Purpose Of International Law Research Articles

The European Union in Global Competition of Jurisdictions

International legal regimes are a factor in regulating relationships between subjects of international relations, constructive interaction, policy coordination and resolution of contradictions. When conflicts arise, the interaction of the legal systems of states, regional associations and international organizations can be both complementary and competitive in nature, affecting the legal qualification of the parties’ actions. Competitiveness manifests itself in the interpretation of the actions of the same entities within different jurisdictions. The conflict of interests of the parties, as confirmed by examples from the contractual legal practice of relations between the EU and the USA, Canada and a number of other countries, is quite surmountable. The cluster of contradictions characterizing the current situation on the European continent gives an existential character to the search by all parties for a rational strategy for resolving the crisis. The purpose of international law is to put contradictions into the legal plane in order to avoid escalation of tension in relations between the warring parties. An objective assessment of the positions of the world centers of power and the basic legal principles that guide them in the strategy of global presence requires taking into account the problems that gave rise to the replacement of the previous attitude towards «integration of integrations» by a direct clash of the parties. A critical analysis of the key areas of the EU’s implementation of external competencies, including sanctions (implemented with varying degrees of effectiveness in recent years), is important for understanding the strategy that Brussels is implementing. The current crisis is a serious test of the EU’s resistance to stress, and of the Union’s value system for resilience in unfavorable external conditions. The subject of this paper is the real possibilities of the European Union to offer an alternative to the confrontational scenario.

The Art of International Law

International lawyers study international law primarily through its written texts—treaties, official documents, judgments, and scholarly works. Critical to being an international lawyer, it seems, is access to the written word, whether in hard copy or online. Indeed, as Jesse Hohmann observes, “the production of text can come to feel like the very purpose of international law.”

The Purpose of International Law Is to Advance Justice—and International Law Has No Value Unless It Does So

The central topic of this year's annual meeting of the American Society of International Law has been “What International Law Values,” restated more forcefully in the title of this panel, “The Value and Purpose of International Law.” Notice the underlying assumption: that international law has value and serves some useful purpose. This premise is important because it supplies the basis on which international law seeks to secure our obedience and respect. We have no reason to obey or respect international law unless international law has some value or serves some useful purpose. This leads us to consider what this value and purpose might be. Which values and what purpose does international law exist to serve? Or, more important, which values and purpose would international law have to serve or advance if it were to deserve our obedience or respect? The answer can be given in one word: justice. Justice is the value that justifies or could justify international law, and justice is the purpose that international law properly seeks to serve and protect.

The Existential Function of Interpretation in International Law

For most international lawyers, involves acts giving meaning to a particular legal rule. Interpretative studies center largely on questions of method and technique – by what process should (or must) meaning be given to an international legal rule and how does a given meaning accord with the interpretative method employed. In recent years, increasing methodological awareness of interpretative theory has broadened – or, in the case of critical scholarship, challenged – the capacity of to give meaning to international law. Notwithstanding the value in focusing on interpretative methods and techniques, the concept of they produce remains incomplete. International law’s interpretative processes are like an iceberg – the meaning arrived at by an interpreter is not simply a of the method and technique employed (the visible tip) but rests on an array of earlier choices about what exists to be interpreted in the first place (the iceberg’s hidden, critical mass). A familiar example involves the question of what evidence counts as State for purposes of identifying customary international law. Interpreters who only count what States do may generate different content for a claimed rule than those who also consider what States say about the rule, even holding constant the method and technique employed. Similar questions arise throughout the international legal order. Before a treaty can be interpreted according to the 1969 Vienna Convention, for example, the interpreter must conclude the treaty actually exists. Indeed, interpretative choices lie at the core of international law’s sources doctrine, since what qualifies as international law (or not) can privilege or foreclose specific interpretative methods and outcomes. This paper seeks to uncover the existential function of in international law. It explains how all interpretations have effects as they create, confirm, or deny the existence of the subject of interpretation. At the same time, I identify a particular structure of interpretative argument – what I call existential interpretation – by which interpreters ascertain the existence of their subjects. I review examples of this phenomenon in questions about the existence of interpretative authority, evidence, international law, and its sources. Existential interpretations and the functions they serve have significant implications for international legal (a) discourse, (b) doctrine, and (c) theories of international law. Existential interpretations delineate the boundaries for interpretative discourse, narrowing it in cases of consensus on the existence of the interpreted subject, and broadening it in cases of dispute. Where interpretative resolutions of questions are possible, they may impact the content of international law doctrine, either directly or indirectly. And, where resolution is not possible, interpretations may operate as proxies for theoretical disagreement about the nature or purpose of international law (e.g., positivists may insist interpreters exclude from their toolbox the same soft law sources that naturalists insist require effectiveness as a matter of right). The paper concludes with a call for further study of given its importance to practice as well as its potential to provide a new lens for mapping the unity and fragmentation of the international legal order itself.

War is Governance: Explaining the Logic of the Laws of War from a Principal-Agent Perspective

What is purpose of international law on armed conflict, and why would opponents bent on destroying each other’s capabilities commit to and obey rules designed to limit their choice of targets, weapons and tactics? Traditionally, answers to this question have been offered on one hand by moralists who regard law as being inspired by morality, and on other by realists who explain this branch of law on basis of reciprocity. Neither side's answers withstand close scrutiny. In this Article we develop an alternative explanation which is based on principal-agent model of domestic governance. We pry open black box of the state, and examine complex interaction between civilian and military apparatuses seething beneath veil of sovereignty. Our point of departure is that military conflicts raise significant intra-state conflicts of interest that result from delegation of authority to engage in combat: between civil society and elected officials, between elected officials and military commanders, and within military chain of command. We submit that most effective way to reduce domestic agency costs prevalent in war is by relying on external resources to monitor and discipline agents. Even though it may be costly, and reciprocity is not assured, principals who worry that agency slack may harm them or their nations' interests are likely to prefer that warfare be regulated by international norms. The Article expounds theory and uses it to explain evolution of law and its specific doctrines, and outlines normative implications of this new understanding of purpose of law. Ultimately, our analysis suggests that, as a practical matter, international law enhances ability of states to amass huge armies, because it lowers costs of controlling them. Therefore, although at times compliance with law may prove costly in short run, in long run it strengthens state against its enemies.

Religious Human Rights and Peace

This article analyzes the international human rights to have or adopt a religion or belief and to manifest one's religion or belief as liberties of individual human beings protected by duties of non-interference and immunities from extinction holding against State Parties. It identifies their moral grounds as analogous moral religious human rights and morally proper purposes of international law, including the promotion of international peace. It argues that although these human rights threaten peace to a limited extent, on balance they would, if universally respected, enhance both internal and international peace even more.

International law and the limits of global justice

AbstractThere are two central theses to this article, the first is that a special kind of governance authority is needed for principles of distributive social justice (‘social justice’ from now on) to be applicable to any sphere of human action. The second is that international law does not and cannot represent that kind of governance authority. It is not ‘social justice-apt’, in my terminology. This is due to the limits inherent in the statist character of international law, a character that underlies the point and purpose of international law in the first place. Putting these together, one can conclude that international law cannot be used to govern the global order according to those principles of social justice that liberal theorists typically defend in the domestic context. This shows that if the cosmopolitan project of extending social justice to the global arena does not find an alternative form of governance for the international order (the problem of ‘cosmopolitan coordination’) it ceases to be a viable project.

What is the purpose of international law?

What is the purpose of international law?

The Wilsonian Challenge to International Law

AbstractAfter the Great War, Woodrow Wilson challenged the foundations of international law based on fully sovereign states. “Wilsonianism” as elaborated in the Fourteen Points, and in other speeches, rested on a logic that made a universalized liberal individual the locus of sovereignty in the new world order. The truly radical implications of Wilsonianism had no sterner critic than Robert Lansing, Wilson's secretary of state and one of the founders of the American Journal of International Law. Lansing held tenaciously to a positivist paradigm of international law as it had evolved by the early twentieth century. This article reconsiders the conflict between Wilson and Lansing not so much as a duel between individuals as a duel between conflicting conceptions of sovereignty and the purpose of international law in the new world order.

The Sources of International Human Rights and their Application in U.S.

Is the torture morally and legally justifiable in some cases? What is the relations between the Human Rights and the International Law? Is the International Law applied by the U.S. Courts? Can the Human Rights be considered jus cogens? What are the preemptive norms? Is the sentence “less free but more safe” true? These are some of the questions that this article tries to answer. This paper considers the sources of International Human Rights Law and their application by the Courts of the United States. Based on the recent decisions of different Courts and the Restatement (third) of the Foreign Relations law of the United States, the paper explains how the judges apply the Treaties and criticizes the “self executing” character as too strict described by the U.S. Supreme Court in Meddelin v. Texas .Further, the paper analyzes the concept of Customary International Law, its relation with Human Rights, and the different theories about the application of International Custom in U.S. Court. The article argues that Customary International Law is federal Law of U.S., with the traditional theory of the Customary International Law. I think the needs to protect Human Rights and the fact that many national constitutions provides the automatic incorporation of customary international law caused the distortions of the definition of International Custom which is accepted by some scholars like a religious dogma. In my prospective, according to the Restatment and Schachter, only few Human Rights provisions can be retained Customary Law because in compliance with the two requirements: state practice and opinion juris.The most innovative part of the article is about the jus cogens, its definition and its content. Analyzing all the positions about it and its application by the Greek Aeropago and Italian Corte di Cassazione, the paper affirms the existence of jus cogens and rethinks its role in International Law. In particular, the paper answers to the three questions which Antony D’amato wrote in his article in which criticizes the concept of jus cogens: 1. What is the utility of a norm of jus cogens? 2. How does a purported norm of jus cogens arise? 3. Once one arises, how can international law change it or get rid of it?The conclusion is about the function of International Law and his role played in the defense of Human Rights. The paper argues that the principal purpose of International Law, in order to defend all the people and all the human beings, is avoiding this “injection of hate” in faithfulness bringing forth justice. That is settling common rules among the nations mainly through the agreement of the States but also through those norms essential for the pacific consistence of the people.

Al-Haq Position Paper on Issues Arising from the Palestinian Authority’s Submission of a Declaration to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Under Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute

In early 2009 the Palestinian Authority submitted a declaration under Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute recognizing the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court ‘for the purpose of identifying, prosecuting and judging the authors and accomplices of acts committed on the territory of Palestine since 1 July 2002.’ In the first instance this paper argues that whereas the existence or otherwise of a state of Palestine remains moot at best for the purpose of international law and international relations broadly speaking, a compelling argument can be made that for the purposes of the Statute only, a determination by the Court that Palestine is a state that can engage with the Court would be valid and in line with the Court and the Statute’s statutory requirements. The paper, drawing on the criteria being relied upon by the Office of the Prosecutor in order to decide whether the PA, as an institution established by the PLO, has the necessary ‘capacity’ to transfer its jurisdiction to the Court, then addresses the extent of the PA’s jurisdiction over international crimes. It demonstrates that the PA can legitimately prosecute individuals responsible for crimes within the jurisdiction of the ICC regardless of the nationality of the individuals concerned and that the PA has the ability to enter into international agreements. It concludes by asserting that the ICC may validly consider Palestine to be a state for the purposes of Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute and may accept the transfer of jurisdiction from the PA to the Court in line with the Statute and the principles of international law

The Power and Purpose of International Law: Insights from the Theory & Practice of Enforcement

The Power and Purpose of International Law: Insights from the Theory & Practice of Enforcement

Australia's Reckless Enactment of the War Crime of Wilful Killing

A significant part of Australia's domestic implementation of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (the Rome Statute) is the insertion of a new Division 268 into the Commonwealth's Criminal Code. The new division contains a set of criminal offences equivalent to those listed in Articles 6 to 8 of the Rome Statute, covering genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The new offences differ from their domestic predecessors, the offences in the Geneva Convention Act 1957 (Cth), in two ways: they are defined in the domestic statute (rather than by reference to an international convention) and they operate within a relatively new scheme of domestic criminal law, the Commonwealth's Criminal Code. The Commonwealth government took the step of 'domesticating' the offences in the Rome Statute for the express purpose of minimising the likelihood that the new International Criminal Court (ICC) will be able to exercise its jurisdiction in relation to alleged breaches of international humanitarian law by Australians. This article addresses one consequence of this course: the introduction into Australian law of ill - defined offences that serve neither the purposes of international law nor sensible domestic law. In particular, it explains how one egregious bastard child of these two fields of law, the new Australian crime of 'wilful killing', may have criminalised collateral damage in the field of war. The article also speculates on the causes of this misbegotten enactment and possible remedies for the problems that flow from it.

Appraising the Methods of International Law: A Prospectus for Readers

In 1908 the second volume of the American Journal of International Law featured a piece by Lassa Oppenheim entitled The Science of International Law: Its Tasks and Method. Oppenheim began his article by noting, apparently with some approval, that the first volume of AJIL, stacked with articles only by Americans, had “shown to the world that America is able to foster the science of international law without being dependent upon the assistance of foreign contributors.” Concerned, however, that students were “at first frequently quite helpless for want of method [and] mostly plunge into their work without a proper knowledge of the task of our science, without knowing how to make use of the assertions of authorities, and without the proper views for the valuation and appreciation of the material at hand,” Oppenheim sought to bring “the task and the method of this our science into discussion in this Journal.” What followed was a comprehensive exposition of his views on the purposes of international law and the methods available to lawyers and scholars for approaching the problems they face.

Challenges and Opportunities: The European Communities and the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe

The astonishing sequence of events during the past twelve months which have completely turned Eastern Europe upside down and mark the beginning of a new era of which nobody yet knows the outlines, has turned out to be of crucial importance for the future of the European Communities as well. One of the international fora where this is obvious, is the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. With Soviet President Gorbachov calling for a follow-up Conference this November, American President Bush willing to give Western Europe -read the E.C.- primary responsibility for the economic resurrection and political integration within the West of Eastern Europe; West German Chancellor Kohl totally preoccupied by German unification, British Prime Minister, Thatcher, and French President, Mitterand, unable to give Western Europe the lead, necessary and desired, the European Communites have a unique political opportunity to take some decisive steps towards the proclaimed ultimate goal of a European Union by further tightening the Communities and enforcing their autonomous role, inter alia within the CSCE. At the same time, those steps not only seem legally desirable, but e.g. with respect to that same CSCE, perhaps also necessary for purposes of international law!

The Gulf War from the point of view of international law: An ordinary war of aggression inspired by territorial ambition?

Iraq and Iran would certainly not come at the top of everyone's list of States which are particularly concerned with the implementation of international law. However, as is the case in virtually all international conflicts, to justify their actions in the Gulf War, these States have also adopted positions based on arguments of international law. In a complicated conflict such as this, it is by no means easy to assess the validity of such justifications, as this contribution attempts to do, if only because the facts are extremely difficult to determine objectively. For purposes of international law, this problem regarding the facts can be partially avoided by analysing the conflict mainly on the basis of the viewpoints raised during the discussions of the conflict in the Security Council and the General Assembly of the United Nations. Moreover, only the first stage of the conflict up to 1980 is examined here.