In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Symposia

16 Jul

[Zachary Clopton is the Public Law Fellow at the University of Chicago Law School.] For decades, scholars and practitioners of international law in the United States have focused on the federal courts.  The combination of diversity, alienage, federal question, and Alien Tort Statute (ATS) jurisdiction largely justified this focus.  But in the wake of decisions such as Morrison and Kiobel, some of these scholars and practitioners have turned to state courts and state law to vindicate international norms (1, 2).  To give one example, New York state courts are adjudicating foreign-law claims against the Bank of China arising from its alleged facilitation of Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad attacks in Israel. The attention to states may prove to be a positive development, but notably it has tended to rely on judicially created rights—common law claims under state or foreign law, or customary international law.  What about state political branches?  Is there is a role for governors and state legislatures, and should internationalists spend some of their energy lobbying these state-level political actors? From a policy perspective, as well as from a doctrinal and constitutional one, international litigation in U.S. courts raises both horizontal (separation of powers) and vertical (federalism) questions.  Although some judges and scholars object to international law in all of its forms, and others applaud any expanded role for international law, acknowledging the independent horizontal and vertical dimensions opens up more nuanced options.
|
16 Jul

Last year's inaugural Emerging Voices symposium was a big success, so today we’re kicking off our second annual edition. Through mid-August, we will be bringing you a wide variety of posts written by graduate students, early-career practitioners and academics. Tune in over the next several weeks if you'd like to read more about litigation of international law in domestic courts, interstate arbitration, statelessness, and rape as a war crime--to...

|
14 May

[John Ohnesorge is currently Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School .] 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. I completely agree with Professor Kroncke that the world of law and development, both scholarship and...

|
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,...

|
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...

|
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.
|
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...

|
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...

|
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...

|
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...

|