Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) has recently begun a series of "daily questions" for Supreme Court nominee Judge Sotomayor. The Friday, June 12 question is about interpretation of the US constitution and foreign and international law in relation thereto. One thing that can safely be taken away from the last three Supreme Court confirmation processes is that this issue is here...
Professor Bodansky is absolutely right that the success of U.S. climate change policy depends on whether our leaders can align domestic and international efforts. Unless the United States does its fair share, other nations will not do theirs. And yet a purely international solution – untethered to domestic political realities – has little chance of securing U.S. participation. Bodansky’s own...
[Daniel Bodansky is a Professor at the University of Georgia Law School] In the international climate change negotiations, new ideas are a scarce commodity. After almost twenty years of intensive work, most of the low-hanging fruit have already been plucked, and progress tends to be more incremental – a refinement to the possible types of emissions targets here, a new variation...
[Nigel Purvis is the President of Climate Advisers] Climate change presents a clear and growth threat to the United States and the world. America now has an important opportunity to lead. Congress is moving toward enacting comprehensive climate legislation. The House Energy and Commerce committee recently approved a “cap-and-trade” bill (Waxman-Markey) that would reduce U.S. emissions 17% below 2005 levels by...
I appreciate the comments from Professors Fontana and Ahdieh, and don’t have much to quarrel about with them. They offer useful correctives or supplements to my argument. On the question of the scope of the argument – that is, the nations where we can expect convergence in constitutional law – my essay notes one important exception, and Professor Fontana raises a...
[David Fontana is a Professor at George Washington University School of Law] Mark Tushnet has written another interesting paper, yet again combining his background in American and comparative constitutional law. Tushnet argues—with some qualifications—that there are major structural pressures leading to the globalization of a genre of provisions of domestic constitutional law. Tushnet’s paper is shorter, so there are many claims...
[Robert Ahdieh is a Professor at Emory Law School] At the outset, my thanks to the editors of the Virginia Journal of International Law for inviting me to contribute to this symposium, to my friends at Opinio Juris for hosting it, and to Professor Tushnet for his valuable contribution to ongoing debates about constitutionalism, globalization, and their interrelationship. Needless to say, Professor...
[Mark Tushnet is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard Law School] The argument for “The Inevitable Globalization of Constitutional Law” identifies two general processes – top-down and bottom-up – pushing toward convergence of basic constitutional principles in a rather large number of jurisdictions, those that participate in world-wide markets requiring significant cross-border flows of investment and human capital. We...
As an eminent scholar on the topic of amnesties, I appreciate Ron Slye’s thoughtful response to my analysis of the Barrios Altos case. His critiques are certainly ones that I anticipated when offering my broad reading of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights’s landmark ruling. As a regional body, the Court can only issue judgments that bind member States. Thus,...
[Ronald Slye is the Director of International and Comparative Law Programs and Professor at Seattle University School of Law] Lisa Laplante provides those of us interested in international criminal law, and more specifically the legitimacy of utilizing amnesties during a period of societal transition, with a valuable service by pointing us to, and carefully parsing, the Barrios Altos decision of Inter-American...
[Lisa J. Laplante is Visiting Assistant Professor at Marquette University Law School] Until recently, immunity measures like amnesties were considered an acceptable part of promoting transitional justice in countries seeking to address past episodes of systematic violations of human rights. The politically sensitive context of countries seeking to broker peace between oppositional forces often outweighed the moral imperative of punishing those...
I am briefly interrupting the erudite VJIL symposium to note that a task force announced by the administration to discuss and come up with ideas on how to address detention, Guantanamo, etc., is meeting today in DC. I am unable to make it today, but supplied a number of comments via Ben Wittes, and I send it all good wishes...
