International Law Works Research Articles

The Right to Work in International and National Law in the Time of Globalization

Work is not a commodity like all other commodities, but it is an emanation of the human person. For this reason, its value is higher than all other things. With the beginning of industrialization, in addition to state measures for the protection and education of work, the workers joining forces in mutual unions have done everything to oppose the inferiority of the labor factor to capital. It should be emphasized that the right to work is not a subjective right that you can claim in court in case of non-realization, but it is a principle that the State through policies must be committed to create conditions for everyone to be employed. In the time of economic and financial globalization that today's society is experiencing, the right to work is not regulated only in national legislation, but also in international legislation and collective contracts. In this work, the sources of international labor law approved by the ILO, the UN and some regional organizations such as the Council of Europe and the European Union will be explained first. It is very important to know the international sources for labor law because they occupy a privileged position in the hierarchy of sources of law in the Republic of Albania, which are often overlooked by law enforcement officers. After exhausting the sources of international labor law, the national sources will be treated with a focus on our Constitution. A special place in this work will be occupied by trade union freedom and the right to strike according to domestic law, which have historically represented the basic means to protect the rights of women workers. At the end of the report in this conference, we will briefly dwell on the impact of globalization on labor law. Received: 25 December 2023 / Accepted: 25 February 2024 / Published: 23 April 2024

Between a Rock-Hard Reality and a Pious Wish Place: Postema on the Rule of Law Beyond Borders

In the final chapter of Law’s Rule, his recently published tour de force on the nature, value, and viability of the rule of law, Gerald Postema defends the desirability, possibility, and actuality of an international rule of law. I contend that his attempt to defend the latter two claims fall short of what is needed, focusing in this essay on his argument for the possibility of a rule of law beyond state borders. Postema moves quickly from an argument for the existence and efficacy of international law to the conclusion that an international rule of law is no pious wish. Yet as I explain, the refutation of rule-skepticism does not suffice to refute rule of law skepticism. Indeed, I demonstrate that Postema misconstrues the most interesting and plausible challenge to an international rule of law he considers, namely the economic analysis of international law, and consequently his response misses the mark. The economic account of how international law works, together with those developed by TWAIL scholars and Marxist theorists of international law, pose far greater challenges to the possibility of an international rule of law than those Postema considers, as each offers a plausible explanation for why any attempt to realize that ideal is doomed to fail. To address these challenges, theorists should look to Postema’s discussion of the institutions and culture that foster fidelity to the rule of law, rather than his remarks on a global rule of law.

Consuming International Law: Towards an Experimental Research Agenda for Understanding the Effects of Corporate International Humanitarian Law Violations on Consumer Buying Behavior

AbstractThe focus of international humanitarian law scholarship, and that of international law more broadly, has traditionally taken a state-centric focus, for good reason. Moreover, the age-old question of “does international law work” is explored thorough the rubric of state and, more recently, corporate-level compliance. Such endeavors, however, overlook a set of participants in international law: The individual. Diffusion of international law norms through the general populace is a valuable goal in itself, but by leveraging their decision-making as consumers, it may also play an important role in inducing greater compliance by companies and states. This is acknowledged by the proliferation of consumer boycott campaigns, country-of-origin labelling requirements, and increased demands for corporate transparency. However, little is known about whether international law influences consumer choices. Using international humanitarian law as an illustrative example, this article contends that international legal scholarship should be expanded to include the consumer within its ambit, and that one promising pathway to do so is through greater uptake of the methodological approaches and insights offered by behavioral economics.

Legal protection against harassment at work in domestic and international law

Harassment at work is a labour law problem that has become relevant in recent decades, in parallel with the development of neoliberal capitalism and globalisation, which together cause flexibility in the sphere of labour. In such working conditions, when the workplace is harder to maintain, other employees and employer use several illegal methods, harassing colleagues, to break them mentally, so that they leave the work environment. We have had a Law on prevention of harassment at work for more than a decade. It contains shortcomings and good solutions. The efficiency of legal protection against harassment at work in work environment depends mostly on the position of the employer. Internal mediation is an effective method to prevent harassment at work with employers who maintain quality interpersonal relationships in the team, while it is often a method for satisfying the form of law. By applying the historical, sociological, and comparative method, with reference to the international labour standards, Convention No. 190 and Recommendation No. 206 and European standards, we tried to send proposals to the legislator, in order to improve the existing normative framework.

Political Life of Treaties: Indeterminacy, Interpretation and Political Consequences

Abstract The argument that the operation of the international legal system depends on political factors is to many a truism requiring little clarification or verification. But what does the operation of the system of positive international law do to international political processes? Even if it is politics and not law which primarily guides activities and decisions of States, how far could sheer politics get States in achieving their political goals? This paper focuses on three episodes—two historical and one current—about the political life of treaties involving high political stakes, and shows that the viability of foreign policies of States may be more dependent on the ways in which the system of positive international law works than is that system dependent on political agenda pursued by any State or group of States.

Platform work and social security in German law: An international law perspective

AbstractPlatform work confronts traditional social security law in two dimensions. First, it makes the distinction between dependent and independent work uncertain and unclear, as the borderline between these blur. This is a profound challenge for social security law, because the criteria of dependent and independent work have to be precise. In the determination of work as dependent or independent, German law illustrates that a shift has taken place in determining employment status, moving from external and objective criteria to the contracting parties’ decision, which is to be executed under private law, but also respected under social security law. Second, platform work is heavily intertwined with digital communication, which has established a global environment for communication. Thereby, platform work can also facilitate international trade by making transnational work more accessible and efficient. Therefore, it seems necessary to examine the implications of platform work in international law. International law makes possible the choice of law, executed by the contracting parties. As a consequence, the protection of employees by social security law is related to the private law arrangements between the service provider and the service recipient. Gaps in social security protection of service providers are widespread. In many countries, awareness of the social protection deficits of platform workers has grown and responses to improve the social status of platform workers have come under scrutiny. Analysis reveals that there is a joint responsibility of the service provider and the service recipient to be bound to social security coverage under the same national legislation. Nevertheless, from an international law perspective, it is shown that reforms are confronted with restrictions under international law.

'The Life of the Law Has Not Been Logic; It Has Been Experience:' International Legal Ethnography and the New Legal Realism

Scholars in law and the social sciences are calling into question the conventional doctrinal account of how international law works. We join this chorus by extolling the virtues of a new method for studying the social life of international law: international legal ethnography. Ethnographic approaches advance the project of the New Legal Realism by explaining legal outcomes through a multidisciplinary study of concrete institutional practices and the subjectivity of legal actors in international justice institutions. A full understanding of why international courts produce influential legal precedent as well as incoherent law and failed prosecutions requires a grasp of both international legal doctrine as well as the organizational culture and quotidian practice of international organizations. International justice institutions are neither insulated from the vagaries of global politics, nor simply reducible to them. Because of their unique and structurally-fragile position betwixt and between national legal cultures, international criminal tribunals have of necessity created a socialization process that inculcates distinctive norms, practices and values among its staff, a process that has identifiable consequences for legal process and outcomes. Our ultimate goal is neither naive faith in the probity of international tribunals, nor a reflexively moral dystopian-ism, but a clear-eyed assessment of both the successes and shortcomings of international justice institutions.

Remedying depletion through social reproduction: a critical engagement with the United Nations’ business and human rights framework

The growing recognition of unpaid work in international law and the Sustainable Development Goals acknowledges that gendered labour supports the global economy. This work can have harmful impacts, leading to ‘depletion through social reproduction’ (Rai et al, 2014). When corporate harms impact on workers and communities, family members are often required to provide caring labour for those directly affected. However, the consequential harms of depletion are generally invisible within the law and uncompensated. In assessing the United Nations’ business and human rights framework, we argue that the international legal regime must take account of social reproductive work and its consequent harms.

International Law as Behavior: An Agenda

Over the past few decades, scholars in a variety of fields – economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology, and international relations, among others – have made enormous strides studying the behavioral roots of international law by exploring individual motivations, describing organizational cultures, and mapping communities of practice. Taken together, the work of these scholars presents a complex, nuanced understanding of how international law works. However, these projects are rarely considered together: often separated by academic enclosures and focused on different subfields within international law, communication among scholars using different methodologies is restricted. The goal of this book is to break down some of these barriers and provide a glimpse of what an international law more focused on behavior and more engaged with these other fields might look like. This introductory chapter aims to provide a roadmap in this effort by describing international law's long interest in behavior and the past attempts to explore that relationship, exploring the book's approach and laying out the contributions in each chapter, and beginning the process of bringing these insights together and outlining a series of takeaways for future study of international law as behavior.

Research Handbook on the Sociology of International Law - Introduction

Bringing together a highly diverse body of scholars, this comprehensive Research Handbook explores recent developments at the intersection of international law, sociology and social theory. It showcases a wide range of methodologies and approaches, including those inspired by traditional social thought as well as less familiar literature, including computational linguistics, performance theory and economic sociology. It reflects the fact that we are in the middle of a particularly fertile period of creative borrowing between the disciplines of international law and sociology. This borrowing no doubt partly reflects a broader and more general turn towards interdisciplinary work in international law, a turn which has its roots in the changing character of the international legal academy, as well as the newly problematized place of legal knowledge as a privileged expertise of international governance. But it also reflects the fact that quite profound social and political changes to the international order over the last decades have led international lawyers to consider again some fundamental questions which had appeared settled – or had at least been provisionally bracketed – for some time. What is the state? What motivates international actors to behave as they do? How are states’ interests formed, and how do they change? What is ‘culture’, and how does it relate to international law? Who interprets the world for international actors, how, and to what effect? How are (global) markets made and unmade? What dynamics drive the messy processes by which international law is formed, interpreted, and implemented? Many international lawyers interested in these questions have found themselves returning to, and taking inspiration from, an eclectic range of different traditions of social and sociological thought, This new sociological turn is helping to creating spaces in which the constraints of what has become orthodox international legal thinking have been consciously cast off in pursuit of new kinds of thinking, more suitable for the rapidly transforming social and political landscape in which contemporary international lawyering is done. For this volume, we asked our authors, first, to situate their intervention within a particular tradition of sociological or social theoretic thinking, and second, to explain and illustrate how and why they find this tradition useful in thinking about some contemporary development, or problem, within the domain of international law and governance. The result is a diverse and exciting set of contributions, which lay out a variety of paths down which future international legal scholarship may choose to travel, or indeed which it may contest.

Safeguarding foreign direct investment in South Africa: Does the Protection of Investment Act live up to its name?

ABSTRACTFollowing a multi-year review of its bilateral investment treaties (BITs), the South African government terminated all BITs it had signed with European countries, and instead promulgated the Protection of Investment Act 22 of 2015 (PIA). The purpose of the PIA is, among other things, to protect investment in line with the Constitution, in a manner that balances the public interest and investors’ rights and obligations. The termination of the BITs and the promulgation of the PIA, however, seem to have created a gap with regard to the protection afforded to investors; compared with some of the terminated BITs, the PIA has modified or completely removed several provisions. This raises critical questions about the implications of the provisions of the new act, and whether it lives up to its name and indeed provides sufficient protection to foreign investments. The article takes the form of a comparative and analytical study of the provisions of the PIA, other South African legislation, international instruments, national and international case law and other scholarly work to assess the adequacy of the protection afforded by the act.

The Right to Work in International Law of the Twentieth Century

The Right to Work in International Law of the Twentieth Century

The challenge for Europe: making international law work for Middle East peace

ABSTRACTNo modern conflict has contributed so much to the development of international law as the Israeli–Palestinian conflict yet, paradoxically, no conflict has so undercut the efficacy of law by its political marginalization of a rights-based framework throughout the Oslo peace process. International law has a potentially redemptive role to play in securing a just and lasting peace in Israel/Palestine, but its absence in the formative agreements of the Oslo process – supported by the international mediating powers and the occupying power – has contributed mightily to the failures of the past quarter-century. Europe has played a muffled role during this process, advocating for the principles of international law – such as the illegality of the Israeli settlements and the annexation of East Jerusalem – yet unwilling to enforce these principles through the adoption of political measures against Israeli policy in the occupied Palestinian territory. As Israel's prolonged role as belligerent occupier crosses a bright red line into illegality, the importance of Europe taking an effective stand to end the occupation assumes an increasingly greater significance.

Brief of International Law Scholars as Amici Curiae in Support of Petitioners, Jesner v. Arab Bank, PLC

This amicus brief was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of international law scholars in Jesner v. Arab Bank, PLC. Relying on its earlier decision in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., the Second Circuit held that claims under the Alien Tort Statute could never be brought against corporations. The amicus brief argues that the Second Circuit’s decision in Kiobel fundamentally misunderstood how international law works. Customary international law establishes human rights norms that prohibit certain conduct. Some of these norms apply to all actors, and some apply only to certain actors. Customary international law, however, does not provide the means of enforcing those norms. The enforcement of human rights norms is instead left to states, which may act collectively through treaties or separately by providing for liability under their domestic laws. The Second Circuit’s misunderstanding of international law led it to make two significant errors. First, the Second Circuit framed the question as whether there is a general “norm of corporate liability under customary international law.” That question makes no sense, because customary international law leaves the question whether to impose liability to the decision of states. The proper question under customary international law is instead the one the Supreme Court framed in Sosa: “whether international law extends the scope of liability for a violation of a given norm to the perpetrator being sued.” Second, the Second Circuit confused limits on particular mechanisms for enforcing customary international law norms with limits on the substantive applicability of the norms themselves. International criminal tribunals generally have been given jurisdiction only over natural persons because many nations have concerns about imposing criminal liability on corporations. In concluding suppression conventions, like the Genocide Convention and the Torture Convention, nations have similarly limited their obligations to prosecute or extradite to natural persons. But these limitations on particular enforcement mechanisms are not limitations on the underlying norms themselves. This is confirmed by the widespread practice of states providing both criminal and civil liability for human rights violations, including corporate violations, in their domestic laws.

BOOK REVIEW: HOW INTERNATIONAL LAW WORK A RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY

Does international law affect state behavior?. Why would states pay any attention to international law in the absence of coercive enforcement mechanism?. What do we mean when we say international law is “binding”, given that states can almost always to violate it?. These intriguing and philosophical questions raised by the author to make sure that we had grasped at least one answer. If not, we were failed to understand the nature of international law. These question also remains us about traditional debate between proponent and opponent of international law such as Hobbes, Spinoza and Austin. But, in the 21st Century we are not debating or neglecting the existence of international law anymore.Written by Andrew T. Guzman who is recently serving as dean of The University of Southern California Gould School of Law (USC Gould), this book develops a persuasive explanation of why and when international law works by using rational choice perspective. Although previously there are some authors focusing their study on this topic such as Professor Abraham Chayes and Antonia Handler Chayes in their book “The New Sovereignty: Compliance with International Regulatory Agreement” which uses managerial approach in describing the compliance of international law and Professor Thomas Franck in his book “Fairness in International Law and Institution” which explains why states comply with international law by introducing fairness approach, this book offers better perspective in understanding international law in contemporary development by proposing “Rational Choice Theory”. The theory then is developed into “Three Rs of Compliance” (Reputation, Reciprocity and Retaliation). The book tries to explain how international law is able to affect state behavior despite a lack of coercive enforcement mechanism.

Using International Criminal Law to Resist Transitional Justice

An increasing body of literature focuses on negotiations of transitional justice, but not much has been written so far regarding contestations over its practices and the refusal of states and individuals to participate. Given the remaining legalistic dominance, this is particularly true regarding the field of international criminal law. Very little, if any, work in international criminal law engages with the topic of “resistance.” Departing from this gap in research, focusing on Cambodia and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), the objective of this article is to introduce, discuss, and analyze the “strategy of rupture”—as developed by the late French lawyer Jacques Vergès—and the ways in which this legal defense has been applied in practice at the ECCC in order to resist not only the Tribunal per se, but also the entire Cambodian transitional justice process and, by extension, the post–Cold War global liberal project.

A Virtual Wall of Shame: The New Way of Imposing Reputational Sanctions on Defiant States

What happens after an international court finds a state violated international law? Many realize today that states often fail to comply with such judgments. International courts like the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) have to rely on the help of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) to shame states into compliance. In 2011, the body charged with enforcing judgments of the ECHR launched a new website dedicated to publishing reports by NGOs that criticize states for noncompliance with ECHR judgments. This website published hundreds of reports, as well as the responses of some accused states. The paper analyzes all the reports published in the first four years since the website was created. This analysis, together with interviews with many of the NGO lawyers involved, sheds light on the way reputational sanctions work in international law. It reveals that NGOs focus most of their attention on legally important cases and on cases that address severe violations. It also shows that NGOs focus on states that usually comply with their international obligations instead of on states that regularly fail to comply with international law.

Circumstances Precluding Wrongfulness in International Investment Law

The systemic role of circumstances precluding wrongfulness, both in international investment law and in international law more generally, is neither central nor, at least in the form in which they are currently expressed, likely to be of great practical importance in most cases. But circumstances precluding wrongfulness have played an important role in some international investment disputes, and provide an excellent illustration for how blackletter international law works, particularly in relation to countermeasures and necessity. If these decisions are anything to go by, future developments will be of great interest to both practitioners and academic commentators, and directly touch upon the systemic pulse of international investment law and law of State responsibility.

Defense from the Asteroid-Comet Danger in the Short Term as the Object of International law Regulation

Defense from the asteroid–comet danger has become more and more essential. In the technical aspect (among all and first of all – it is permanent sky monitoring and ensuring timely warning about of asteroid–comet danger) there have been some successes. As to the international law work, the necessity of which is already indisputable, it is just starting. And most active here are the specialists in the technical sphere who are proposing to conclude a due universal treaty and formulating principles to be included into it. International law specialists should urgently engage in this work.

Multinational corporations' economic and human rights impacts on developing countries: a review and research agenda

Developing countries are attracting a significant portion of global foreign direct investments. Governments of such countries often compete fiercely for attracting multinational corporations (MNCs) in the expectation of the advantages they will bring to their economies, often prioritising economic goals over fundamental human rights. For a long time, economists have analysed the economic impacts of MNCs, while a parallel strand of work in political science, business ethics and international law investigates the repercussions of MNC operations on human rights. Despite the significant relatedness and complementarities, these two bodies of literature have so far poorly interacted. This paper addresses this limitation and systematically analyses and integrates existing micro-level empirical evidence on the economic and human rights impacts of MNCs on developing countries. It provides a critical analysis of what is known and highlights what we do not know about the factors that mediate the positive and/or negative impacts of MNC operations on host developing countries. Based on a critical analysis of the literature, it discusses avenues for future research in this field and sets the grounds for a new interdisciplinary research agenda on this subject.