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This paper focuses on the International Criminal Court (ICC) as an instrument for the global enforcement of international human rights law and the US opposition to it. It argues that the ICC is a step away from the classic regime of state sovereignty towards the integration of a broader framework of global governance and law. The article looks at one of the major challenges to such global enforcement of human rights by looking at the opposition of the United States against the Court. It analyses the reasons for the US opposition which are mainly based on the ICC's jurisdiction and criticisms that the Court does not recognise the 'special' role the US plays as only remaining superpower. The US made a number of attempts to undermine the ICC, based on a unilateralist focus on national interests and national law enforcement. More recent events, however, suggest that the US is increasingly adopting a more practical approach towards the ICC by acknowledging the Court's role in the overall system of justice. The paper argues that the initial hostility and actions taken to undermine the ICC were based on a belief that the US could prevent the Court from coming into existence. However, so far the ICC has proved to be too strong mainly due to a large number of developments preceding its creation that provided strong foundation on which the ICC is built. This has led to the US adopting a more pragmatic approach towards the Court. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United States and (Western) Europe have been among the most ardent supporters of international human rights norms. However, despite having been at the forefront of the creation of an international human rights regime after World War II, in recent years, Europe and the United States have taken markedly different approaches to designing international institutions for the protection of human rights. The United States has promoted a system of sovereign inequality, which restricts the sovereignty of non-democratic countries but exempts liberal democracies, and especially itself, from international institutional supervision. In contrast, Europeans, for the most part, have pursued the creation of an international regime of equally diminished sovereignty. This model promotes the creation of substantive international institutional constraints on liberal and non-liberal countries alike. In this paper, I characterize the existing gap between the approaches taken by the United States, on the one hand, and Europe, on the other, as normative dissonance. I argue that normative dissonance is counterproductive to strengthening the international human rights regime and to curtailing the ability of non-democratic countries to restrict the human rights of their citizens. Normative dissonance inhibits the evolution of new customary international norms re-defining the limits of legitimate international interference into the domestic affairs of rights-violating countries. Overcoming the normative dissonance dilemma requires widespread acceptance of one of the two models. I suggest that the equally diminished sovereignty model is more likely to lead to lasting change as it is more likely to gain the widespread legitimacy that is necessary for new international customary norms to evolve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the relationship between wartime sacrifice and changes in civic membership in the United States, arguing for the reconsideration of the Cold War "expansion" of civil rights by incorporating lenses of gender and sexuality. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers some of the political issues at stake when critics of extraterritorial situations like the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay invoke a 'legal black hole' or 'legal vacuum' and call for the application of human rights law to remedy this problem. What is being suggested about the role of the law in relation to such situations, and is it legally correct and politically supportable? Can human rights law deliver all that is being expected of it? Given these considerations, what value is there to Guantanamo's pre-eminent status amongst the concerns of many human rights activists? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on existing norms literature in order to explain the process of international human rights norms diffusion into domestic settings using the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in the United States, South Africa and India. The CRC is the most widely ratified United Nations Convention with 192 countries party to the treaty. This widespread ratification suggests that a set of universal children’s rights norms may exist. The majority of the International Relations literature that addresses norm diffusion processes links the ratification of a human rights treaty by a state to the automatic adoption of the norms codified within the treaty into domestic law. Yet the process by which this happens -- and the extent to which it happens at all-- remains largely unexplored in the literature. This paper questions the idea that children’s rights are universally celebrated norms and that ratification of the CRC translates into full enforcement of those rights within a country. The paper's research suggests that the number of treaties ratified by a state is a weak indication of the existence of a universal human rights norm. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IScholars have for decades debated why the United States, a prosperous, well developed democracy with a strong tradition of rule of law, has problems with applying international human rights treaties domestically. This reluctance is often contrasted to the strong US rhetorical support for human rights and active participation in negotiating human rights declarations and treaties. Many trace the US reluctance towards domestic application of human rights treaties back to the early 1950s.This paper offers an archival based revisit to the policymaking processes within the US administration in the period 1947 to 1953 in order to asses the importance of domestic constitutional and legal issues on the US human rights policy. It documents how the administration from the very beginning of the work of the United Nations Human Rights Commission struggled to understand the possible impact of binding international human rights treaties on the United States judicial and political system, in particular when it came to the relations between the federal government and its constituent states. The United States suggested several controversial provisions in the negotiations over the Human Rights Covenant in order to avoid or silence domestic constitutional debates. The paper lends support to those who argue that one cannot understand US human rights policy without taking into account the unique institutional and political system of the US. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legal scholars who take up the issue of US treatment of ?enemy combatants? in this post-9/11 era are rightly concerned with active and official manipulations of the relevant international law. Authors painstakingly comb through the law, identify the protections that are supposed to be granted by relevant provisions of humanitarian and human rights law, and hold these provisions up against US practice. They appropriately conclude by saying that the United States is ?breaking the law? and ?making up rules that are empty of legal theory.? These analyses, however exhaustive in their review of the law, tend to assume that the law can and does have autonomous authority, quite delinked from the prerogatives of state power. This approach is both limited and serves to validate hegemonic power relations by depoliticizing the context in which the law operates. It is the case that US treatment of Guantánamo detainees evidences a serious departure from the legal community?s interpretation of, e.g., the Third Geneva Convention. However, if international law is what states want it to be, and if power functions to define the law, then the hegemonic state is well positioned to interpret and even reject commonly understood notions of legal responsibility. The paper argues that we must turn our attention to why the law (on torture and the treatment of prisoners of war) was so vulnerable to manipulation in the first place. It will examine two points: the limitations of legal scholarship that disregards the function of (in this case, American) power in law interpretation, and the responsibility of legal scholars to analyze the function of power in law as a way to explain ?violations? of the law as ongoing constructs. For the law to be what legal scholars who have been critical of the Bush administration want it to be, then scholarship should explore how the law can be loosened from the grip of state, and specifically hegemonic, control. The paper argues that, for this level of activism to be achieved, scholars should explore how the law itself, despite the radical implications for conventional international relations, must be more open to democratic accountability and oversight. Otherwise, the law will always and only be a limited way to constrain state behavior (as seen in the obvious example of Guantánamo and despite international outcry). Finally, the paper argues that responsible scholarship must acknowledge that existing law is and can only be one step toward creating conditions of justice ? and take as a starting point that even this one step is distorted with the privileges of power. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to explain how a discourse of human rights has been constructed as an instrument of power by the 2001-2004 George W Bush administration. This administration has had an apparently ambiguous relation with the theory and practice of universal human rights. On the level of speech acts, officials have been keen to identify with human rights and have proclaimed that the commitment to human rights exists in US foreign policy independent of self interest. In contrast to this position, the administration has been openly hostile to the necessary conditions of respecting human rights as exemplified through its opposition to the ICC and through the tactics employed in the conduct of the wars ‘on terror’, Afghanistan and Iraq. The paper explains this apparent contradiction by examining three very different explanations of the human rights discourse constructed by the GW Bush administration. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been widely noted that the stance of the United States is at odds with other western liberal democracies regarding international human rights obligations and the enforcement of international legal standards by international tribunals such as the ICC. The exceptionalist stance of U.S. foreign policy has meant that in many cases the U.S. does not comply with the same obligations that other states consider themselves bound by. In some cases it simply abstains (as in a refusal to ratify a convention such as the Rome Treaty) and in other cases it refuses to comply with obligations specified through international legal procedure (as in the refusal to comply with the ruling of the International Court of Justice in the Nicaragua ruling). This paper will analyze what this exceptional behavior has meant and will mean in future for the perceived legitimacy of the U.S. as an international actor. It will situate American Exceptionalism in its historic context by looking at the era during which the United States took an activist role in supporting the rapid development of international law ? the Nuremberg Tribunals. One of the defenses that the Nazi defendants tried to use was the claim that the laws they were accused of breaking (crimes against humanity) did not exist at the time they were committed. The willingness of the allied powers to prosecute German (and Japanese) officials for the violation of ex post facto laws represented a radical acceleration of the breadth and power of international legal standards and the laws of war. Today, however, the United States has fiercely resisted any attempt to obligate itself domestically to uphold international human rights treaties, and has actively obstructed any legitimation of the new International Criminal Court. These two historical eras seem at odds. This paper will explore the question of how the U.S. attitude towards international legal development changed in the period between Nuremberg and today. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a preliminary attempt at setting the record straight on the content of the "human rights" concept in 19th century American political thought. Many scholars have overlooked its full history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some scholars point to the establishment of International Criminal Court (ICC) as a testament to both the power of non-state actors in creating international institutions and the rise of the “individual accountability” norm. But this argument fails to explain why state leaders were unable to establish such a Court immediately following the Nuremberg trials, when the principle of individual accountability in international law was arguably at its apex. In this paper, I propose that the ICC became a viable option in the 1990s because leaders of the US and UK recognized that such a court might reduce their costly role as the “accountability police.” Specifically, a Court could relieve them of having to respond to an irreconcilable set of pressures: human rights advocates demanding that perpetrators be held accountable and foreign government leaders insisting that the sovereign immunity principle be upheld. The core argument is that the increased countervailing pressures led US and UK national executives to want to “outsource” prosecution authority to a third actor. To evaluate this argument, I will compare the 1990s establishment of the ICC with three earlier, failed attempts to create some form of an international criminal court. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In August 2008, Texas executed a Mexican national in violation of international law, five months after the United States Supreme Court ruled that the president could not compel states to honor an international treaty and a 2004 International Court of Justice order. This is one of four recent death penalty cases in which the justices divided sharply over the role of international laws and norms. Three of these cases referenced international standards and practices in striking state laws to bring US death penalty practice more in line with world human rights standards, while in the most recent case they limited the reach of international law. In each of these cases, the justices divided over the role of institutions (especially the court, but also the executive) governmental level (state, national and transnational) and of international law. This paper describes and analyzes these arguments with attention to the realist, liberal internationalist, and social constructionist approaches to international relations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores why and how the humanitarian, political and economic motivations set forth in the Preamble to the Constitution of the International Labour Organization (ILO) shape the characterization of indigenous peoples in international law. Part I of the paper explains the history of the ILO and the context surrounding its formation. Given this history and context, the paper proposes that promoting the development of a global economy and empowering nation states to compete actively in that economy were and continue to be the ultimate goals of the ILO. Part II of the paper describes the somewhat unlikely relationship that has developed between the ILO and indigenous peoples and ponders the ways in which that relationship informs the international legal community's understanding of indigenous peoples and the international norms and standards it propagates regarding them. In conclusion, Part III of the paper discusses the benefits and drawbacks to indigenous peoples that may flow from their relationship with the ILO and its objectives. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Will the establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) constitute a challenge to national sovereignty? According to the US government and several observers the answer is yes. Establishing a world court that acts independently of the states that have given birth to it and which can prosecute nationals of all sovereign states even those that have not ascribed to it, renders the entire idea of sovereignty meaningless. The question is, nevertheless, whether such a conception of sovereignty continues to be valid in a post Cold-War world where most nations already have submitted to the UN Charter of Human Rights and where the individual is increasingly regarded as a legitimate subject of international law. This paper sets out to analyze the US objections to the ICC and ends up arguing that governments that stick to traditional conceptions of sovereignty in the employment of their foreign policy may lose the moral legitimacy that has proved increasingly important for winning the sympathy of allies and for taking on world leadership. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International enforcement courts are explicitly empowered to rule on state compliance with international law. Part I identifies the universe of permanent international courts (ICs) with delegated enforcement roles and it explains why states are increasingly consenting to robust compulsory international judicial review of state compliance. Part II focuses on enforcement courts as they influence state behavior and international politics. Examining four detailed case studies, I explain the mobilization and influence of ICs over time. The cases are intentionally diverse, including WTO review of the United States Foreign Sales Corporation policy, a challenge to a Peruvian decree designed to circumvent Andean prohibitions against second use patents, the ECOWAS court's finding that Niger failed to protect a former slave, and the indictment and subsequent arrest the President of Liberia for war crimes committed in a neighboring state. I argue that across courts, cases and subject matter, ICs influence political outcomes by providing sources of leverage that domestic and international interlocutors use to tip the political balance in favor of those actors who prefer law compliance, for whatever reason. Overall, the book will have approximately eighteen cases, showing a variety of ways that ICs tip the political balance in international and domestic politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The US claims to be champion of democracy and human rights, but its war on terrorism is accompanied by major human rights violations, by commission and omission, especially with regard to enemy detainees. This paper analyzes US policy on this matter, the role of international law and international agencies at issue (especially the ICRC), and implications for all concerned. Based in part on interviews in Washington and Geneva. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper makes the following main points: •International norms of behavior are not what drive US security policy, so we need to wonder what it means to ask whether the law is too restrictive or unrestrictive enough to accommodate said policy. •It may no longer make sense to charge the United States with “operating outside the law” and instead (and sadly) consider that international rules as they stand are operating outside a developing new security framework that is unfriendly to existing laws. •A finer balance must be struck between the letter and spirit of human rights law and the stated goals and needs of US security strategy; new, creative synergies are needed to do this. •Once we agree that powerful states, with the United States in the lead, are not likely to ease up on “fighting terrorism mercilessly,” it becomes important to consider what leverage a reconceptualized body of law can have in tempering the use and abuse of state power. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In its recent decisions, the United States Supreme Court has renewed a practice of citing foreign law. This phenomenon stands in contrast to decisions of little more than a decade ago, when the Court's attitude was described as a "pugnacious parochialism." At this time the U.S. Supreme Court was generally viewed as an exporter of human rights based decisions to other legal systems. As recently as the late 1980s commentators were pointing to a one-way traffic in constitutional ideas emanating from the United States. Yet, even in its current incarnation the references to foreign law by today's Supreme Court are not as frequent as in its early history or in the practice seen in some foreign courts. This reawakening of the U.S. Supreme Court to the use of international legal authority arises in the context of the development of an emerging global community of courts, where constitutional courts are citing each other's precedents on a wide range of human rights oriented issues. The result is an emerging global jurisprudence in areas related to concerns of the U.S. Bill of Rights. This paper will discuss this practice of foreign courts and the globalization of trafficking of human rights legal norms. The focus will be on criminal justice related decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court and other nations' constitutional courts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human trafficking has become a critical global issue since the 1990s. At the intersection of human rights, human security, and transnational criminal control, human trafficking is increasingly at the forefront of United States foreign policy. One of the central policy responses to the problem of human trafficking - central both to international law, regional European law, and domestic US law - has been to criminalize it and work to prosecute traffickers. Yet little to nothing is known about the consequences of a prosecutorial approach. We suggest there are at least three theoretical possibilities: (1) criminalization may have no effect on trafficking; (2) criminalization may reduce human trafficking, and/or (3) criminalization may divert human trafficking from one jurisdiction to another, as traffickers seek the path of least resistance toward profiting from the exploitation of potential workers. To test these ideas, we have developed a unique time series dataset that documents trafficking "corridors:" dyads of states between which human trafficking has credibly been observed and reported in the annual United States Trafficking in Persons Reports. We find evidence of a reduction of trafficking within corridors where enforcement has been strengthened, but also diversion of trafficking towards contiguous neighbors of the enforcers. This is important because it suggests the enforcement of criminal law can have transnational negative externalities unless it is approached in a coordinated fashion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This poster presentation explores the cultural and racist assumptions implicit in the law facilitating U.S. occupation of the Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba and detention on the base. It argues that U.S. law and its interpretation of international law carve a racialized space on the base. This is central to base creation during U.S. occupation of Cuba, 1898-1902, and to "War on Terror" base detention, which is reserved primarily to persons of color. The base is a product of the Platt Amendment (1901), making Cuba a U.S. protectorate, denying Cuba full sovereignty, and requiring a U.S. base in Cuban territory. Race, along with economic and geopolitical factors, justified these sovereignty limitations in U.S. law. Notions of Anglo superiority, and the inability to self-govern for "hispanic," black, and mixed-race population characterized U.S. relations with Cuba. Strategic objectives required Cuba lease the base under present non-sovereign terms. The policies reflect international law, which generally precluded non-European populations from attaining full sovereignty. Historic racial power in foreign relations and law created the base at Guantánamo. Recently, race colors base detention in the "War on Terror" in three ways. First, detention is primarily reserved to South and Central Asian, Middle-Eastern, or Arab identities. The total detention population (including those released) amounts to nearly 800 persons and includes 47 nationalities. An overwhelming number of detainees are citizens of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. Second, U.S. policies painting detainees as "jihadists" serve as proxies for Muslim detention. Third, the "unlawful enemy combatant" classification mimics historic identities of the "savage." Initially, detainees were not protected by Geneva conventions. Historically, "savages," "barbarians," and "natives" were excluded from similar international law protections. Race whether tied to nationality, religion, or neo-savagery, characterizes Guantánamo, illuminating critical commonalities in myriad nationalities. Despite diverse identities, being in Guantánamo's space imposes these commonalities. Foreign relations history created this racialized space. Detention makes it current. As a work-in-progress, this presentation correlates cultural studies and critical race theory with an analysis of legal jurisdiction on the base, historic and present. While President Barack Obama's recent executive order promises to end base detention by January 2010, legal precedent and foreign relations practices keep detention (along with "interrogation" practices and individual rights abuses) engrained in U.S. law. This presentation builds on an article providing a post-colonial analysis of detention jurisprudence, titled "Boumediene v. Bush and Guantánamo, Cuba: does the "Empire Strike Back"?" 61 SMU Law Rev. (2009) and is part of a long-term research project titled "Guantánamo, War on Terror, and Law's Imperial legacy: Examples in Race, Space, and Resources." This article is attached. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the central issues plaguing international commercial relations is that the private interests at the heart of international flows of goods, services, and capital have traditionally lacked any “personality” within customary international law. Without ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the absence of strong mechanisms for investigation and punishment, what motivates states to comply with international law? Studies have theoretically and empirically investigated "first-order compliance" with treaties, but there has not been equal examination of "second-order compliance" with the judgments of international legal bodies that enforce treaties. This study aims to fill that gap through an investigation of patterns of state compliance with the Inter-American human rights bodies. It will examine compliance throughout Latin America and then focus on the compliance behavior of two countries, Peru and Ecuador, between 1996 and 2006. From this empirical investigation, it will offer a theoretical analysis of state compliance choices using two approaches in international relations: rationalism and constructivism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the international law focused on governance in the U.S. It offers information on public international law rules related to governance. It mentions that the public international law regulates relations between sovereign and legally equal states. It offers information on the human rights as an important public part of international law.

Norms on the prohibition of torture are some of the strongest standards in the international system as they are embedded in both legal and moral codes. Despite this fact, torture continues to be a significant problem in many areas of the world, indicating a weakness in the norm or its application. Investigating non-compliance aids in understanding the actual force of this norm in shaping and constraining state action. This study examines the case of allegations of torture and ill-treatment of prisoners by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. It employs a theoretical analysis of U.S. behavior and discourse by drawing on constructivism, as articulated by Martha Finnemore, and Thomas Risse's discussion of communicative action. These theories are used to illustrate how the U.S. perceives the norm of torture prohibition in practice, in its interaction with the world community, and in its discourse. Finally, the study attempts to clarify why states fail to comply with human rights norms that they espouse and identify with. In the case of Guantanamo Bay, theories of alterations in normative environments and changes in "threat perception" offer potential pathways for explaining U.S. non-compliance. This research indicates that while looking at discourse provides a deeper understanding of the U.S. relationship with norms on torture prohibition, non-compliance with firmly established norms and changes in a state's relationship with norms require further investigation in order to have greater comprehension of why there are inconsistencies between state discourse and behavior. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the ever growing international human rights norm against the death penalty, two advanced industrial democracies, Japan and the United States, shy away from global collaboration to abolish this "inhuman and degrading" punishment. I ask why the international human rights norm that prohibits capital punishment seems to have little impact on the United States and Japan. Why have these two advanced democracies been averse to implementing the international human rights norm? What are the salient similarities between these two cases that may help explain their divergence from other advanced democracies? How do these similarities play out in the particular context of noncompliance? In presenting these questions, I do not purport to revisit wider historical and sociological debates about why some countries exempt themselves from international human rights provisions. Instead, I highlight several of the most important characteristics. A careful comparative analysis of the similarities of these two cases may help to illuminate the forces that are likely to be brought to noncompliance of these countries beyond the area of human rights. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the failure of governments to ensure that their agents are bound by the same laws that apply to the rest of the population. It creates a measure of impunity based on data from the U.S. State Department of Human Rights Country Reports for more than 140 countries. Initial analysis of this data reveals that official impunity is worse in policies facing domestic insurgencies and high levels of corruption, and that the prevalence of impunity decreases with press freedom.

The article suggests an outline of topics for a new international convention focused on enslavement. It cites several cases in U.S. courts involving slavery such as the Unocal case on slave labor, the Hwang Geum Joo v. Japan case on sexual slavery, and Humphries v. Various Federal US INS Employees. Among the suggestions of the author for the convention are the examination of customary international law on slavery, political demands to oppose slavery and the international response, and the scope of state Immunities for Acts of Enslavement.

The article explores the global issue of torture and terrorism. It commends the commitment of the U.S. government to implement and manage human rights. It offers information on the different United Nations human rights treaties. It describes how the international law addresses torture and other cruel inhuman activities.

Drawing on the rich body of scholarship surrounding the relationship between rights and remedies in U.S. constitutional law, this paper explores a number of theoretical questions related to remedies in international human rights law and assesses and compares the remedial jurisprudence of several international courts. It assesses the ways in which courts' institutional capacity and legitimacy concerns shape their remedial choices, and the ways in which the remedies available to courts in turn shape their substantive interpretations of the underlying rights. It considers whether and under what circumstances the remedial rules adopted by international courts constitute international law. Finally, it assesses the problem of remedial shortfall, considering whether in some circumstances a right-remedy gap may be either inevitable or desirable, and outlining principles for identifying acceptable second-best solutions when complete remedies are unattainable. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]