American International Law Research Articles

Establishing the Argumentative DNA of International Law: A Cubistic View on the Rule of Treaty Interpretation and its Underlying Legal Culture(s)

There is an increasing tendency to frame international legal discourse in terms of regional designations. We speak, for example, of European or American approaches or of Latin American international law. This development could seriously impact the perception of international law. The present article attempts to deepen the understanding of what happens when we think about international law and international legal theory in national or regional terms. The article looks at different approaches to treaty interpretation which have been framed as European and American, to see how this impacts on international legal discourse. In a first step, the two approaches at the Vienna Conference on the Law of Treaties will be explained. Secondly, two narratives will be developed to describe what happened in Vienna in turn as European/American or as international legal discourse. The third part reflects on the consequences of framing concepts and theories in this way, with particular reference to the rules of treaty interpretation.

Fortunes of a Profession: American Foundations and International Law, 1910–1939

In the Progressive Era large-scale foundation philanthropy emerged at the same time as the American international law community gained in professional standing and political influence. From the 1900s, international lawyers forged a strategic alliance in particular with Carnegie philanthropy. After the First World War, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Commonwealth Fund also gave grants to international lawyers, even if they preferred projects informed by sociological jurisprudence. All three foundations supported the Harvard Research in International Law, the most significant private attempt at codifying international law in the twentieth century. Although foundation support for international law waned in the 1930s, the Harvard Research served as a template for the post-1945 international legal order. Ultimately, foundation support for the research was conditioned by how international law related to American power in the world.

Is International Relations Corrosive of International Law? A Reply to Martti Koskenniemi

Over the past two decades, cooperation between international law (IL) and international relations (IR) scholars has produced a vibrant, interdisciplinary IL/IR scholarship. Yet such interdisciplinarity has also produced a backlash from some legal scholars. Martti Koskenniemi, in particular, has for decades warned legal scholars about the potentially damaging effects of exposure to international relations. In his writings, Koskenniemi paints a picture of an IR field dominated by realism, in thrall to American policy-makers, and firmly committed to an antiformalism that is corrosive of international law and of the international legal profession, whose American practitioners have become so corrupted as to be unable to distinguish the law from the interests of American imperial power. Koskenniemi’s concerns, I argue, are not without foundation, yet his critique of IR represents at best an anachronism, and at worst a distortion of IR scholars’ attitudes, aims, and influence on the legal profession. IR scholarship is guilty of multiple sins, which can and should be corrected in dialogue with international legal scholars, but these sins are quite different from those imagined by Koskenniemi. The paper is organized in three parts. In the first, I briefly summarize Koskenniemi’s indictment of IR, including his provocative claim that IR has corrupted the American international law community. This argument, I argue, is flawed by a series of distortions of the views of IR and legal scholars alike, and does not survive careful scrutiny. In the second part of the paper, I take issue with Koskenniemi’s characterization of the IR field as a realist policy science, drawing on recent data to depict a field that is far more theoretically diverse and less in thrall to American policy-makers than Koskenniemi suggests. This is not to say, however, that IR scholarship is without fault as an approach to the study of international law. In the third and final section, therefore, I consider the real problems with IR scholarship in relation to international law. By contrast with Koskenniemi, who sees IR’s relentless antiformalism and commitment to interdisciplinarity as the field’s original sins, I argue that contemporary IR is characterized by precisely the opposite problems, namely a naive and unwitting formalism in its treatment of law, and a disciplinary insularity that has prevented IR scholars from learning some basic lessons that are familiar to international legal scholars. These weaknesses of IR scholarship are real, but they are remediable through more, not less, interdisciplinary collaboration.

American Judges and International Law

This article addresses an issue with which federal courts have been forced to deal with increasing frequency: how ought a judge go about determining the content of customary international law? The article seeks to demonstrate, using the example of the treatment of the concept of jus cogens by the courts of appeals, that federal courts have come to rely on doubtful sources in addressing questions of international law. More specifically, it sets out to show that courts frequently do not rely on the actual practice of governments to determine the content of customary international law, which would seem to be required both by the nature of customary international law and by Supreme Court authority. Rather, they have come to place weight on the works of writers whose conclusions are based on questionable authority, on the Restatement of Foreign Relations Law, on the views of other domestic courts and on the decisions of international courts. The article explains the problems with relying on such sources, and briefly describes an alternative method of proceeding for cases involving an area of customary international law very frequently before American courts, the law of human rights.

Canada and the Security of the Americas

Since 1940 the Americas have been fairly peaceful compared to other regions of the world. Although Central America was racked by extremely violent civil wars during the 1980s, over the past few decades the region as a whole has not experienced many military conflicts between states. Barely a handful of the various territorial disputes, past or present, have led to open warfare. The last significant episode, the 1995 war between Peru and Ecuador, lasted no more than a week. Yet this relative tranquillity must not obscure the fact that over the years, the regional security agenda has undergone major changes.From 1945 to 1990 the security of the Americas essentially meant defending the region against what was perceived by many governments as a communist threat. But with globalization and the end of the Cold War, the nature of the threat changed radically. The central concern of the United States, particularly after September 2001, shifted to the prevention of terrorist attacks. For the Americas overall, organized crime, in both its local and transnational variants, became the major security issue, primarily but not exclusively as it relates to drug trafficking and drug-related phenomena such as criminal gangs, money laundering, and corruption. Citizen security thus became a dominant concern in most countries of the region.1This article presents an analysis of Canada's involvement in the security of the Americas, particularly after 1990, and examines the impact of Canadian policy and actions on the hemispheric security agenda. After it joined the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1990, Canada identified security as one of three top objectives in its policy for the western hemisphere, along with economic prosperity and the promotion of democracy. The same objectives are mainstays of Canada's Americas strategy, announced in July 2007, and are major components of current Canadian foreign policy regarding the region.2 Our aim in this paper is to show that although Ottawa has given higher priority to security issues since 2007, the Canadian contribution in this area thus far remains modest. To this end the paper is organized as follows. The first part provides an overview of the evolution of security issues in the Americas since 1945. The second part looks at the cooperative security approach that prevailed during the 1990s and examines Canada's role during that period. We then assess Canada's policy since 2001 in the context of the new hemispheric concept of multidimensional security. Finally, we summarize our thoughts on Canadian involvement to date in the security of the region, and we consider Canada's possible contributions in the future.SECURITY IN THE AMERICAS: A HISTORICAL OVERVIEWFrom a security point of view, the situation of the Americas during the 20th century was characterized by two main elements. The first was the asymmetry of power between the United States and the other countries of the region. This asymmetry of power had two consequences, starting with Washington's belief that it could freely intervene in neighbouring countries to restore order or fight communism in application of the Monroe Doctrine or the Roosevelt Corollary.3 US authorities used these precepts to justify and legitimize US interventions in the Caribbean Basin (as part of the so-called dollar diplomacy that prevailed in the early decades of the 20th century) and, later on, to oppose left-wing governments accused of importing communism in the region. The other consequence of the power asymmetry was the impossibility for Latin American governments to compete militarily with the US, obliging those governments to use alternative and generally less effective strategies. The most prominent alternative strategy was the development of a corpus of Latin American international law through instruments such as the Calvo Clause and the Drago Doctrine, which reaffirmed sovereign immunity against external intervention.4The other major feature of the 20th century security environment in the Americas was the perceived threat of and the fight against communism. …

Meeting the enemy: American exceptionalism and international law

Meeting the enemy: American exceptionalism and international law

The War on Ideas: Alhurra and US International Broadcasting Law in the ‘War on Terror’

Numerous non-Arab states employ international broadcasting agencies to impact the Arab media mix. This article examines the recent American intervention into the Arab public sphere – via its satellite television network, Alhurra (‘the free one’) – and the inherent norms promoted by these efforts. The regulations guiding the American government’s international broadcasting efforts establish certain standards and guidelines that can explain why Alhurra’s credibility suffers and audience remains scant – it is more accountable to domestic political actors than it is to the audiences it is trying to reach. The structure of political oversight established by American international broadcasting law resembles the top-down authoritarian model of media governance common to many Arab regimes. This suggests that reconstructing Alhurra as an independent network able to push ideational envelopes and facilitate cross-national exchange without the burden of its current imperative, selling deeply unpopular American polices, should be considered.

Alejandro Álvarez's Latin American Law: A Question of Identity

This essay focuses on Alejandro Álvarez's seminal article, ‘Latin America and International Law’, published in 1909 in the American Journal of International Law. Offering and in-depth analysis of the text, it foregrounds the strategic meaning of Álvarez's work in the light of the international politics of his day. It posits that, more than simply a diplomatic history of Latin American particularity, Álvarez presents the case for a different hemispheric international order, based on an ‘American international law’ extending to the United States. He draws primarily an Latin American Precedents – based on historical and stituational commonalities – to argue for a common public law. He then grafts an idiosyncratic interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine as the United States' main contribution to this common law, as well as the fact of US sponsorship of various Americas-wide conferences resulting in the ratification of regional treaties. Notably, and this is one of the main points of this is one of the main points of this essay, Álvarez elevates certain Latin American states as leaders in regional international law and capable agents of its enforcement across the hemisphere. In short, this essay advances the claim that Álvarez's project of pan-American law in effect entreats the United States to share its hegemony and wield its power in the region jointly with Latin America's ‘better-constituted’ states.

Between civilisation and barbarism: Creole interventions in international law

This article argues that Latin American regionalism in international law is a direct consequence of a ‘creole legal consciousness’ meaning a shared basic assumption about the origins of law in the region (as coming from Europe through Roman law and Spanish law) as well as a belief in the uniqueness of an American (as in the continent) interpretation and development of that law. Those who participate of such a consciousness assume themselves as being part of the metropolitan centre (as descendants of Europeans), while at the same time challenging the centre with notions of their own regional uniqueness (as natives of America). Creole consciousness about international law was an instrument of nation and region building during the 19th century. This led to a discussion of the actual existence of a regional international law ‘[Latin] American international law’ (derecho internacional Americano) in the first half of the 20th century. The article concludes with a look at how a regional perspective was also inherent in the construction of a human rights regime in the second half of the twentieth century.

Corporate Liability under the US Alien Tort Claims Act and the (Inadvertent) Creation of an American International Law

(2003). Corporate Liability under the US Alien Tort Claims Act and the (Inadvertent) Creation of an American International Law. King's Law Journal: Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 232-244.

New International Legal Process

International legal process (ILP) emphasizes understanding how international law works. It concentrates not so much on the exposition of rules and their content as on how international legal rules are actually used by the makers of foreign policy. It is a more limited methodology than some others discussed in the symposium in that it did not, as originally developed, expose the normative values of the methodology, or how the methodology could be used to achieve those values. Nevertheless, ILP, as a study of international law in its actual operation and the consideration of how international law could work better, has had a significant influence on American international law scholarship.

American International Law Cases, Second Series 1979–1989: Sources and Documents. Edited by Bernard D. ReamsJr. , Oceana Publications, Dobbs Ferry, New York: 1991. US $65.00 per volume. Projected at 8 volumes. (hard cover)

American International Law Cases, Second Series 1979–1989: Sources and Documents. Edited by Bernard D. ReamsJr. , Oceana Publications, Dobbs Ferry, New York: 1991. US $65.00 per volume. Projected at 8 volumes. (hard cover) - Volume 20 Issue 2

American International Law Cases. Second Series. 1979-1986. Edited by Bernard D. ReamsJr. , Vols. 1-8 and Index. Dobbs Ferry: Oceana Publications, Inc., 1986-1988. Vols. 1-8: $37.50 each; index (2 loose-leaf binders): $225.

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American Imperialism and International Law: Carl Schmitt on the US in World Affairs

American Imperialism and International Law: Carl Schmitt on the US in World Affairs

The Organization of American States and International Law

The Organization of American States and International Law

American International Law Cases, 1969-1978. Vols. 21-28. Collected and edited by Frank S. Ruddy. Dobbs Ferry: Oceana Publications, Inc., 1980-1984.

American International Law Cases, 1969-1978. Vols. 21-28. Collected and edited by Frank S. Ruddy. Dobbs Ferry: Oceana Publications, Inc., 1980-1984.

The Arbitration of Boundary Disputes in Latin America

The principle of arbitration took roots and flourished in Latin America because of three principal reasons. Firstly, it was a necessity that peace should be maintained among the newly emancipated Republics, if their independence was not to be rendered precarious. In this sense the desire of these Republics to settle their international problems by pacific methods was in itself a product of their historical situation. Secondly, the spirit of confraternity engendered by the similarity in language, culture and religion aided the reception of arbitration as a mode of settling their quarrels. Finally from the earliest beginnings the leaders of the revolution, especially Bolivar devised projects to ensure that arbitration became the foundation-stone of American International Law.

American International Law Cases, 1793–1968. Volume 1. Collected and Edited by Francis Deak. [Dobbs Ferry, New York: Oceana Publications Inc.1971. xxvii, 484 pp. $40.

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American International Law Cases, 1783–1963, Collected and edited by Francis Deak, Vol. I: International Law in General, Oceana Publications Inc., Dobbs Ferry N. Y. 1971, XXVII en 484 blz. $40.00

American International Law Cases, 1783–1963, Collected and edited by Francis Deak, Vol. I: International Law in General, Oceana Publications Inc., Dobbs Ferry N. Y. 1971, XXVII en 484 blz. $40.00

The Dominican Crisis: An Inter-American Dilemma

From whatever standpoint it may be viewed, the decision of President Johnson to order the Marines into the Dominican Republic on April 28, 1965, was bound to provide a focus for controversy. However, the essentially political nature of that act and its ostensible and concealed motivations have tended to shroud the impact of the Dominican crisis upon the legal mechanisms of the Inter-American System, outlined in the basic documents and developed in the practice of the Organization of American States. This is not to suggest that the problems of Latin America in general and of the Dominion Republic in particular are reducible to a statement of principles of international law. Indeed, it is the present writer’s contention that the Latin American members of the Organization have demonstrated that they are far too servile towards what they deem to be the basic norms of American international law, and that this attitude coupled with the equivocal political manœuvres of the United States has produced a form of institutional schizophrenia which deflects attention from the basic problems of contemporary Latin America and the pressing need for their solution. The main purposes of this comment are to examine the Dominican crisis in the context of fundamental stresses in Latin American society, to evaluate the roles of the United States and the O.A.S. in terms of their reactions to this case, and to make some general comments on how the Inter-American System may be rendered more meaningful in dealing with the political, economic, and social priorities of the region.