In association with the International Commission of Jurists

NYU JILP Symposium: Promoting democracy from within: The role of rising civil society in taking on authoritarian government in China

13 May

[Eva Pils is currently Associate Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Law and a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at NYU Law School’s U.S.-Asia Law Institute. Her scholarship focuses on human rights in China, with publications addressing Chinese human rights lawyers, property law and land rights in China, the status of migrant workers, the Chinese petitioning system,...

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13 May

[Cynthia Estlund is currently Catherine A. Rein Professor a NYU School of Law] This post is part of the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics Vol. 46, No. 1 symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. Jed Kroncke explores a fascinating contrast within US policy toward China and other developing countries: That policy couples...

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13 May

This post is part of the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics Vol. 46, No. 1 symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. The NYU Journal of International Law and Politics is proud to be partnering with Opinio Juris once again for an online symposium. This symposium is a discussion of Professor Jedidiah J. Kroncke’s article Property Rights, Labor Rights and Democratization: Lessons From China and Experimental Authoritarians, which was published in the NYU Journal of International Law and Politics, Volume 46, issue No. 1. In this article, Professor Kroncke argues that a fundamental paradox exists in efforts to promote democratization abroad that emphasize property rights to the exclusion of labor rights and that this paradox emerges from the connection between property rights and foreign legal development alongside a renewed emphasis on independent unionization in democratization theory. The Article explores the paradox in action through the willingness of modern authoritarian regimes, particularly China, to experiment with rule of law reforms, and creatively so in the realm of property rights, while being uniformly repressive of associative labor rights. Over the next two days, a number of legal scholars will offer their thoughts on the topic, including: Tuesday, May 13, 2014:
  • Cynthia Estlund – New York University School of Law
  • Eva Pils – Chinese University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Law
Wednesday, May 14, 2014: Below is an introduction to the symposium by Professor Jedidiah Kroncke: I want to open by thanking the editors at NYU JILP for their efforts in organizing this symposium and Opinio Juris for hosting. I am also very thankful for the opportunity to have scholars whose work I regard highly subject the article to critical scrutiny. As I look forward to the commentators’ engagement with the paper’s substantive claims, I thought I would give a simple preface to make explicit some of the methodological motivations that shape the piece. Much of my work to date has focused on the historical evolution of comparative law in the US, specifically through its relationship to China and the field popularly known as law and development. I believe that the distinction between these two fields is inherently illusory and counterproductive, especially when such distinction artificially segregates the study of certain foreign legal systems from others and in doing so presumes a certain common sense about from where and to where legal knowledge flows globally. Further, I see it as a categorical error that the monadic study of foreign legal systems is de facto labeled “comparative law” when it is not analytically comparative or, worse, implicitly employs an uncritical view of US or “Western” law.
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11 May

Events Sociological Inquires into International Law” (LSE, May 16-17, 2014) is a workshop with the aim of bringing contemporary international law scholarship into a closer conversation with a number of inspiring and theoretically rich literatures on law and markets deriving from traditions of thinking within sociology and anthropology.  We are convinced that, particularly within the field of international economic law, a deeper...

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09 May

[David J. R. Frakt, Lt. Col., USAFR, is a legal scholar and former lead counsel, Office of Military Commissions-Defense.] I wanted to weigh in on the debate between my esteemed colleagues Steve Vladeck, Peter Margulies and Kevin Jon Heller at Just Security, Lawfare and Opinio Juris, on the issue of the existence of an armed conflict at the time of Mr. Al Nashiri’s alleged offenses and the critical questions of who should decide this issue, and when.  Peter argues that this is a question of fact best decided by the panel of military officers who will serve as jurors in the military commissions.  Al Nashiri’s defense team asserts that this is a question of law and they are asking the D.C. District Court to rule that the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000 was not part of an armed conflict.  As there was no armed conflict ongoing, so goes their argument, the law of armed conflict does not apply and his actions could not be considered a violation of the law of war; further, because military commissions are courts of limited jurisdiction with power only to try and punish violations of the law of war, the federal court should enjoin any further proceedings at Guantanamo.  It should be noted that Al Nashiri has already raised this matter in a pretrial motion in the military commission, seeking to have the charges dismissed by the military judge on the grounds that the commission lacks jurisdiction over his alleged offenses because they did not take place in the context of an armed conflict.  Judge Pohl declined to dismiss the charges, characterizing the issue as primarily a question of fact for the jury (Ruling AE104F).  Judge Pohl also acknowledged that the question was a “jurisdictional question subject to purely legal determination” but claimed that he must make this determination using a “wide deference” standard.”  Applying this standard, he found that the Congressional authorization to try offenses that occurred prior to 9/11, coupled with the fact that charges had been filed by the prosecutor, referred to trial by the Convening Authority, and not withdrawn by the Secretary of Defense or the President was sufficient to establish the existence of an armed conflict at the time of the offenses for jurisdictional purposes.  This determination is essentially tantamount to a finding that he considered there to be sufficient evidence to submit the question to a jury.  However, he left open the possibility of reconsideration at a later time, presumably in the form of a motion for a directed verdict at the close of the prosecution’s case.
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09 May

[Carsten Stahn is Professor of International Criminal Law and Global Justice at Leiden University, and Programme Director of the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies.] Jus post bellum comes in many forms and variations. One of the main shortcomings in existing discourse is the lack of engagement with the interplay between law and morality. Like the laws of war, and the...

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09 May

[James Pattison is a Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of Manchester.] It’s often been claimed that there exists a responsibility to rebuild after war on behalf of the international community in cases such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Somalia, and so on. For instance, this was one of the key tenets of the report by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty...

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08 May

[Hayk Kupelyants is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge] Pari passu clauses remain perhaps the most nebulous clauses found in sovereign bonds. Among varying wordings, the clause in its simplest form provides that the bonds will rank pari passu (i.e., on equal footing). The clause puzzled many academics and has given rise to legal battles before national courts, for it is undeniable that the state is not subject to a bankruptcy regime where the pari passu treatment is naturally well-fitted. Two interpretations have been offered to demystify the function of the pari passu in sovereign debt bonds. The first and the most controversial of these constructions argues that the clause requires equal payment to all, even holdout, bondholders. Recently, the Second Circuit Court of Appeal in NML v Argentina has endorsed this interpretation of the pari passu clause. Under this construction of the clause, a sovereign debtor is obliged to pay to all bondholders, even those who held out from the sovereign debt restructuring. The pari passu clause can thus become a powerful tool in the hands of holdout creditors which seek to reclaim the full value of the bonds they hold by claiming that the state is in breach of the pari passu clause by the mere fact of refusing to pay up. Many academics have argued that this interpretation of the pari passu clause is too far-fetched (at least for the pari passu clauses that do not expressly refer to ‘payment’ in their wording). On its face, pari passu clauses simply require equal (legal) ranking, whereas the payment under bonds is a question of factual performance of the contract and not a question of priorities or ranking. The second and the conventional interpretation of the pari passu clause argues that the clause merely ensures equal legal ranking and no factual equality in terms of payment. By this, the sovereign debtor would be under no obligation to pay to all bondholders. Two counter-arguments spring to mind.
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08 May

[Dov Jacobs is an Assistant Professor of International Law at the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies, Leiden University and comments on international law issues at Spreading the Jam.] Carsten Stahn, Jennifer Easterday and Jens Iverson have edited a comprehensive and rich volume on the law applicable in the aftermath of conflict, also known as Jus Post Bellum. This book covers...

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07 May

[Cymie R. Payne is Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers University and the School of Law - Camden.] In my contribution to Jus Post Bellum: Mapping the Normative Foundations, I claim that: Existing treaty law prohibits some infliction of environmental damage, but only if it is “widespread, long-term and/or severe.” There is evidence of state practice recognizing the importance...

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