‘International Law is Part of the Law of the Land’: True or False?

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 351-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
KENNETH KEITH

AbstractThis article addresses the question stated in its title by considering not only the role of national courts but also the roles of national legislatures and executives. That emphasis is called for because most of international law most of the time operates through national, rather than international, institutions and in particular through the executive and the legislature. Before I get to those national institutions, I consider two undisputed propositions of law, the varying characteristics of rules of international law and the impact of those characteristics on different national constitutional and legal systems.

Author(s):  
Kevin L. Cope ◽  
Hooman Movassagh

One critique of some common-law comparative legal academies is their intensively “court-centric” focus, which, some believe, “marginalize[s]” the role of the legislative branch. The same may be said of the extant comparative international law literature: most of it concerns the interpretive approaches of national courts. In fact, one of the field’s seminal pieces characterizes comparative international law as involving “comparative analyses of various domestic court decisions.” Not surprisingly, then, nearly all of this volume’s contributions deal mostly or exclusively with courts and judicial decisions. We agree that courts can play a large part in diversifying how international law works across different systems, but we contend that the foundation of the comparative international law project lies elsewhere. We argue that among the most important and underappreciated interpretative acts—and therefore, those currently most needing study—are the international law interpretations of national legislatures.


Author(s):  
Lawrence Gostin

The objectives of this chapter are to help you understand: the impact of legislation, regulations, and litigation on the public’s health; the powers, duties, and restraints imposed by the law on public health officials; the potential of legal change to improve the public’s health; the role of international law and institutions in securing public health in the face of increasing globalization.


2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 909-931 ◽  
Author(s):  
YOSHIFUMI TANAKA

AbstractOn 19 November 2012, the International Court of Justice gave its judgment concerning the Territorial and Maritime Dispute between Nicaragua and Colombia. This judgment includes several important issues which need serious consideration, such the as legal status of maritime features, the interpretation and application of Article 121 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the methodology of maritime delimitations, the role of proportionality in maritime delimitations, and the impact of the judgment upon third states and effect of Article 59 of the ICJ Statute. Focusing on these issues, this contribution aims to analyse the judgment of 2012 from a viewpoint of the international law of the sea, in particular, the law of maritime delimitation.


Author(s):  
Lawrence Gostin

The objectives of this chapter are to help you understand the impact of legislation, regulations, and litigation on the public’s health, the powers, duties, and restraints imposed by the law on public health officials, the potential of legal change to improve the public’s health, andthe role of international law in securing public health in the face of increasing globalization.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-108
Author(s):  
Mantinkang Formbasso Lawrence

States may use foreign law for different reasons. Courts can do so when faced with a controversial new issue for which no apparent solution is found under national law. Often countries refer to laws or legal practices of other countries within the same legal family. This is done by Cameroonian courts, especially in the English speaking regions where the common law legal system applies. This paper analyses the impact and legitimacy of the use of foreign law paying particular attention to Cameroon. The analysis will be based on the following sequence: comparative law and national legislatures; comparative law and national courts; voluntary recourse to foreign law in domestic disputes; legitimacy of comparative law influence and reasoning; motives and strategies in valuing foreign law; and the extent to which legal systems are opened to foreign influence. The paper concludes that the Cameroon legal systems (common law and civil law) are highly influenced by legal transplant.


2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 479-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
KERRY RITTICH

AbstractThe occupation of Iraq in 2003 involved a wide-ranging set of interventions in the domestic legal, political and economic structures of the state, interventions that provoked a debate about whether the law of occupation should recognize a category of ‘transformative’ occupation.While the occupation itself has often been decried as an imperial venture, its administration involved a diffusion of power among international institutions as well as ratification by the Security Council through Resolution 1483. This article pursues the intuition that the transformation of norms and practices elsewhere in the international order underwrote the idea that it was the law of occupation that was problematic, at the same time facilitating the transmutation and preservation of practices that might be identified as imperial. Two developments are key: The first is the pervasive normalization of intervention in the domestic policy and legal orders of states; the second is the dissemination of norms about domestic regulation within the international order, those that touch on economic governance in particular. The orders of the occupying were infused in both form and substance with ideas of ‘normal governance’ traceable to myriad projects, policies and practices of other international institutions: development agencies, financial institutions, trade organizations. Iraq then might be a revealing case with which to consider the character and locations of contemporary imperialism, as well as the role of international law and international institutions in its unfolding.


2011 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthea Roberts

AbstractAcademics, practitioners and international and national courts are increasingly seeking to identify and interpret international law by engaging in comparative analyses of various domestic court decisions. This emerging phenomenon, which I term ‘comparative international law’, loosely fuses international law (as a matter of substance) with comparative law (as a matter of process). However, this comparative process is seriously complicated by the ambiguous role that national court decisions play in the international law doctrine of sources, under which they provide evidence of the practice of the forum State as well as being a subsidiary means for determining international law. This article analyses these dual, and sometimes conflicting, roles of national courts and the impact of this duality on the comparative international law process.


2004 ◽  
pp. 129-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Tretyakov

The article focuses on the analysis of the process of convergence of outsider and insider models of corporate governance. Chief characteristics of basic and intermediate systems of corporate governance as well as the changing role of its main agents are under examination. Globalization of financial and commodity markets, convergence of legal systems, an open exchange of ideas and information are the driving forces of the convergence of basic systems of corporate governance. However the convergence does not imply the unification of institutional environment and national institutions of corporate governance.


Author(s):  
Julio Baquero Cruz

This book discusses the impact of the difficult situation the European Union is currently going through on some structural elements of its legal order, looking for symptoms of decay, exploring examples of resistance, and assessing its overall state of health. The original choices made by the drafters of the Treaties and by the Court of Justice are put in their proper historical perspective, understanding Union law as a tool of civilization, and explaining its current problems, at least in part, as a consequence of the waning of the initial impetus behind integration. The concrete themes to be explored are the following: primacy, the national resistance to it and constitutional pluralism; the preliminary rulings procedure; Union citizenship, equality, and human dignity; the scope of the Charter and the standard of protection of fundamental rights; and the rigidity and fragmentation of the Union system in connection with the recent occasional use of international law as an alternative to Union law. The book looks at the development of the law throughout the decades, inevitably losing much detail, but hopefully also uncovering structural connections and continuities.


Author(s):  
Gina Heathcote

Reflecting on recent gender law reform within international law, this book examines the nature of feminist interventions to consider what the next phase of feminist approaches to international law might include. To undertake analysis of existing gender law reform and future gender law reform, the book engages critical legal inquiries on international law on the foundations of international law. At the same time, the text looks beyond mainstream feminist accounts to consider the contributions, and tensions, across a broader range of feminist methodologies than has been adapted and incorporated into gender law reform including transnational and postcolonial feminisms. The text therefore develops dialogues across feminist approaches, beyond dominant Western liberal, radical, and cultural feminisms, to analyse the rise of expertise and the impact of fragmentation on global governance, to study sovereignty and international institutions, and to reflect on the construction of authority within international law. The book concludes that through feminist dialogues that incorporate intersectionality, and thus feminist dialogues with queer, crip, and race theories, that reflect on the politics of listening and which are actively attentive to the conditions of privilege from which dominant feminist approaches are articulated, opportunity for feminist dialogues to shape feminist futures on international law emerge. The book begins this process through analysis of the conditions in which the author speaks and the role histories of colonialism play out to define her own privilege, thus requiring attention to indigenous feminisms and, in the UK, the important interventions of Black British feminisms.


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