Longtime readers know that I have been pretty skeptical of the usefulness of the ICC's actions against Sudan. Indeed, Professor Jide Nzelibe and I have argued in prior work that international criminal tribunals can worsen humanitarian atrocities rather than deter or prevent them, especially when they are aimed at leaders who have the power to commit greater atrocities to stay...
The NYT Room for Debate blog is kind enough occasionally to invite me to contribute on law topics. It recently held a mini-debate on the question of whether Congress should empanel some kind of “truth commission” to deal with issues of torture and other things from the Bush administration. I was the voice in opposition. Other contributors were David Cole, Michael Ratner,...
Here. And who knew that there was an Association of Public Diplomacy Scholars, and that one can get a master's degree in the field? Public diplomacy's rise among both policymakers and academics has been pretty dramatic. In the government, what used to be a backwater, both in main State's public affairs bureau and in the now defunct US Information Agency, was...
This is a non-substance post just to say thanks from all of us to Richard Gardiner and all the commenters for offering, and to Duncan for organizing, the treaty interpretation symposium this past week. It was marvelously intellectual and subtle and, even having read the book, I am still reading the posts carefully. I think they will be read and...
As you have likely heard by now, the DOJ has released nine more memos from the Bush Administration's Office of Legal Counsel concerning various national security and international law issues. My colleague Brian Tamanaha has read through them and has a post over at Balkinization on why they show that John Yoo's argument that he and his colleagues acted in...
As we come to the end of our discussion of Richard Gardiner's book and the subject of Treaty Interpretation more generally, I wanted to thank our guest bloggers and, of course, Richard, for what has proven a sophisticated (and hopefully useful) discussion. I have thoroughly enjoyed the examination Isabelle, Malgosia, Jan and Richard brought to bear on issues about the...
Treaties constitute one of the largest effective components of modern international law. Lawyers routinely have to give meaning to their terms. Mostly this is straightforward, but often enough there are interesting difficulties in deciding what the terms mean and how they apply in novel or unexpected situations. I have found all the posts and comments extremely interesting, and I am grateful...
It seems that our discussion these past few days confirms that 40 years after the Vienna Conference the meta-questions relating to treaty interpretation remain unaltered. But perhaps it also appears that the ILC ultimately made the right decision to codify the relatively few basic principles on which agreement could be found. The Commission always made it clear that...
I much enjoyed reading the views of Duncan Hollis on the art element in treaty interpretation and on auto-interpretation. I agree that who it is who is making an interpretation may play a key part in the outcome. That two tribunals arrived at different interpretations of similar “umbrella” provisions in bilateral investment treaties shows this all too vividly (SGS v...
I am actually not sure whether it makes much sense, as Isabelle fleetingly suggests, to think of articles 31-32 in terms of either rules or principles. Following e.g. Rosenne, I tend to think that they lack any 'norm-creative character' (to use the phrase from the ICJ's 1969 North Sea Continental Shelf cases), and are best seen as methodological devices: as instructions...
As Jan suggested at the end of his post, it seems that the broader question underlying our debate is how principles of treaty interpretation are used to empower international courts and tribunals and what the limits are of that function. On interpretation as a rule-governed activity, it seems that we all approach Articles 31 to 33 VCLT as principles rather than...
First off, I should say how much I admire Richard Gardiner's book; it has already earned a prominent spot on my bookshelf and I expect it will become a regular reference work for me in any future interpretative exercises. At the same time, I have lots of questions and comments about the book and the growing density of the VCLT...
