In Extraterritorial Application of Human Rights Treaties: Law, Principles, Policy, Marko Milanovic has written an illuminating and comprehensive analysis of the increasingly contested question of the geographic scope of human rights treaties. Of course, this is a dynamic area of law—as Marko notes, many of the cases he examines are of quite recent vintage—so undoubtedly he will be at work...
There are few international lawyers in the world who know more about climate change than Dan Bodansky. More generally, Dan is also an expert on international environmental law (IEL), and in this book he has distilled years of study and observation into a very readable yet sophisticated treatment of the subject. A successful overview and analysis of IEL is very...
At Greg Shaffer’s invitation I’m joining the discussion to make a couple of small points about some of the concepts used in Greg and Mark’s very interesting and carefully researched book. The first concerns the GMO case as an example of a “regime complex.” When David Victor and I first proposed the concept of a regime complex, we used the...
I want to give my sincere thanks to all the participants in the symposium on Does the Constitution Follow the Flag? Many terrific points, questions, and critiques were raised (made?) this week, and I certainly found it a fascinating discussion. My book is an attempt to synthesize and reframe a wide range of issues related to territoriality, and in so...
Reading over the last few posts, it seems very clear that there is an array of extremely interesting angles to the question of whether the Constitution ought to follow the flag in all instances. Tim, Peter, David, and Bill all have raised great questions about the normative dimensions of extraterritoriality and intraterritoriality. In my book I generally eschewed this...
Roger raises an important issue with regard to the landmark 2008 decision in Boumediene v. Bush . Is that case in effect limited to its facts because of the unique qualities of Guantanamo? Or does the logic extend elsewhere? The obvious focus going forward is Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Bagram holds many more detainees than does GTMO and, given...
I’m glad (though by no means surprised) to see so many thoughtful comments about Does the Constitution Follow the Flag? In this post I will respond briefly to a few of the points made in the hopes of clarifying the issues at stake. Let me take them in reverse order. David Golove makes a very interesting argument about how contempories understood...
A century ago the presidential race between Republican William McKinley and Democrat William Jennings Bryan was consumed by the question of whether "the Constitution follows the flag." The United States had just acquired several overseas colonies in the wake of the Spanish-American War. The Democratic Party platform of 1900 declared that “We hold that the Constitution follows the flag, and...
Andrew’s reply makes a good point. I share his skepticism about my proffered explanation for the choice of hard law over soft law. The problem is that we have an empirical puzzle that demands explanation, and we lack a good one. If there is a better explanation than the one I put forward, I have not yet seen it. The...
The conversation thus far has been interesting, but I want to bring up some new issues that we have not yet discussed. I have long been interested in how international agreements work, in part because since the end of the Second World War (at least) international agreements have been the most significant source of international law, and in part...
Larry Helfer's post on the creation of new international tribunals presents the puzzle of why states create so many new institutions when they could, in theory, use existing institutions. I suspect that he is right that part of the answer is a desire to create more focused and technically expert tribunals. But perhaps states also desire more closely controlled tribunals...
