Talmon: The South China Sea Arbitration: Observations on the Award on Jurisdiction and Admissibility

Stefan A.G. Talmon (Univ. of Bonn - Law) has posted The South China Sea Arbitration: Observations on the Award on Jurisdiction and Admissibility (Chinese Journal of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

In the South China Sea Arbitration between the Republic of the Philippines and the People’s Republic of China the Arbitral Tribunal constituted under Annex VII to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on 29 October 2015 issued its Award on Jurisdiction and Admissibility. The Tribunal rejected China’s objection that the disputes presented by the Philippines concerned, in essence, the extent of China’s territorial sovereignty in the South China Sea and were thus outside the Tribunal’s jurisdiction. The Tribunal found, inter alia, that the Philippines’ submissions reflected disputes between the parties concerning the interpretation or application of the Convention, that there was no other State indispensable to the proceedings, and that the Philippines had met the requirement under Article 283 of the Convention that the parties exchange views regarding the settlement of their disputes. This paper examines the Tribunal’s findings with regard to each and every of the Philippines’ 15 final submissions and demonstrates that some of its findings on the Tribunal’s jurisdiction and the admissibility of the Philippines’ claims are seriously flawed and based on procedural irregularities.

Chilton & Sarfaty: The Limitations of Supply Chain Disclosure Regimes

Adam S. Chilton (Univ. of Chicago - Law) & Galit A. Sarfaty (Univ. of British Columbia – Law) have posted The Limitations of Supply Chain Disclosure Regimes (Stanford Journal of International Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Although the past few decades have seen numerous cases of human rights violations within corporate supply chains, companies are frequently not held accountable for the abuses because there is a significant governance gap with respect to the regulation of corporate activity abroad. In response, governments have begun to pass mandatory disclosure laws that require companies to release detailed information on their supply chains in the hopes that these laws will create pressure that will improve corporate accountability.

In this paper, we argue that supply chain disclosure regimes are unlikely to have a large effect on consumer behavior, and as a result, their effectiveness at reducing human rights abuses will likely be limited. This is not only because scholarship on mandatory disclosure regimes in other areas has suggested that these regimes are frequently unsuccessful, but also because these problems are likely to be exacerbated in the human rights context. We argue that this is due to the fact that supply chain disclosures do not provide information on actual products, the information in the disclosures only provides weak proxies for human right outcomes, and the risks associated with supply chains vary dramatically across industries.

In order to test our argument, we engaged a leading market research firm to field a series of experiments that were designed to test how well consumers understand supply chain disclosures. In our experiments, the nationally representative sample of respondents consistently rated disclosures reporting low levels of due diligence almost as highly as disclosures that reported a high level of due diligence. Based on these results, we argue that consumer-oriented supply chain disclosure regimes designed to improve corporate human rights behavior should be reconsidered.

Call for Papers: Domestic Humanitarian Law

The Section on International Human Rights of the Association of American Law Schools has issued a call for papers for its program at the 2017 AALS Annual Meeting. The theme is: "Domestic Humanitarian Law." Here's the call:

CALL FOR PAPERS
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS
SECTION PANEL
2017 AALS ANNUAL MEETING
January 3-7, 2017, San Francisco, CA

The AALS Section on International Human Rights is pleased to announce that it will sponsor a call for papers for its program during the 2017 AALS Annual Meeting in San Francisco, CA. The program will be called Domestic Humanitarian Law. It will take place during the Annual Meeting, which is scheduled for January 3-7, 2017. We anticipate selecting up to two speakers from this call for papers to present their work during our Section’s program.

The Section’s 2017 program will focus on Domestic Humanitarian Law. From Nuremberg to Phnom Penh, humanitarian law over the past 60 years has developed almost exclusively in international (or hybrid) tribunals). What about within domestic legal systems? International tribunals, for all of their virtues, continue to be extraordinary, existing as it were above the "legal fray." This has ramifications for the reception, implementation and respect for humanitarian law. This panel will investigate how domestic courts handle war crimes, and crimes against humanity, and other atrocities. What are the virtues, and drawbacks, of domestic adjudication? Does this lead to a stronger respect for humanitarian law?

Deadline and Submission

The deadline to submit a paper is September 15, 2016. Please email submissions in Word or PDF format to Section Chair, Milena Sterio (m.sterio@csuohio.edu) and Section Chair-Elect, Tim Webster (tjw71@case.edu). In selecting proposals, priority will be given to new voices in international human rights (i.e., individuals who have not previously presented a paper at AALS on the topic of international human rights). Presentations at various stages of completion will be considered. Decisions will be made in late September.

Publication

Papers may have already been accepted for publication but must not have been published prior to the Annual Meeting. The section has no plans to publish the selected papers, and individual presenters should continue to seek their own publishers.

Eligibility

Per AALS rules, this call for papers is only open to full-time faculty at an AALS member school. Presenters will be expected to cover their own costs in attending the AALS annual meeting.

For any questions or inquiries please contact Milena Sterio at m.sterio@csuohio.edu.

Henckels: When the ‘Exception’ is an Element of the Rule: The Structural Status of Investment Treaty Exception Clauses

Caroline Henckels (Monash Univ. - Law) has posted When the ‘Exception’ is an Element of the Rule: The Structural Status of Investment Treaty Exception Clauses. Here's the abstract:

This paper discusses the structural status of exception clauses in investment treaties. It addresses two related questions: (1) whether an exception is an element of the substantive investment obligations in the sense of being a limitation on their scope, such that those obligations are inapplicable to measures that come within the exception — or whether an exception is an affirmative defence that operates to justify a prima facie breach of the obligations; and (2) the relationship between security and public order exceptions and the defence of necessity at customary international law — in particular, whether such clauses are lex specialis vis-à-vis the defence of necessity. Investment tribunals have reached differing conclusions as to these issues, creating uncertainty about the nature of states’ treaty commitments to foreign investors. Several claims remain outstanding against Argentina relating to the emergency measures it adopted in response to its economic crisis of 2001-2002, and a treaty exception is likely to be a significant issue in these cases. Moreover, the increasing prevalence of exception clauses in newly concluded and proposed treaties (such as the CETA and the TTIP) suggests that there is a need to better understand their status. Examining the decided cases and considering the implications of different interpretations of the structural status of exception clauses permits two conclusions, subject always to the text of the provision at issue: (1) that exceptions are limitations on the scope of the treaty obligations, and are not affirmative defences; (2) that security and public order exceptions are conceptually separate from the customary defence of necessity, and are not lex specialis manifestations of the defence between the treaty parties. These conclusions have practical implications for the allocation of the burden of proof.

Merry: The Seductions of Quantification: Measuring Human Rights, Gender Violence, and Sex Trafficking

Sally Engle Merry (New York Univ. - Anthropology) has published The Seductions of Quantification: Measuring Human Rights, Gender Violence, and Sex Trafficking (Univ. of Chicago Press 2016). Here's the abstract:

We live in a world where seemingly everything can be measured. We rely on indicators to translate social phenomena into simple, quantified terms, which in turn can be used to guide individuals, organizations, and governments in establishing policy. Yet counting things requires finding a way to make them comparable. And in the process of translating the confusion of social life into neat categories, we inevitably strip it of context and meaning—and risk hiding or distorting as much as we reveal.

With The Seductions of Quantification, leading legal anthropologist Sally Engle Merry investigates the techniques by which information is gathered and analyzed in the production of global indicators on human rights, gender violence, and sex trafficking. Although such numbers convey an aura of objective truth and scientific validity, Merry argues persuasively that measurement systems constitute a form of power by incorporating theories about social change in their design but rarely explicitly acknowledging them. For instance, the US State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report, which ranks countries in terms of their compliance with antitrafficking activities, assumes that prosecuting traffickers as criminals is an effective corrective strategy—overlooking cultures where women and children are frequently sold by their own families. As Merry shows, indicators are indeed seductive in their promise of providing concrete knowledge about how the world works, but they are implemented most successfully when paired with context-rich qualitative accounts grounded in local knowledge.

New Issue: Revista Electrónica de Estudios Internacionales

The latest issue of the Revista Electrónica de Estudios Internacionales (No. 31, June 2016) is out. Contents include:

• Estudios
• Antoni Pigrau Solé, El caso de la isla De Diego García: Territorio sin Derecho Internacional, personas sin derechos
• Milagros Álvarez-Verdugo, La Agencia Internacional de la Energía en el escenario energético mundial y sus relaciones con Estados no miembros
• Mª Dolores Bollo Arocena, La declaración unilateral de aceptación de la competencia de la Corte Penal Internacional (artículo 12.3 del ECPI). De la formulación estatutaria a su puesta en práctica (Costa de Marfil, Uganda, Palestina, Ucrania...)
• Rosario Huesa Vinaixa, La jurisdicción extraterritorial española sobre el tráfico ilícito de armas y los tratados internacionales suscritos por España
• Carmen Pérez González, La tipificación de la trata de seres humanos como crimen contra la humanidad: Una contribución al debate en torno al elemento político de los crímenes
• Xavier Pons Rafols, Nuevos desarrollos en la lucha internacional contra el tráfico de órganos humanos: El Convenio de Santiago de Compostela
• Notas
• Francisco Javier Zamora Cabot, Acceso de las víctimas a la justicia y conductas en el extranjero: El Tribunal Supremo de los Estados Unidos da otra vuelta de tuerca en el caso OBB Personenverkehr v. Sachs, sobre inmunidad de jurisdicción
• María Cervera Vallterra, La fragilidad de la República Democrática del Congo: Problemas y soluciones a la posesión de recursos minerales
• Beatriz Iñarritu, La nueva gobernanza económica de la Unión Europea: Propuesta de sistematización de elementos, procedimientos, mecanismos y herramientas
• Mireya Castillo Daudí, Libertad de circulación y soberanía del Estado: Posibles límites derivados de obligaciones de protección internacional
• Laura Íñigo Álvarez, Los grupos armados ante el Derecho Internacional contemporáneo. Obligaciones y responsabilidad
• Luisa Barrenechea, Mecanismos e iniciativas de cooperación hispano-marroquí contra el terrorismo
• Antía Mato Bouzas, The Kashmir space: Bordering and belonging across the line of control

New Issue: Questions of International Law

The latest issue of Questions of International Law / Questioni di Diritto Internazionale (no. 29, 2016) is out. Contents include:

• Questioning the development of international law with regard to third-party countermeasures: Lessons from Libya, Syria, Ukraine and beyond
• Introduced by Enrico Milano and Paolo Palchetti
• Martin Dawidowicz, Third-party countermeasures: A progressive development of international law?
• Carlo Focarelli, International Law and Third-Party Countermeasures in the Age of Global Instant Communication

Meyer: Local Liability

Timothy Meyer (Vanderbilt Univ. - Law) has posted Local Liability (North Carolina Law Review, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

On February 4, 2016, the United States and eleven other countries signed the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) — the most far-reaching free trade agreement since the World Trade Organization’s founding in 1995. The TPP’s potential ratification promises to be one of the major fights during the last months of the Obama Presidency. Unlike most prior trade agreements, the TPP’s purported benefits do not come primarily from reductions in tariffs paid on goods at the border. Instead, they flow from assumptions that so-called non-tariff barriers — such as discrimination against foreign investors or service providers — will fall significantly under TPP.

Yet to date unnoticed among the TPP’s 30 chapters, schedules, and annexes are provisions that exempt state, provincial, and local measures from compliance with many of the agreement’s nondiscrimination rules. Under the TPP, subnational governments such as California or Ontario — governments with substantial regulatory authority over regional economies much larger than many national economies — may indefinitely continue existing discriminatory policies against foreign investors or foreign service providers. These exemptions represent the multilateralization of a trend underway for a number of years in U.S. treaty practice: efforts to eliminate the federal government’s liability for subnational action that the federal government often cannot control and of which it is frequently unaware. Indeed, 41% of the claims brought under the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have challenged subnational government action. These exemptions also reflect a growing pushback against ISDS.

Contrary to U.S. treaty practice and ISDS’s critics, this Article argues that foreign investors or aggrieved trading partners should be able to make their claims directly against subnational governments such as California, rather than only against national governments like the United States. I make the case by presenting and analyzing international liability rules for local action. Governments use three kinds of local liability rules: 1) immunity, under which neither the subnational nor national governments are answerable under international law for the actions of a subnational government; 2) vicarious liability, under which nations are liable for the actions of their subnational units even if they do not control them as a matter of domestic law; and 3) direct liability, under which a claimant’s case is brought directly against the offending subnational government. Vicarious liability is the default rule under the international law of state responsibility. However, immunity — the rule under an increasing number of economic treaties, including TPP’s investment and services chapters — is on the rise. Direct liability is rare, but exists in certain investment agreements and applies to the European Union.

The choice among these liability rules is the most important front in efforts to reconcile a robust federalism with the increasing importance of local governments to international affairs — an ongoing battle in the United States, the European Union, and other federal nations. Direct liability best achieves the twin goals of fostering local governance and international cooperation for three reasons. First, direct liability would force subnational governments to internalize the costs of their actions, thereby deterring violations. Under vicarious liability, the costs of violations are born by the national government, and under immunity they are born by the claimant who is left with no recourse. Second, a move to direct liability would have beneficial distributional consequences, ensuring that powerful federal nations do not force liberalization in developing countries while protecting discriminatory practices within their own countries. Third, a move to direct liability recognizes the considerably more important role subnational governments play in international affairs today. From climate change and renewable energy to international trade, subnational governments are incredibly active in tackling matters of international concern. They should also bear responsibility for their actions.

Bodansky & Spiro: Executive Agreements Plus

Daniel Bodansky (Arizona State Univ. - Law) & Peter J. Spiro (Temple Univ. - Law) have posted Executive Agreements Plus (Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Can President Obama join the Paris climate change agreement without seeking the approval of the Senate or Congress? According to the conventional, tripartite paradigm for analyzing the president’s treaty-making power, this question is conceptualized as an issue of the president’s independent constitutional power. If the Paris Agreement is not approved by the Senate as an Article II treaty or by Congress as a congressional-executive agreement, then it must be a sole executive agreement.

This article challenges the conventional, tripartite paradigm as both conceptually inadequate and historically inaccurate, and proposes a fourth category of international agreements, which it christens “executive agreements plus” (EA-plus). EA-plus are neither congressional-executive agreements nor sole executive agreements; they fall somewhere in between. They are supported, but not specifically authorized, by congressional action. The article argues that EA-plus have a long, heretofore undiscovered pedigree. It explores the Obama Administration deployment of the concept, applies it to the Paris Agreement, and argues that, if President Obama accepts the Paris Agreement, it will be as an EA-plus rather than as a sole executive agreement.

Fromageau: La théorie des institutions du droit administratif global

Édouard Fromageau (Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law) has published La théorie des institutions du droit administratif global : Étude des interactions avec le droit international public (Bruylant 2016). Here's the abstract:

Le présent ouvrage a pour objectif d’analyser les interactions entre ce droit administratif global et le droit international public d’un point de vue institutionnel. Par ce biais, de nombreuses questions sont abordées : Le droit administratif global fait-il partie de la « famille » du droit international public ? Est-ce une théorie ou une véritable branche du droit positif ? Dans quelle mesure ce droit administratif global est-il pris en compte par les institutions internationales et transnationales? Est-il possible de déceler une « valeur juridique ajoutée » de ce droit administratif global en pratique ?

New Issue: Goettingen Journal of International Law

The latest issue of the Goettingen Journal of International Law (Vol. 7, no. 1, 2016) is out. Contents include:

• Special Issue: The Exercise of Public Authority by International Organizations
• Tim Staal, Exercising or Evading International Public Authority? The Many Faces of Environmental Post-Treaty Instruments
• Biel Company, A Public Law Approach to Internet Standard Setting
• Pedro A. Villarreal, Pandemic Declarations of the World Health Organization as an Exercise of International Public Authority: The Possible Legal Answers to Frictions Between Legitimacies
• Matthias Goldmann & Mona Sonnen, Soft Authority Against Hard Cases of Racially Discriminating Speech: Why the CERD Committee Needs a Margin of Appreciation Doctrine
• Clemens A. Feinäugle, The UN Declaration on the Rule of Law and the Application of the Rule of Law to the UN: A Reconstruction From an International Public Authority Perspective

New Issue: Michigan Journal of International Law

The latest issue of the Michigan Journal of International Law (Vol. 37, no. 2, Winter 2016) is out. Contents include:

• Seventh Colloquium on Challenges in International Refugee Law
• James C. Hathaway, Introduction
• The Michigan Guidelines on Risk for Reasons of Political Opinion
• Catherine Dauvergne, Toward a New Framework for Understanding Political Opinion
• Article
• Sharon Bassan, Shared Responsibility Regulation Model for Cross-Border Reproductive Transactions

Alschner & Skougarevskiy: Mapping the Universe of International Investment Agreements

Wolfgang Alschner (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies) & Dmitriy Skougarevskiy (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies) have posted Mapping the Universe of International Investment Agreements (Journal of International Economic Law, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Traditional means of content analysis are ill-equipped to deal with the vast universe of international investment agreements (IIAs). In this article, we propose a novel approach to efficiently investigate over 2,100 IIAs and their 24,000 articles in unprecedented detail by treating treaty text as data. Our suggested metric yields new and surprising insights about the IIA universe at four different levels. First, at the global level, we use our approach to investigate the effect of asymmetries on negotiation outcomes finding that developed countries tend to be the IIA system’s rule-makers, while developing countries tend to be its rule-takers. Second, on the country-level, our method can trace consistency and legal innovation in national treaty networks uncovering hitherto unknown investment policy changes such as the Finnish shift to a pre-establishment template in 1999. Third, on the inter-treaty level, our metric can detect investment policy diffusion highlighting that Israel, for instance, copied its BIT language from British investment agreements. Finally, on the individual treaty-level, our approach enables us to assess the novelty of newly concluded agreements, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, by relating them to prior practice. Our metric thus provides researchers, practitioners and policy- makers with a powerful novel tool to analyze the IIA universe.

Kanetake: Subsidiarity in the Maintenance of International Peace and Security

Machiko Kanetake (Utrecht Univ. - Law) has posted Subsidiarity in the Maintenance of International Peace and Security (Law and Contemporary Problems, forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

This article analyzes the question of subsidiarity in the sphere of the maintenance of international peace and security. This area of law is increasingly torn between normative claims for centralization and those for decentralization. On the one hand, the UN Charter concentrates decision making at the UN Security Council for the imperative aim of international peace and security. On the other hand, the demand for decentralization reemerged with the greater relevance of the Security Council’s exercise of authority to individuals’ rights. This article examines how these opposite normative claims have arisen with regard to the Security Council’s mandate and whether there are any criteria under international law with which to balance these claims.

Guymon: Digest of United States Practice in International Law, 2015

CarrieLyn D. Guymon (Office of the Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State) has published Digest of United States Practice in International Law, 2015. Here's a summary of the contents:

As is true every year, in 2015 the United States negotiated and concluded a number of noteworthy treaties, other international agreements, and political arrangements. On July 14, 2015, the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States), the European Union, and Iran reached a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (“JCPOA”) to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful. U.S. leadership was also instrumental in the conclusion by over 190 countries of the Paris Agreement of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change on December 12, 2015. The Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development were concluded with U.S. involvement and support. The passage of Trade Promotion Authority (“TPA”) and Trade Adjustment Assistance (“TAA”) legislation in June 2015 paved the way for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (“TPP”), which was concluded in October 2015, and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (“T-TIP”), on which negotiations are ongoing. The United States also signed an extradition treaty with the Dominican Republic; a mutual legal assistance treaty with Kazakhstan; an agreement continuing the International Science and Technology Center in Kazakhstan; new air transport agreements with Togo, Barbados, Serbia, Ukraine, Seychelles, and Mexico; and a tax treaty with Vietnam. The Executive Branch transmitted a number of treaties to the Senate for ratification, including mutual legal assistance treaties with Algeria and Jordan, and a protocol to the U.S. tax treaty with Japan. The U.S. Congress adopted implementing legislation for several nuclear security treaties, including the Nuclear Terrorism Convention, leading to U.S. ratification of those treaties. …

The United States also undertook a number of significant steps in the area of diplomatic relations in 2015. On July 20, 2015, the United States and Cuba re-established diplomatic relations and permanent diplomatic missions in their respective countries. Also in 2015, the United States rescinded Cuba’s designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, made further adjustments to sanctions on Cuba, and entered into claims settlement talks and an aviation arrangement with Cuba. U.S.-Nicaraguan relations also registered a milestone: the settlement of remaining property claims by U.S. nationals against Nicaragua in 2015 lifted the requirement of an annual waiver to allow U.S. government assistance and support. The United States suspended embassy operations in Sana’a, Yemen in February 2015 and responded to litigation regarding visas and evacuations. The U.S. Mission to Somalia commenced operations out of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya in September 2015. The United States also participated in and supported a UN-sponsored effort in 2015 to broker a political resolution in Libya to create a “Government of National Accord.”

The United States continued to lead a coalition of nations participating in the non-international armed conflict against ISIL in Iraq and Syria in 2015. The United States also continued to deploy a variety of resources to support efforts to resolve conflicts in the Middle East, Syria, Burundi, the Central African Republic, Mali, Sudan, South Sudan, Burma, Ukraine, and Yemen.

The United States actively engaged with a number of UN human rights treaty bodies in 2015. In March the United States submitted its one-year follow up response regarding the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (“ICCPR”) to the Human Rights Committee. The United States submitted its Universal Periodic Review (“UPR”) report to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in February, and made its UPR presentation in May. The United States also provided its one-year follow-up response to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and filed its one-year follow-up response to the Committee Against Torture.

New Issue: American Journal of International Law

The latest issue of the American Journal of International Law (Vol. 110, no. 1, January 2016) is out. Contents include:

• Devika Hovell, Due Process in the United Nations
• Joseph W. Doherty & Richard H. Steinberg, Punishment and Policy in International Criminal Sentencing: An Empirical Study
• Notes and Comments
• Nienke Grossman, Achieving Sex-Representative International Court Benches
• International Decisions
• Eugene Kontorovich, Arctic Sunrise (Netherlands v. Russia); In re Arctic Sunrise (Netherlands v. Russia)
• John E. Noyes, In re Arbitration Between the Philippines and China
• Manuel Casas Martínez, Granier v. Venezuela
• Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to International Law
• Kristina Daugirdas & Julian Davis Mortenson, Contemporary Practice of the United States Relating to International Law
• Recent Books on International Law
• Curtis A. Bradley, reviewing The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities, by Stephen Breyer
• David M. Malone, reviewing The Law of Global Governance, by Eyal Benvenisti
• James A. R. Nafziger, reviewing The Assault on International Law, by Jens David Ohlin
• Peter J. Spiro, reviewing Nationality and Statelessness Under International Law, by Alice Edwards and Laura van Waas
• Kevin A. Baumert, reviewing The South China Sea Disputes and Law of the Sea, by S. Jayakumar, Tommy Koh, and Robert Beckman
• Paul Stephen Dempsey, reviewing The Principles and Practice of International Aviation Law, by Brian F. Havel and Gabriel S. Sanchez

New Issue: American Review of International Arbitration

The latest issue of the American Review of International Arbitration (Vol. 26, no. 4, 2015) is out. Contents include:

• Luke Nottage, A Weather Map for International Arbitration: Mainly Sunny, Some Clouds, Possible Thunderstorms
• Edna Sussman, The Arbitrator Survey – Practices, Preferences and Changes on the Horizon
• Jeffrey H. Dasteel, Is It Time to Awaken the New York Convention’s Dormant General Reciprocity Clause?
• Ricardo Ampudia, Investment-Treaty Protection of Commercial Arbitration Awards: Lessons from the Jurisprudence
• Okan Demirkan & Burak Eryiğit, Developing Court Practice in Turkey Regarding Applications to Set Aside Arbitral Awards

New Issue: International Relations

The latest issue of International Relations (Vol. 30, no. 2, June 2016) is out. Contents include:

• Justin Rosenberg, International Relations in the prison of Political Science
• Touko Piiparinen, Intervening to strengthen sovereignty: The lessons of the UN Intervention Brigade for global peacekeeping
• Ha Hai Hoang, Normative Power Europe through trade: Vietnamese perceptions
• Stacey Gutkowski, We are the very model of a moderate Muslim state: The Amman Messages and Jordan’s foreign policy
• Ted Hopf, ‘Crimea is ours’: A discursive history

Coates: Legalist Empire: International Law and American Foreign Relations in the Early Twentieth Century

Benjamin Allen Coates (Wake Forest Univ. - History) has published Legalist Empire: International Law and American Foreign Relations in the Early Twentieth Century (Oxford Univ. Press 2016). Here's the abstract:

America's empire expanded dramatically following the Spanish-American War of 1898. The United States quickly annexed the Philippines and Puerto Rico, seized control over Cuba and the Panama Canal Zone, and extended political and financial power throughout Latin America. This age of empire, Benjamin Allen Coates argues, was also an age of international law. Justifying America's empire with the language of law and civilization, international lawyers-serving simultaneously as academics, leaders of the legal profession, corporate attorneys, and high-ranking government officials-became central to the conceptualization, conduct, and rationalization of US foreign policy.

Just as international law shaped empire, so too did empire shape international law. Legalist Empire shows how the American Society of International Law was animated by the same notions of "civilization" that justified the expansion of empire overseas. Using the private papers and published writings of such figures as Elihu Root, John Bassett Moore, and James Brown Scott, Coates shows how the newly-created international law profession merged European influences with trends in American jurisprudence, while appealing to elite notions of order, reform, and American identity. By projecting an image of the United States as a unique force for law and civilization, legalists reconciled American exceptionalism, empire, and an international rule of law. Under their influence the nation became the world's leading advocate for the creation of an international court.

Although the legalist vision of world peace through voluntary adjudication foundered in the interwar period, international lawyers-through their ideas and their presence in halls of power-continue to infuse vital debates about America's global role.

Fifth Annual Junior Faculty Forum for International Law

Today through Wednesday, June 27-29, 2016, the Annual Junior Faculty Forum for International Law will host its fifth edition, at the New York University School of Law. The Forum is convened by Dino Kritsiotis (Univ. of Nottingham), Anne Orford (Univ. of Melbourne), and J.H.H. Weiler (European Univ. Institute/New York Univ.), who will be joined this year by José Alvarez (New York Univ.) and Benedict Kingsbury (New York Univ.) as guest conveners. The program is here.

Reichert: Transboundary Water Cooperation in Europe

Götz Reichert (Center for European Policy) has published Transboundary Water Cooperation in Europe (Brill 2016). Here's the abstract:

In Transboundary Water Cooperation in Europe, Götz Reichert analyzes the multidimensional regime for the protection and management of European transboundary freshwater resources that is composed of international water law, the water law of the European Union, and domestic water legislation. Accordingly, qualitative and quantitative aspects regarding surface waters and groundwater are to be managed in an integrated manner to achieve “good water status” of rivers, lakes and aquifers. To this end, “international river basin management plans” provided for by the EU Water Framework Directive are developed by international river commissions for Europe’s major transboundary river basins. Götz Reichert analyzes the various dimensions of the regime including their legal interlinkages and considers the question of whether it is successful in achieving its ambitious goals.

New Issue: Global Constitutionalism

The latest issue of Global Constitutionalism (Vol. 5, no. 2, July 2016) is out. Contents include:

• Andreas Fischer-Lescano, Struggles for a global Internet constitution: protecting global communication structures against surveillance measures
• Cormac Mac Amhlaigh, Harmonising Global Constitutionalism
• Michael E. Newell, Interstitial rules and the contested application of human rights law and the laws of war in counterterrorism
• Sivan Shlomo Agon, Non-compliance, renegotiation and justice in international adjudication: A WTO perspective
• Engin Yildirim & Serdar Gülener, Individual application to the Turkish Constitutional Court as a case of constitutional transfer

Podcast: Gender Perspectives on IHL

The Advanced Training Program on Humanitarian Action has posted a podcast on "Gender Perspectives on IHL." Here's the idea:

Armed conflict affects men, women, girls and boys in fundamentally different ways, often exacerbating pre-existing gender inequalities in society. In this context, how well does international humanitarian law (IHL) account for these differences in the protection of vulnerable populations in situations of conflict? Critically analyzing IHL from a gender perspective provides greater insight into many of the key humanitarian challenges in armed conflict, ranging from protecting refugees and displaced persons, to preventing sexual and gender-based violence, and limiting the harmful effects of weapons. It also highlights how gendered deficiencies during conflict affect peace, justice and long-term recovery.

In conversations with key experts and practitioners, this podcast will consider how the practical implementation and enforcement of IHL affects men, women, girls and boys differently. The podcast will examine the gendered nature of protections under IHL. It will also assess what progress has been made in addressing the gendered nature of international law - including the recognition of rape and sexual violence as international crimes. Finally, it will consider how to address disparities in the law and in its implementation with regard to gender and humanitarian protection.

This podcast will address the following questions:

• Why is a gendered perspective on IHL important? How does it influence the protection of civilians and our understanding of vulnerable groups?
• What are the practical implications of highlighting gendered differences in humanitarian programming?
• What progress has been made in integrating a gender perspective into international law and humanitarian protection? What shortcomings exist, and what remains to be done?