Modern International Human Rights Research Articles

Termination of Citizenship of the Russian Federation because of Crimes or Actions that Pose a Threat to National Security: A Comparative Legal Aspect

The formation of a new direction of state policy on the termination of citizenship of the Russian Federation is conditioned by the need to ensure the national security of the country in the modern world. The international legal doctrine in the field of revocation of citizenship states that this measure will never be able to comply with modern international human rights law, while many Western states turn to this institution not only when perpetrators commit terrorist crimes, but also in all types of treason. The objectives of the study are a comparative legal and historical analysis of the regulations on the termination of citizenship for crimes and actions that infringe on national security in Russia and a number of countries in which this practice exists. The purpose of the study is to analyze trends in the formation of Russian state policy in this area. The methodological basis of the research is the use of general scientific and private scientific methods of cognition, including historical and formal legal ones. The authors conclude that the termination of citizenship is a de facto sanction. Punishment in the form of revocation of citizenship can be a deterrent in conditions of constant (often uncontrolled) increase in the Russian population due to migrants. Termination of citizenship as an additional criminal law measure to the main type of punishment should be applied only by the court, accordingly, such a sanction should be fixed directly in the criminal law. The authors point to the need to modernize the legislation on citizenship of the Russian Federation, as well as to expand the list of types of penalties provided for by criminal law, provisions on termination of citizenship for committing specific crimes and actions that pose a threat to national security.

Navigating War Zones: Safeguarding Civilian Rights to Life and Religion through International and Islamic Law

This study explores the protection of civilian rights, focusing on the right to life and religious freedom, within Islamic and international legal contexts. It comprises two main aspects: "The entitlement to life and the prohibition of torture and inhuman treatment" and "Right to respect for religious beliefs, customs, and traditions. In a post-9/11 world, where misconceptions about jihad have proliferated, this research distinguishes between Islamic legal theory and the legislation of Muslim nations. It argues that Islamic law has historically played a pivotal role in safeguarding civilian rights during armed conflicts. It predates the Declaration of Human Rights on a global scale by centuries and aligns with modern international conventions. Islamic humanitarian law reveres civilian rights, condemning violations as crimes against humanity. Through rigorous research, including a review of primary sources in Islamic and international law, this study sheds light on the historical evolution and contemporary relevance of these legal frameworks. It highlights the enduring significance of principles rooted in Islamic law, in harmony with modern international human rights standards. In conclusion, this research provides an in-depth exploration of the intersection of Islamic and international law in safeguarding civilian rights during conflicts. Understanding these legal frameworks in their historical context is essential for global peace and justice.

INTERNATIONAL LEGAL FRAMEWORK FOR ENSURING GENDER EQUALITY AND ANTI–DISCRIMINATION REGULATIONS: GENERAL ISSUES

The purpose of the article is to show and analyze the vector of the latest approach to the internationallegal regulation of the institution of women’s rights. The authors note constructive attempts to strengthenthe legal status of women in modern society at the level of UN conventions and declarations. The authors come to the conclusion that in modern international human rights law, as well as in thelaw-making and human rights activities of the UN, there is a tendency towards a more detailed regulationof certain social, economic, cultural, political and other rights of women on a democratic basis, whichcontributes to combating discrimination in regarding women.The article shows that the negative external factors caused by pandemics and cataclysms weaken thespeed of decision-making in the development of the legal policy of gender equality. Today we have to observea situation that is characterized by an abundance of international standards in the field of gender equality,but at the same time the achievement of gender equality remains a very slow process.

Compensation to the Acquitted Person in International Criminal Law

INTRODUCTION. The practice of modern international criminal courts and tribunals raises serious questions about the proper enforcement of the rights of the accused. Among these rights, the accused's right to compensation is highlighted. Compensation is given to the accused (regardless of the verdict) for violation of his procedural rights and fundamental human rights and compensation to the acquitted person.MATERIALS AND METHODS. The analysis of ensuring the human right to compensation in the event of an unjust sentence is carried out on the basis of international human rights treaties, treaties on the creation of international courts, including appeal to the travaux preparatoires of the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the practice of international criminal courts and tribunals, especially the ICC, as well as the International Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. The study was conducted using general scientific methods of cognition (in particular, analysis and synthesis), as well as comparative legal, historical legal and formal dogmatic methods. To achieve the corresponding conclusions, various methods of interpretation of the rule of law are used, in particular, grammatical, systematic, teleological, harmonic, etc.RESEARCH RESULTS. In the activities of international criminal courts and tribunals, a violation of the accused’s right to a hearing within a reasonable time is systemic, including due to the absence of any procedural deadlines on the one hand, and the absence of any rules (or their non-application) to restore the rights of the accused and punishment of the party who committed the violation of these rights. This situation poses serious problems of ensuring the rights of specific accused (including justified), but also the development of modern international criminal procedural law and international human rights law.DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS. National legislation and international human rights instruments provide for the right of an acquitted person to compensation. In international criminal courts, this issue, however, is addressed in different ways. The statutes of international criminal courts ad hoc created by the UN Security Council do not mention the right to compensation for an accused or acquitted person. At the same time, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda recognized that the absence of a reference to law in the Statute of the Tribunal does not mean that the persons concerned do not have the corresponding right. At the same time, this recognition did not have practical consequences. The Statute of the International Criminal Court recognizes the right to compensation, however, does so to a limited extent. Thus, in international criminal courts and tribunals, the provision of the human right to compensation (primarily compensation to an acquitted person) is performed at a lower level than that established in international human rights treaties.

Bridging the Gap Between Cultural Relativism and Universality of Human Rights: Indonesia Attitudes

Debates on the universality of human rights and cultural relativism seem to be eternal and will continue to exist as societal dynamics bring different views, concepts, and understandings of human rights and culture. However, it cannot be denied that modern international human rights law which is currently being referred to and adopted by the international community, still creates gaps in the protection of human rights. Meanwhile, the development of cultural relativism in the 20th century is quite successful in bridging the gap between the two and contributing positively to the implementation of international human rights law at the domestic level. Nonetheless, the cultural relativism approach presents critiques and challenges. By using various secondary resources, this paper begins with the concept of, debates between, and challenges of cultural relativism and universality of human rights. The paper indicates that the contribution of cultural relativism can be seen from building tolerance and protection of communal rights, the rights of marginal groups, and the optimization of domestic law when dealing with some competing’s rights. This is a good opportunity to reduce discriminatory actions against marginalized groups for maintaining tolerance and harmony in a plural society. The effectiveness of the application of "margin appreciation" in Europe should be the best practice to actualize "Asian values" or "African values" in formulating the concepts of "public morality" or "public order" clearly and precisely. The cultural relativism approach may not be used by a government to justify any human rights violation. Both of these are important considerations for Indonesia because of its ambiguous attitude in placing these two theories appropriately and purposefully.

Remote sensing for international human rights advocacy: Critiques and responses

In recent years the rise of remote sensing (RS) imagery in international human rights (IHR) advocacy has begun to draw significant critical attention from the academic community. This article engages with prominent critiques that emerge from this literature and highlights several areas of concern in their interpretation of the vision of RS that permeates the modern IHR community. Specifically, I identify three significant reasons that the literature has misjudged the role of RS in IHR investigations: (1) the oft-stated a priori notion of RS as a source of prima facie evidence, (2) an overreliance on published INGO imagery and analysis, and (3) a limited exploration of the ways in which RS use continues to evolve. This work is intended to engage in a rigorous debate over the practical and epistemological implications that stem from the adoption of new technologies in the advocacy and human rights arenas.

TOWARDS RECONSTRUCTING THE MEANING OF INHUMAN TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT: A HUMAN CAPABILITY APPROACH

The prohibition on “inhuman treatment” constitutes one of the central tenets of modern international human rights law. However, in the absence of any legislative definition of the term "inhuman", its interpretation becomes challenging. The aim of this article is to critically analyze the interpretation of the term “inhuman” in international human rights law and to suggest a new approach to defining it. The first part of the article highlights the failure of supra-national institutions to provide an independent definition for the term “inhuman”, while mistakenly equating it to other forms of ill-treatment. The second part of the article introduces philosophical concepts necessary for reconstructing the conceptual independence of the term inhuman. It primarily focuses on “the capability approach” and the notion of “human functioning”, as developed by Martha Nussbaum.

India: A Model for the Enforcement of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights

Under the modern international human rights regime, all people are entitled to two categories of rights: civil and political rights and economic, social, and cultural rights. While the judicial enforcement of civil and political rights is commonly accepted in virtually every country in the world, there is a significant degree of hostility towards the judicial enforcement of economic, social, and cultural rights. Critics have long held that the enforcement of these rights in the courtroom would be inherently undemocratic and unmanageable. This belief, and the general aversion to the judicial enforcement of these rights, is primarily rooted in the fact that the enforcement of these rights would require compelling the government to spend vast sums of money in the form of welfare programs. However, India has overcome these criticisms and emerged as a model for the enforcement of these rights. The following paper will serve to lay a foundational understanding of the modern international human rights regime, look to the functionality of both sets of rights, and examine how Indian jurisprudence has come to allow the enforcement of economic, social, and cultural rights in the courtroom. From there, this paper will examine PUCL v. Union of India, the landmark case that recognized the right to food in India, the impact this case has on the lives of the Indian people, and the economic impact of protecting the right to food in an attempt to demonstrate that the judicial enforcement of these rights is not only possible, but can also be done in an effective manner.

The legal grounds for derogation of Ukraine from some obligations, which are defined by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms

Modern international human rights treaties may envisage the rights of states, which participate in these treaties, to derogate from contractual obligations under emergency circumstances. The existence of the right to derogate (based on the provisions of the law of the state right to withdraw from the fulfillment of certain contractual obligations) has a significant impact on the state behavior in the field of ensuring and protecting human rights.On May 21st,2015,Ukraine used this right as a member of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (hereinafter referred to as the Convention), Art. 15 of which establishes the right to derogate from obligations in emergency situations, which led to a closer study by scientists of the question of the derogation right.The normative consolidation of the right to a derogation, in particular in Art. 15 of the Convention treats the possibility of the existence of an objective necessity to reduce the level of protection of human rights and freedoms. Contemporaneously with consolidating the right of the state to the derogation, these provisions of the law contain conditions designed to prevent the unjustifiably wide application of this very right.According to the basic requirements, which are contained in Art. 15, first of all, it is enshrined that the right to withdraw from the state's obligations can arise only due to the war or another public danger threatening the life of the nation.The next key requirement is that measures taken by the state in derogation from their obligations should strictly correspond to the severity of the situation.The third requirement is the inadmissibility of the extension of the right to derogate to the rights, the protection of which is guaranteed by the polls, the list of which is given in Art. 15 of the Convention.Also these measures should not contradict other obligations of the state in accordance with the International Law.And, indisputable is the condition of compliance with the procedural requirements, enshrined in Sect. 3 of Art. 15 concerning the official public announcement of the derogation, which contains some information about the measures taken by the state and the reasons for taking them.Compliance with the requirements, mentioned above, will be served, in particular, by the activities of the Temporary Consultative Body of The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine Multiagency Commission on the questions of Ukraine derogation from the duties regarding the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, which was established on April 19th, in accordance with the Resolution of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine.The activities of the Commission will help to prevent the abuse of the right of the State to derogate from certain obligations defined by the Covenant and the Convention and unreasonable reduction of the level of human rights protection and freedoms as the matter of fact that Ukraine may use this right. And at the same time, as it is rightly suggested in the publications, considering the Court practice, it may be advisable for the applicants to formulate appropriate complaints even in situations in which they are possible due to the derogation of Ukraine, whereas it is the Court that will ultimately assess the derogation and the necessity for taking certain measures under circumstances, existing in the occupied territories of Ukraine and in some areas of ATO (anti-terrorist operation).

How International Human Rights Transformed the US Constitution

Adoption of the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights created a new international norm prohibiting racial discrimination. That anti-discrimination norm had been a part of the paper Constitution in the United States since adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. However, it did not become a part of the living Constitution until the Fourteenth Amendment was subjected to the magnetic pull of international human rights law. Adoption of the Charter sparked a chain of events culminating in the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which heralded the end of apartheid in the United States. Many Americans think that modern anti-discrimination law was a U.S. invention that we exported to the rest of the world. In fact, U.S. anti-discrimination law is properly understood as an outgrowth of the creation of modern international human rights law.

'Their Way of Punishing': Corporal Punishment by Indigenous Peoples and the Prohibition of Torture

Both the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatments and the right of indigenous peoples’ to self-determination and cultural integrity are vital features of the character of modern international law. These two essential components of modern international law, however, do not always seem to see eye to eye, and one particular point of conflict is in relation to corporal punishment as a criminal sanction in indigenous communities. Practices such as flogging and the stocks would normally be considered to fall within the realm of torture or at least some kind of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment under the various international instruments covering such conducts. However, notions of cultural integrity and identity cause uncertainty as to what status should these practices actually have in the context of indigenous peoples rights. This paper seeks to offer a way to solve the disagreement between these two fundamental aspects of modern international human rights law. Specifically, while claiming that indigenous corporal punishment should be judged under the same standard for torture as any other form of corporal punishment, it also proposes that states should seek to establish transitional consultation processes under ILO Convention 169 to seek to discourage indigenous practices that breach international standards.

Right to Clean Environment- The Various Issues and Challenges

Faced with the results of polluting and destructive actions, many international treaties and local laws and regulations on environmental protection have been introduced in the second half of the 20th century. These at first did not mention human rights in relation to environmental protection. The United Nations Charter of 1945 marked the beginning of modern international human rights law, whereas the Stockholm Declaration of 1972 is generally seen as the starting point of a rights based approach to environmental protection. This declaration formulated several principles, including that 'Man have the fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being, and he bears a solemn responsibility to protect and improve the environment for present and future generations.'

The unbearable rightfulness of being human: citizenship, displacement, and the right to not have rights

Claims to human rights protection made by displaced persons are displaced from the universe of humanity and rendered ineffective by the geopolitical character of modern international human rights law, in favour of the protection of citizens' rights claims. In response, there is increasing interest in leveraging respect for and protection of the rights of displaced persons through extension of the rights enjoyed and supposedly borne by emplaced citizens. However, it is a mistake to assume that humans as citizens bear human rights or that the freedoms that they may be able to extend beyond state boundaries are universalisable. The extension of the right to citizenship functions to displace questions of human rights themselves. The question of the human in rights is in fact always displaced, as long as the human subject is acted upon as if it could possess rights. In paying attention to the critical perspectives with which displaced persons confront the citizen, she or he may come to appreciate the fact that the universality of human rights is served where one does not claim to have rights but, rather, actively engages, without limits, with others in the struggle for rights and their respect.

Refugee Registration as Foreclosure of the Freedom to Move: The Virtualisation of Refugees' Rights within Maps of International Protection

The lack of solid footing in political space is what makes the human rights claims of refugees most vulnerable in the contemporary international order. However, modern international human rights law and protection are predicated on a spatialised sense of the subject of rights that is formed in opposition to and in exclusion of the refugee. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) seeks to locate refugees as part of the universe of human rights through refugee registration exercises; it attempts to map their displacement within the geography of emplaced citizenry. Its conventional efforts in this regard fail, though, and, rather, serve to illustrate how the informal international movement of refugees still exceeds and, thus, undermines the universalism of the UN vision of human rights and freedoms. Consequently, the UNHCR has recently resorted to the highly sophisticated computerised registration technology, called proGres, under its Project Profile system. While the detail and complexity of Project Profile allow for a mapping no more capable of accurately tracing the movements of refugees within the global geography of universal human rights, the complex of digitalised mapping systems brought together within Project Profile permit the production and performance of an international space in which humanitarians may expect refugees to fit. The force of the UNHCR's new registration system is to produce a manner of spatialising refugees that can legitimate and moralise their constraint within orders of international politics and security which allow little room for response to the rights claims of refugees. Rather, their claims to human rights become foreclosed within a virtual understanding of human displacement with respect to emplacement in the state.

The Displacement of the Rights of Displaced Persons: An Irreconciliation of Human Rights between Place and Movement

In this paper, I argue that, despite contemporary efforts, on scholarly, legal, and political registers, to somehow include the rights claims of displaced persons within the modern international regime of human rights protection, respect for their rights itself is inescapably displaced. I establish this point on three central grounds: that modern human rights law is a set of spatially oriented and spatializing orders that necessarily produces nonsites of human displacement; that the political and legal theories on which modern international human rights law and protection are grounded are hostile to irregular human movement as a condition of freedom; and that the various manners in which “the human” as a subject of rights is discursively formed denies one the capacity to establish a sphere of human rights that could ever be universal in scope. Consequently, I conclude that serious address of the exclusionary character of modern international human rights law is insufficiently critical until it considers how it is that debate on the subject is normally confined within territorialized notions of human being and until it recognizes movement as a universal human norm.

A New Deal for the World: America's Vision for Human Rights

In a work of sweeping scope and luminous detail, Elizabeth Borgwardt describes how a cadre of World War II American planners inaugurated the ideas and institutions that underlie our modern international human rights regime. Borgwardt finds the key in the 1941 Atlantic Charter and its Anglo-American vision of 'war and peace aims.' In attempting to globalise what U.S. planners heralded as domestic New Deal ideas about security, the ideology of the Atlantic Charter - buttressed by FDR's 'Four Freedoms' and the legacies of World War I - redefined human rights and America's vision for the world. Three sets of international negotiations brought the Atlantic Charter blueprint to life - Bretton Woods, the United Nations and the Nuremberg trials. These new institutions set up mechanisms to stabilise the international economy, promote collective security and implement new thinking about international justice. The design of these institutions served as a concrete articulation of U.S. national interests, even as they emphasised the importance of working with allies to achieve common goals. The American architects of these charters were attempting to redefine the idea of security in the international sphere. To varying degrees, these institutions and the debates surrounding them set the foundations for the world we know today. By analysing the interaction of ideas, individuals, and institutions that transformed American foreign policy - and Americans' view of themselves - Borgwardt illuminates the broader history of modern human rights, trade and the global economy, collective security and international law. This book captures a lost vision of the American role in the world.

The Kosovo Intervention: Legal Analysis and a More Persuasive Paradigm

NATO's action within the territory of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) in 1999 continues to pose significant and as yet largely unanswered questions to the international legal community with regard to the normative value of existing international law and institutions governing the area of international use of force. This article examines the actions of NATO against the backdrop of traditionally held and arguably evolving interpretations of international law in this supremely important area and concludes that, while some, including Professor Michael Reisman, have argued to the contrary, NATO's actions in the FRY in the spring of 1999 were both presently illegal and prudentially unsound as prospective steps in the evolution of customary international law. The article argues that, instead of working towards the creation of a new custom-based legal order to cover such humanitarian necessity interventions, proponents of the same should rather expend greater energy, and endeavour to achieve more substantial commitment of resources, in efforts to work within the established legal order, with the United Nations Security Council as the governing body thereof. It argues further that, with simple and easily accomplished changes to the procedures of the Security Council, such persuasive efforts will be more likely to bear productive fruit than they have hitherto been. The 11-week armed intervention by NATO member states against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) in the spring of 1999 brought to a head questions of fundamental importance to the international community, specifically with regard to international law concerning the use of force and the weight of modern international human rights principles in modifying traditional international law on that subject. The debate over humanitarian intervention has been rekindled in recent months due to renewed conflict in the Balkans and to the change in the United States

Customary International Law and Private Rights of Action

It has been twenty years since the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued its landmark decision in Filartiga v Pena-Irala.1 In upholding federal court jurisdiction over a suit between aliens concerning violations of international human rights standards in a foreign country, the court in Filartiga paved the way for modern international human rights litigation. As Professor David Bederman has observed, [iln a sense, all current human rights litigation owes its fortune to Filartiga.2 Since Filartiga, US courts have been confronted with two waves of international human rights litigation. The first has primarily involved suits, like Filartiga itself, between aliens concerning alleged human rights abuses occurring outside the United States. This has been moderately successful. While enforcement of judgments is often a problem in these cases, many courts have at least been receptive to hearing the plaintiffs' claims. In recent years, litigants have increasingly attempted to apply the principles developed in this first litigation to suits against domestic defendants. This second wave litigation has been much less successful than the first wave. More importantly, the failure of this litigation-especially in cases involving US plaintiffs-- has the potential to unravel some of the successes achieved in the first wave. To understand this point, some background is necessary. There are two principal types of international law-treaties and customary international law. International human rights litigation has not primarily involved treaty claims. There are of course many treaties today that govern human rights, but the United States either has not ratified these treaties, or it has declared them to be non-self-executing-that is, not enforceable in US courts until implemented by Congress. Consequently, international human rights litigation in the United States is primarily based on claims under customary international law-the that results from a general and consistent practice of states followed by them from a sense of legal obligation.3 The text of the Constitution says little about the domestic status of customary international law. It says a number of things about the status of treaties-in particular, it tells us that they are of the supreme of the land and that federal courts may hear cases arising under them.4 The only reference in the Constitution to customary international law, however, is a grant of statutory power to Congress to define and punish offenses against customary international (referred to at the time of the founding as of the of nations).5 In several decisions in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Supreme Court referred to the of nations as part of our law or part of the of the land.6 In practice, courts treated customary international as general common law-a background source of for federal and state courts in the absence of any federal or state legislation to the contrary. Federal court interpretations of this general common were not binding on the state courts, and claims arising under this general common did not fall within the federal question jurisdiction of the federal courts.7 In Erie Railroad v Tompkins,8 the Supreme Court held that federal courts were no longer free to apply general common law-the choice was either federal or state law.9 On the same day it decided Erie, however, the Court held that for some issues it is appropriate for federal courts to create federal common law-common that is truly federal in that it is binding on the states and provides a basis for federal question jurisdiction.10 The Supreme Court has not had occasion since Erie to resolve the status of customary international law. There is dicta in the Supreme Court's Sabbatino decision11 that could be read as endorsing a federal common status for customary international law,12 but that was not the holding of the Court; indeed, the Court in Sabbatino refused to apply in that case customary international governing expropriation of foreign citizen property. …

A Theory of Customary International Law

This article presents a theory of customary international law (CIL) that seeks to sort out the many well-known difficulties with standard accounts of CIL. The theory uses simple game theoretical concepts to explain how what we call CIL arises, why nations with CIL as commonly understood, and how CIL changes. This theory differs from the standard account of CIL in several fundamental respects. It rejects the usual explanations of CIL based on opinio juris, legality, morality, and related concepts. States do not comply with norms of CIL because of a sense of moral or legal obligation; rather, their compliance and the norms themselves emerge from the states' pursuit of self interested policies on the international stage. In addition, the behaviors associated with CIL do not reflect a single, unitary logic. Instead, they reflect various and importantly different logical structures played out in discrete, historically contingent contexts. Finally, the theory is skeptical of the existence of multilateral behavioral regularities that are typically thought to constitute CIL. The article tests the theory using case studies from four traditional areas of CIL: neutrality, diplomatic immunity, prize, and maritime jurisdiction. We find that most purported rules of CIL reflect pure coincidence of interest, rather than international cooperation, and that the rest are best explained as the outcome of repeated bilateral prisoner's dilemmas or coercion analogous to the behavior of the monopolist in predatory pricing games. We conclude by examining the implications of our analysis for understanding the role of CIL in domestic constitutional arrangements, the function of international treaties and international organizations, and the status of modern international human rights law.

A Theory of Customary International Law

This article presents a theory of customary international law (CIL) that seeks to sort out the many well-known difficulties with standard accounts of CIL. The theory uses simple game theoretical concepts to explain how what we call CIL arises, why nations with CIL as commonly understood, and how CIL changes. This theory differs from the standard account of CIL in several fundamental respects. It rejects the usual explanations of CIL based on opinio juris, legality, morality, and related concepts. States do not comply with norms of CIL because of a sense of moral or legal obligation; rather, their compliance and the norms themselves emerge from the states' pursuit of self interested policies on the international stage. In addition, the behaviors associated with CIL do not reflect a single, unitary logic. Instead, they reflect various and importantly different logical structures played out in discrete, historically contingent contexts. Finally, the theory is skeptical of the existence of multilateral behavioral regularities that are typically thought to constitute CIL. The article tests the theory using case studies from four traditional areas of CIL: neutrality, diplomatic immunity, prize, and maritime jurisdiction. We find that most purported rules of CIL reflect pure coincidence of interest, rather than international cooperation, and that the rest are best explained as the outcome of repeated bilateral prisoner's dilemmas or coercion analogous to the behavior of the monopolist in predatory pricing games. We conclude by examining the implications of our analysis for understanding the role of CIL in domestic constitutional arrangements, the function of international treaties and international organizations, and the status of modern international human rights law.