In association with the International Commission of Jurists

General

25 Jul

[Christopher McCrudden FBA is Professor of Human Rights and Equality Law, Queen’s University, Belfast, William W Cook Global Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School, and Leverhulme Major Research Fellow (2011-2014). I am particularly grateful to Kathleen McCrudden who provided helpful comments on an earlier draft.] Eyal Benvenisti asks how far, if at all, national sovereign states are under an obligation to take into account the effects of their internal decisions on those outside the boundaries of the state. We can consider his argument either at a very high level of abstraction, or test his (and our) intuitions by using a worked example of a practical problem that raises the issue he discusses. I prefer the latter approach.

An example

Over the past couple of years, there has been an intense debate in the United Kingdom over whether the UK should leave the European Convention on Human Rights; as part of this larger debate, there has also been a narrower debate over whether (and if so how) the UK should implement the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights on prisoner voting (an issue on which I have blogged earlier elsewhere).  The way in which both the broader and narrower debates are conducted have potentially adverse effects well beyond the UK. The sight of the House of Commons defying the Court on prisoner voting, or high-ranking members of the Government arguing that the UK should leave the Convention, has potentially damaging effects on the authority and legitimacy of the Court and the Convention in other states. It is one thing for the robust UK debate to be picked up in other stable constitutional democracies with good human rights records.  It is another thing entirely where the British debate is transmitted to barely democratic European states with a debatable human rights record, and a weak commitment to constitutionalism. In the latter states, the British ‘defiance’ gives aid and comfort to altogether darker forces, which see the British resistance as legitimizing their own visceral resistance to the cosmopolitan liberal vision that the Court and the Convention embody.  Is the UK under an obligation to take into account the adverse effects that the British debate, and any decisions flowing from it, may have elsewhere? There is, of course, both an empirical as well as a normative issue in play here.  For the purposes of this post, I don’t want to get embroiled in the empirical question of whether the UK debates do have such effects externally (although I’m quite prepare to believe that they have). The question I’m interested in is whether, assuming that there are such external effects, the UK ought to take these into account. It is at this point that Eyal Benvenisti’s article is powerfully relevant, since it addresses directly the morality (as well as the legality) of ignoring what economists call ‘externalities’ in domestic decision-making.  On what might we base an obligation (whether moral or legal) to ‘internalise’ these externalities, for example in the debate over the UK’s continuing membership of the ECHR, or whether to implement the ECtHR’s decisions?

Benvenisti’s argument

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25 Jul

[Jan Klabbers is Professor of International Organisations Law and Director of the Centre of Excellence in Global Governance Research at the University of Helsinki.] Much of the more serious theoretical reflection in international law aims to bring apology and utopia in alignment. This may be structurally impossible, as Martti Koskenniemi suggested a quarter of a century ago, but aiming to bridge the gap between the two is nonetheless a laudable enterprise. Eyal Benvenisti’s recent contribution to the American Journal of International Law comes closer than many before him. Partly this is because, unlike many others, Benvenisti takes both apology and utopia seriously: he is realist and idealist rolled into one. For him, sovereignty is not a bad word but a respectable concept, providing the space for legitimate exercises of self-determination. At the same time, he is aware that with globalization, many sovereign states (as traditionally conceived) are no longer able fully to help and protect their citizens. Globalization erodes independence and thus undermines self-determination – hence, sovereignty needs to be reconceived in order to take non-citizens into account and, what is more, is indeed undergoing such a re-conceptualization in positive international law. Benvenisti has written an excellent piece, in his customary lucid and thoughtful style. The paper contributes to global ethics in a fairly novel way by positing a combination of cosmopolitanism and parochialism that seems reasonable and workable; it therewith adds to other recent studies engaged in similar enterprises, albeit from different angles (think of Kok-Chor Tan’s Justice without Borders, or Toni Erskine’s Embedded Cosmopolitanism). It contributes to international law by demonstrating that international law as it currently stands can indeed be seen to offer support to such a novel re-conceptualization of sovereignty as trusteeship. I have only one major gripe with the article, and that is that it is too short. It is too short in two ways: it neither allows for the argument completely to unfold, nor does it allow for the empirical materials to be carefully discussed. These are both obviously restrictions stemming from the format of a journal article, so perhaps the thing to question is the popularity (well-nigh sanctity) of the format, or the link between medium and message: the medium dictates the message. My first gripe relates to the space needed for normative argument.
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25 Jul

Almost a quarter of a million Colombians have been killed in the country's internal conflict since 1958, most of them civilians, according to a government-funded report. Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad killed at least 15 Palestinians, mostly women and children, in a rocket attack on a rebel-held refugee camp on the southern edge of Damascus. The United States' National Security Agency's warrantless...

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25 Jul

Eyal Benvenisti's excellent piece sets the stage for a substantial research agenda (hence the need for a major project to pursue its many possible applications). Benvenisti considers aspects of his trusteeship norm largely in the realm of international tribunals. There is also the possibility of direct internalization. I read the piece through the optic of US decisionmaking. My first thought was,...

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25 Jul

Last week, the ECJ handed down its judgment on the Yassin Abdullah Kadi appeal, marking the end of a decade long legal battle involving the Security Council’s consolidated anti-terrorism lists, and their implementation in the EU. The decision is available here.   As I noted in a post last fall, Kadi was delisted by the UN Ombudsperson in October of 2012, and so this judgment does not affect his status. Instead, this appeal against the ECJ’s decision in Kadi II raises the issues of effective judicial protection and standard of judicial review.  In an earlier decision, the ECJ had already established that “Courts of the European Union … ensure review, in principle the full review, of the lawfulness of all Union acts … including review of such measures as are designed to give effect to resolutions adopted by the Security Council.” (Para. 97)  These rights include respect for the rights of the defense and the right to effective judicial protection. What is notable about this latest decision is that:
  • The Court finds that judicial review is indispensable to ensure a fair balance between the maintenance of (i) international peace and (ii) international security (para.131), suggesting that Courts will play a role in the collective security going forward, particularly where fundamental rights are at stake.
  • Despite the improvements in the listing / delisting process represented by the creation of the UN Office of the Ombudsperson, the Court decides that UN processes do not “provide to the person whose name is listed on the Sanctions Committee Consolidated List … [with] the guarantee of effective judicial protection.” (133)
  • This decision may set a new standard for the review of Security Council acts in other fields.
Another notable aspect of the judgment is its emphasis on a high level of procedural and substantive review.  The ECJ stated that:
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24 Jul

[Armin von Bogdandy is Director and Dana Schmalz is a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law] In another seminal piece, Eyal Benvenisti continues his well-balanced middle course between utopian cosmopolitan aspirations and resigned state pragmatism, this time by reconstructing contemporary sovereignty. Like many others, he considers the Westphalian model of state power to be neither an appropriate description of today’s world order nor a normatively appealing model for the future. Starting from an assessment of democratic deficits and dilemmas arising from limited space and resources, Benvenisti shows why a different conception of sovereignty is morally required. He then accomplishes a brilliant reconstruction of important court decisions and doctrinal evolutions that support his normative findings. Within this reconstruction, Benvenisti integrates a great variety of legal phenomena, ranging from a vessel’s right to innocent passage, to consultation duties in WTO-law, to the responsibility to protect. These normative and legal reconstructions are impeccable, and we are sympathetic to the general thrust of Benvenisti’s argument. However, we suggest a more pluralist approach, mainly in two respects. For one, we would complement Benvenisti’s private law paradigm with a stronger focus on international public authority, which plays little role in his reconstruction. Depending on the subject matter and the institutions available, some issues might be resolved more effectively and inclusively through international institutions. At the same time and on a more basic level, we suggest construing the international sovereignty of a country in a more pluralist manner, taking into account its relevant constitutional law. We think that Benvenisti’s legal reconstruction can be thickened, in this way, while avoiding his problematic reliance on humanity as a source of public authority. International sovereignty has changed from a founding concept to a functional concept: once, international sovereignty provided a point of closure where legal thinking could stop. Georg Jellinek perfectly captured this paradigm in 1882 when he stated that everything could be explained “through sovereignty and from sovereignty”. Today, as Benvenisti’s analysis shows, it is far better to conceive of international sovereignty functionally, so as to serve other principles, such as self-determination, human rights, or reasonable allocation of resources. Pushing Benvenisti’s reconstruction further, we propose that the functional concept should also be conceived as relative: The specific meaning of a state’s international sovereignty should be informed by its constitutional law and practice. Benvenisti’s article perhaps presents the world in an overly uniform manner. To start with his fabulous image of the “small apartment in the densely packed high-rise”: Great as the picture is, it neglects huge differences between states. Sticking with the metaphor, we might say that some owners possess special voting rights in the owners’ association, have special access to the common property, and own a mansion out of town, to which they can escape when fed up with the neighbors. Others, by contrast, do not have such privileges, and still others have pooled their rights for common exercise. On a more legal note, the constitutional orders of China, Germany, or Lebanon enshrine deeply different understandings of the international order and the country’s place therein. A reconstructive proposal should take those differences into account. Accordingly,  international sovereignty could be informed by the respective constitutional openness towards common projects and willingness to recognize shared responsibility. Yet, how can such relativization take place without endangering the autonomy of international law and the equality of states under international law?
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24 Jul

[Eyal Benvenisti is the Anny and Paul Yanowicz Professor of Human Rights at Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law and Global Visiting Professor at New York University School of Law.] We live in a shrinking world where interdependence between countries and communities is intensifying. This interdependence tests the limits of the traditional concept of sovereignty which crystallized at a time when distances...

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24 Jul

South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir Mayardit has fired Vice President Riek Machar Teny and all his cabinet ministers. Australia is to investigate reports that asylum seekers at one of its detention camps in Papua New Guinea are being raped and tortured. Syrian rebels claim they have captured the entire western area of Aleppo. Russian and Iranian media are reporting that Vladimir Putin will meet Iran's...

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23 Jul

A top UN envoy, Leila Zerrougui, special representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, has warned officials and anti-government fighters in Syria risk prosecution as war criminals for atrocities against children. The US House Intelligence Committee says it is now willing to supply weapons to Syrian rebels despite the risk of their ending up with al-Qaeda allies. Additionally, top US military...

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22 Jul

We are pleased to host the American Journal of International Law on-line symposium on the lead articles of the new issue of the AJIL, which were written by Leila Sadat (Washington University) and Eyal Benvenisti (Tel Aviv University). Today and tomorrow there will be a discussion of Leila Sadat's article, Crimes Against Humanity in the Modern Age. The précis of her piece explains...

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22 Jul

The ICC's Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has said that attacks on UN peacekeepers in the Darfur region of Sudan may constitute war crimes. European Union governments agreed today to put the armed wing of Hezbollah on the EU terrorism blacklist in a reversal of past policy fuelled by concerns over the Lebanese militant movement's activities in Europe. French Interior Minister Manuel Valls...

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20 Jul

This week on Opinio Juris, we continued our Emerging Voices symposium. Patricia Tarre Moser started the week with her proposal for the unilateral withholding of sovereign immunity as a countermeasure against jus cogens violations. Scott McKenzie wrote on the application of international water law principles to the simmering tension between Egypt and Ethiopia on the latter's decision to dam the Nile. Daniel Seah...

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