In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

30 Nov

up doing nothing, while the world watches helplessly as the atrocities unfold.  Alternatives to the Security Council do not always exist.  In most situations, the General Assembly cannot simply take up the measures blocked within the Security Council because certain powers contained in the UN Charter are exclusively the province of the Security Council.  On the 75th anniversary of the UN Charter, this book suggests that a solution for this dysfunction may actually exist. The Book’s Central Thesis The central thesis of the book is that casting a veto while...
30.11.20 | |

15 May

[Allison Stanger is Russell J. Leng ’60 Professor of International Politics and Economics and Chair of the Political Science Department at Middlebury College. She is the author of One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy.] This is the first day of our book symposium on Laura Dickinson’s book Outsourcing War and Peace: Preserving Public Values in a World of Privatized Foreign Affairs. Related posts can be found below. Laura Dickinson has written a compelling and thoughtful inquiry into the larger implications of...
15.05.12 | |

06 Apr

as much as I love treaties, I believe that there is significant value in thinking about interpretation as more than a process of giving treaty provisions meaning. My introduction of the concept of existential interpretation is an effort to show just how broadly interpretative processes reach and structure the international legal order. In doing so, I hope to illustrate — as the book itself does — the importance of thinking about interpretation as its own field within international law. [An introductory post to the book symposium can be found here.]...
06.04.15 | |

13 Nov

The trial of Arthur Greiser in Poland, 1946 23: Immi Tallgren: The Finnish war-responsibility trial in 1945-56: Flawed justice, anxious peace? You can purchase a hard copy of the book at the OUP website here. You can also — as part of an experimental OUP initiative — download a complete PDF of the book for free at either www.oup.com/uk or www.oapen.org. If you cannot afford the £70.00, by all means download the PDF. UPDATE: The free open-access version of the book is now available on the webpage linked to above....
13.11.13 | |

01 Aug

modify the introductory claim. To my mind, this work’s potential is not merely as descriptive book about the Constitution’s foreign affairs text as it was “understood” in the eighteenth century. Pitching it this way make it rely too much on one-sided history, and ironically does the book’s theory a disservice by rending to be a historical curiosity that may or may not be relevant to the age of globalization. Rather, what this book really is doing is presenting an elegant, balanced theory derived from text and one – not “the”...
01.08.07 | |

16 Oct

[David Zaring is Assistant Professor of Legal Studies and Business Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School] Pauwelyn, Wessel, and Wouter’s excellent book, which in turn marks the fruition of a project on informal international lawmaking that they dub IN-LAW, is pretty good on the theory end of things, which is what this post will look at, and also critique. Organizationally, the editors cracked the whip creditably – each chapter is organized, features a takeaway, and follows well. But should you read it? PWW develop both a definition and...
16.10.12 | |

05 Jan

I want to congratulate Mark Pollack and Gregory Shaffer for their recently published book When Cooperation Fails: The International Law and Politics of Genetically Modified Foods (Oxford 2009). Using the WTO proceeding as a focal point, When Cooperation Fails explores the vexing question of why multiple international and bilateral initiatives have failed to resolve the transatlantic GMO dispute. The book offers a clear and detailed tour of “the difficulties, limits, and outright failures of international cooperation” (pp. 3, 280) for regulating GMOs. It also details the success that international institutions...
05.01.10 | |

18 Jun

[Jeffrey Dunoff holds the Laura H. Carnell Chair at Temple University Law School] This post is part of our symposium on Dean Schiff Berman’s book Global Legal Pluralism. Other posts can be found in Related Posts below. Paul Berman has produced a terrific, and terrifically ambitious, work of scholarship. The book presents a compelling case that the current legal order is marked by multiple and overlapping international, transnational, national, sub-national and non-state normative orders. Paul argues that relations among these various orders should be managed through a “cosmopolitan pluralist” approach...
18.06.12 | |

26 Jun

[Rachel Brewster is Professor of Law at Duke Law] There is much to admire in Katerina Linos’ new book, The Democratic Foundations of Policy Diffusion: How Health, Family and Employment Laws Spread Across Countries. Linos elegantly integrates a disparate set of literatures – international relations, domestic politics, and transnational diffusion – to construct a powerful and persuasive account of the transmission of social policy between states. The book is a remarkable achievement. It uses sophisticated statistical models as well as case studies and polling data to establish the causal argument...
26.06.13 | |

20 Nov

the dozens of book reviews written in response. The reaction might lead one to believe that rational choice theory and IL-proponents are doomed to conflicting positions. Not so, says Joel Trachtman, who has a new book out, The Economic Structure of International Law (Harv. Univ. Press, 2008). Trachtman (a former professor of mine) along with my current colleague Jeff Dunoff were among the first to advocate using economic theory to assess international law. In his current book, Trachtman offers an overarching theoretical model for applying “rational analysis (but not necessarily...
20.11.08 | |

23 Jul

1901-1945 time frame. Here’s a quick description of the project as a whole: From its earliest decisions in the 1790s, the U.S. Supreme Court has used international law to help resolve major legal controversies. This book presents a comprehensive account of the Supreme Court’s use of international law from the Court’s inception to the present day. Addressing treaties, the direct application of customary international law and the use of international law as an interpretive tool, the book examines all the cases or lines of cases in which international law has...
23.07.11 | |

07 Sep

to OJ readers that they read it for themselves. It is a greatly provocative book, with a writing style that Tom has honed over decades to be at once highly readable, never dull and never turgid, but which also invites provocative responses; the response might be misplaced, I grant. But I leave that to OJ readers to figure out. The book is a great read, and Tom, my thanks for taking part in the discussion with me here. You’ve persuaded me – against my better time-management judgment, I might add!...
07.09.08 | |