case Western Reserve Univ. - Political Science), & Robert O. Keohane (Princeton Univ. - Woodrow Wilson School) have posted Organizational Ecology and Organizational Strategies in World Politics. Here's the abstract:

The landscape of global governance is changing. Growth in the number of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) has slowed markedly, while other organizational forms — from transgovernmental networks to private transnational organizations (PTOs) — have emerged and are expanding rapidly. Organizational ecology theory explains such changes in organizational diversity, growth rates and composition with reference to the suitability of organizational forms for current conditions, inherent growth rates and changes in conditions of resource competition over time. We supplement these variables with a micro-level focus on organizational strategies. IGOs and PTOs behave differently because they vary in authority and strategic flexibility. IGOs, backed by the authority of states, seek to dominate and protect their “turf;” they expand their activities to fill the available regulatory space, constraining further growth. But PTOs are more nimble, and so can adopt strategies to avoid costly competition, such as finding sparsely occupied policy niches, facilitating rapid growth. Evidence from the domain of climate change supports the plausibility of our theory.

Wouters, Odermatt, & Ramopoulos: Worlds Apart? Comparing the Approaches of the European Court of Justice and the EU Legislature to International Law

Jan Wouters (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven - Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies), Jed Odermatt (KU Leuven - Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies), & Thomas Ramopoulos (KU Leuven - Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies) have posted Worlds Apart? Comparing the Approaches of the European Court of Justice and the EU Legislature to International Law. Here's the abstract:

This paper examines and compares the approaches taken by the European Court of Justice and the EU legislature towards international law. Although the Court and legislature are tasked with different roles, such a comparison is warranted, especially since many of the complex legal problems facing the EU regarding international law in recent years have arisen in part due to a growing divergence between the two approaches. We begin by looking at the EU Treaties. Although little guidance is given on how international law is to be applied within the EU legal order, the Treaties are not entirely silent. Numerous references to international law and multilateralism, especially those included post-Lisbon, guide the Court and the legislature, helping to minimize inconsistencies between their approaches. We examine the Court’s approach to international law, which, especially in the light of recent case law, is much less ‘open’ than it is often portrayed. It stands in contrast to that of the legislature, which shows greater willingness to take into account international law. We argue that the Court’s more guarded approach, often motivated by a desire to preserve the autonomy of EU law, is largely unwarranted. Rather, the Court should enter into a more open dialogue with international law, helping the EU to, “contribute ... to the strict observance and the development of international law", as prescribed by Article 3(5) TEU.

New Issue: Human Rights Law Review

The latest issue of the Human Rights Law Review (Vol. 13, no. 2, June 2013) is out. Contents include:

• Articles
• Suzanne Egan, Strengthening the United Nations Human Rights Treaty Body System
• Gillian Moon, Trading in Good Faith? Importing States’ Economic Human Rights Obligations into the WTO’s Doha Round Negotiations
• Giulio Itzcovich, One, None and One Hundred Thousand Margins of Appreciations: The Lautsi Case
• Ingrid Leijten, From Stec to Valkov: Possessions and Margins in the Social Security Case Law of the European Court of Human Rights
• Recent Developments
• Sangeeta Shah, Questions Relating to the Obligation to Prosecute or Extradite (Belgium v Senegal)
• Gauthier de Beco, The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on a Communications Procedure: Good News?
• Inga T. Winkler & Claudia Mahler Interpreting the Right to a Dignified Minimum Existence: A New Era in German Socio-Economic Rights Jurisprudence?
• Luc Leboeuf & Evangelia (Lilian) Tsourdi, Towards a Re-definition of Persecution? Assessing the Potential Impact of Y and Z

Newman & Zaring: Regulatory Networks: Power, Legitimacy, and Compliance

Abraham Newman (Georgetown Univ. - School of Foreign Service) & David T. Zaring (Univ. of Pennsylvania - Wharton School) have posted Regulatory Networks: Power, Legitimacy, and Compliance (in Interdisciplinary Perspectives on International Law and International Relations: The State of the Art, Jeffrey Dunoff & Mark Pollack eds. forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

This paper offers a scholarly review of the international relations and international law literature on regulatory networks. Although generalizations are necessarily imprecise, we suggest that the international relations oeuvre has proved particularly attentive to the way that power is wielded within these networks. International law scholars have focused more on the description of networks and considerations of their legitimacy. We suggest that, although the literatures have diverged, future work may be ripe for reintegration, as both IL and IR scholars increasingly turn their attention to the same issue: compliance with network mandates. Thus, we present a collaborative research agenda on regulatory networks highlighting issues of participation, authority resources, regime complexity, and interdependent implementation, which we hope will be of interests to scholars from both fields.

Special Issue: Realizing the Right to Health Through a Framework Convention on Global Health?

The latest issue of Health and Human Rights (Vol. 15, no. 1, 2013) focuses on "Realizing the Right to Health Through a Framework Convention on Global Health?" Contents include:

• Martín Hevia & Carlos Herrera Vacaflor, Effective access to justice against state and nonstate actors in the Framework Convention on Global Health: A proposal
• Lance Gable & Benjamin Mason Meier, Global health rights: Employing human rights to develop and implement the Framework Convention on Global Health
• Suerie Moon, Respecting the right to access to medicines: Implications of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights for the pharmaceutical industry
• Emmanuel Kabengele Mpinga, Tshimungu Kandolo, Henk Verloo, Ngoyi K. Zacharie Bukonda, Ngianga-Bakwin Kandala, & Philippe Chastonay, Traditional/alternative medicines and the right to health: Key elements for a convention on global health
• Sophie Smyth & Anna Triponel, Funding global health
• Eric A. Friedman, Lawrence O. Gostin, & Kent Buse, Advancing the right to health through global organizations: The potential role of a Framework Convention on Global Health
• Ella Scheepers, The Framework Convention on Global Health: A tool for empowering the HIV/AIDS movements in Senegal and South Africa
• Kent Buse, Patrick Eba, Jason Sigurdson, Kate Thomson, & Susan Timberlake, Leveraging HIV-related human rights achievements through a Framework Convention on Global Health
• Leigh Haynes, David Legge, Leslie London, David McCoy, David Sanders, & Claudio Schuftan, Will the struggle for health equity and social justice be best served by a Framework Convention on Global Health?
• Steven J. Hoffman & John-Arne Røttingen, Dark sides of the proposed Framework Convention on Global Health’s many virtues: A systematic review and critical analysis

Job Openings: Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (Research Fellow/Senior Research Fellow)

The Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law is seeking to make two hires: a Research Fellow (PhD candidate) and a Senior Research Fellow (Postdoc), both to work with Anne Peters. The advertisement for the Research Fellow is here (English/Deutsch) and for the Senior Research Fellow is here (English/Deutsch).

Thies: International Trade Disputes and EU Liability

Anne Thies (Univ. of Reading - Law) has published International Trade Disputes and EU Liability (Cambridge Univ. Press 2013). Here's the abstract:

The European Union has become the respondent of several international trade disputes. This book examines the right to compensation for damage resulting from retaliatory measures imposed under the system of the World Trade Organization in disputes triggered by the EU. Anne Thies evaluates the implications of the EU's membership in the WTO for its domestic system of rights and judicial protection. Emphasising the necessity to maintain EU standards of protection independently of the external dimension of EU action, the book offers suggestions on how the current gap of protection could be filled while upholding the scope of manoeuvre of the EU institutions on the international plane. Moreover, it places the issue in its broader context of the relationship between international and EU law on the one hand, and the discretion of the EU as a global actor and standards of individual rights protection under EU law on the other.

New Issue: Humanity

The latest issue of Humanity (Vol. 4, no. 2, July 2013) is out. Contents include:

• Jan Eckel, The International League for the Rights of Man, Amnesty International, and the Changing Fate of Human Rights Activism from the 1940s through the 1970s
• Johannes Paulmann, Conjunctures in the History of International Humanitarian Aid during the Twentieth Century
• Bradley R. Simpson, Self-Determination, Human Rights, and the End of Empire in the 1970s
• Robert Vitalis, The Midnight Ride of Kwame Nkrumah and Other Fables of Bandung (Ban-doong)
• Martha Lagace & Jens Meierhenrich, Photo Essay: Tropes of Memory
• John R. Wallach, Dignity: The Last Bastion of Liberalism
• Michael E. Latham, Development at War

Lamb: Ethics and the Laws of War: The Moral Justification of Legal Norms

Antony Lamb has published Ethics and the Laws of War: The Moral Justification of Legal Norms (Routledge 2013). Here's the abstract:

This book is an examination of the permissions, prohibitions and obligations found in just war theory, and the moral grounds for laws concerning war. Pronouncing an action or course of actions to be prohibited, permitted or obligatory by just war theory does not thereby establish the moral grounds of that prohibition, permission or obligation; nor does such a pronouncement have sufficient persuasive force to govern actions in the public arena. So what are the moral grounds of laws concerning war, and what ought these laws to be? Adopting the distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello, the author argues that rules governing conduct in war can be morally grounded in a form of rule-consequentialism of negative duties. Looking towards the public rules, the book argues for a new interpretation of existing laws, and in some cases the implementation of completely new laws. These include recognising rights of encompassing groups to necessary self-defence; recognising a duty to rescue; and considering all persons neither in uniform nor bearing arms as civilians and therefore fully immune from attack, thus ruling out ‘targeted’ or ‘named’ killings.

New Issue: International Affairs

The latest issue of International Affairs (Vol. 89, no. 4, July 2013) is out. Contents include:

• Roy Allison, Russia and Syria: explaining alignment with a regime in crisis
• Matt Waldman, System failure: the underlying causes of US policy-making errors in Afghanistan
• Theo Farrell & Antonio Giustozzi, The Taliban at war: inside the Helmand insurgency, 2004–2012
• Peter R. Neumann, The trouble with radicalization
• Peter Ferdinand & Jue Wang, China and the IMF: from mimicry towards pragmatic international institutional pluralism
• Brantly Womack, Beyond win–win: rethinking China's international relationships in an era of economic uncertainty
• Rod Lyon, The challenges confronting US extended nuclear assurance in Asia
• Ramesh Thakur, Follow the yellowcake road: balancing Australia's national interests against international anti-nuclear interests
• Christopher M. Dent, Paths ahead for East Asia and Asia–Pacific regionalism
• Frédéric Grare, Pakistan's foreign and security policies after the 2013 general election: the judge, the politician and the military

New Volume: Yearbook on Arbitration and Mediation

The latest volume of the Yearbook on Arbitration and Mediation (Vol. 4, 2012) is out. Contents include:

• Symposium: U.S. Arbitration Law in the Wake of AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion
• John D. Feerick, Keynote Address
• Ian D. Mitchell & Richard A. Bales, Concepcion and Preemption under the Federal Arbitration Act
• Jill Gross, AT&T Mobility and FAA Over-Preemption
• Hiro N. Aragaki, AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion and the Antidiscrimination Theory of FAA Preemption
• Sandra K. Partridge, Arbitration Post-AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion at the American Arbitration Association - A Service Provider's Perspective
• Christopher R. Drahozal, Arbitration Innumeracy
• Steven C. Bennett, Does AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion Justify the Arbitration Fairness Act?
• Michael A. Helfand, Purpose, Precedent, and Politics: Why Concepcion Covers Less than You Think
• Terry F. Moritz, The Fallout from AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion: Parameters Established by the Interpretations of Lower Courts

Charlesworth & Chinkin: The Creation of UN Women

Hilary Charlesworth (Australian National Univ. - Law) & Christine Chinkin (London School of Economics - Law) have posted The Creation of UN Women (Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

The notion of institutional coherence has dominated the agenda for reform of the United Nations (UN) in this century. Motivated by what he saw as the weakness of the fractured UN system, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan led an ambitious reform program throughout his term of office (1996-2005) seeking to ensure greater UN effectiveness through streamlining institutional functions. This concern has been inherited by Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon. A significant development in the reform process has been the creation in 2010 of the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, known as UN Women, which came into operation on January 1, 2011. UN Women incorporates four existing parts of the UN system dealing with women and has been styled as the new UN “gender architecture.” In this article we consider the implications of this new structure for the situation of women worldwide from the perspective of international law. Is UN Women simply a bureaucratic rearrangement or is it greater than the sum of its parts?

New Volume: Polish Yearbook of International Law

The latest volume of the Polish Yearbook of International Law (Vol. 32, 2012) is out. Contents include:

• Wojciech Sadurski, Democratic Legitimacy of the European Union: A Diagnosis and Some Modest Proposals
• Roman Kwiecień, Does the State Still Matter? Sovereignty, Legitimacy and International Law
• Anna Wyrozumska, Execution on an Embassy Bank Account
• Malgorzata Fitzmaurice, Some Reflections on Legal and Philosophical Foundations of International Environmental Law
• Susana Camargo Vieira, Governance, Good Governance, Earth System Governance . . . and International Law
• Alice de Jonge, What Are the Principles of International Law Applicable to the Resolution of Sovereign Debt Crises?
• Mia Swart, The Lubanga Reparations Decision: A Missed Opportunity?
• Adam Bodnar & Irmina Pacho, Targeted Killings (Drone Strikes) and the European Convention on Human Rights
• Aleksandra Dłubak, Problems Surrounding Arrest Warrants Issued by the International Criminal Court: A Decade of Judicial Practice
• Maurizio Arcari, Limits to Security Council Powers under the UN Charter and Issues of Charter Interpretation
• Natividad Fernández Sola, The European Union as a Regional Organization within the Meaning of the UN Charter
• Dagmar Richter, Judicial Review of Security Council Decisions – A Modern Vision of the Administration of Justice?
• Pavel Šturma, Does the Rule of Law also Apply to the Security Council? Limiting Its Powers by Way of Responsibility and Accountability
• Andreas Zimmermann, The Security Council and the Obligation to Prevent Genocide and War Crimes

Reinisch & Bachmayer: Customary International Law in Austrian Courts

August Reinisch (Univ. of Vienna - Law) & Peter Bachmayer (Univ. of Vienna - Law) have posted Customary International Law in Austrian Courts. Here's the abstract:

National courts, when dealing with cases of immunity, state succession problems, expropriation claims or cross-border environmental claims, often have to resort to customary international law which requires them to identify the normative content of such rules. Customary international law before Austrian courts has been analyzed and established in strikingly contrasting ways over the years: While the in-depth discussion of foreign and domestic judicial practice that the seminal Austrian Supreme Court case of Hoffmann v. Dralle offered in 1950 amounts to an exceptionally diligent analysis in the area of international law, subsequent cases indicate a much more superficial approach: While a few cases have offered at least some light form of analysis with a limited number of foreign court judgments discussed, the vast majority of Austrian jurisprudence dealing with customary international law often merely restates the elements of state practice and opinio iuris, usually by relying on the writings of legal scholars both in the area of international law as well as domestic substantive or procedural law. By presenting a variety of court cases of the past decades, this study focuses on analyzing the different approaches that Austrian courts have taken in identifying rules of customary international law. It will try to give reasons as to why national courts often seem reluctant to engage in a more thorough analysis of custom and why such an approach could be doctrinally dangerous.

Lewis: Plurilateral Trade Negotiations: Supplanting or Supplementing the Multilateral Trading System?

Meredith Kolsky Lewis (State Univ. of New York, Buffalo - Law) has posted an ASIL Insight on Plurilateral Trade Negotiations: Supplanting or Supplementing the Multilateral Trading System?