Yale Journal of International Law Symposium: Volume 37 Issue No. 2

This post is part of the Yale Journal of International Law Volume 37, Issue 2 symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below.

The Yale Journal of International Law (YJIL) is pleased to continue its partnership with Opinio Juris through this symposium. Over the next three days we will be discussing two Articles from Volume 37, Issue No. 2. Our sincere thanks to An Hertogen and the rest of the Opinio Juris team for hosting this exciting discussion.

First, in Avoiding Adaptation Apartheid: Climate Change Adaptation and Human Rights Law, Margaux J. Hall and David C. Weiss discuss how international human rights law can inform and guide policy decisions regarding climate change adaptation. They argue that incorporating human rights considerations into adaptation policy can help to moderate or avoid the growing threat of “adaptation apartheid” that will result from unequal global adaptation to the effects of climate change. Their introduction to the discussion and the comments will be posted throughout today and tomorrow.

Second, in Permitting Pluralism: The Seal Products Dispute and Why the WTO Should Accept Trade Restrictions Justified by Noninstrumental Moral Values, Robert Howse and Joanna Langille examine the extent to which countries can use animal welfare concerns—and non-instrumental moral values more broadly—to justify placing restrictions on international trade under the law of the WTO. Using the Seal Products dispute, the authors conclude that the WTO should not deny countries the ability to regulate for moral reasons and risk imposing a secular, materialist, instrumentally rational worldview on its member states. Instead, the WTO should permit pluralism—competing notions of righteousness—and allow countries to regulate for moral reasons. Their introduction to the discussion will be posted on Thursday.

Although this discussion will focus on those articles, we would like to introduce the third article of the issue. In Prospective Advice and Consent, Jean Galbraith proposes an approaching for improving the current system of treaty ratification. She argues that the current system, in which the President negotiates a treaty and the Senate then provides advice and consent, is not constitutionally determined and the that the order should be reversed under certain circumstances. The present system of advice and consent after negotiation and signature limits the number of treaties that can be made under the Treaty Clause, slows the entry into force of even minor treaties, and leads to intentionally endless delays (amounting to outright deaths) for major multilateral treaties. By having broad-brush advice and consent precede treaty negotiation and signature, Professor Galbraith argues, the United States could greatly improve the efficiency of its treatymaking process and increase its negotiating power at the international level.

We look forward to the discussion.