Introduction: Trumping International Law?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold Hongju Koh
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
International Law ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
World War ◽  
Legal Process ◽  
Spheres Of Influence ◽  
Transnational Legal Process

How to resist President Donald Trump’s assault on international law? This introduction sketches the tripartite plan of this book. First, it discusses a counterstrategy of resistance based on transnational legal process. Second, it illustrates that counterstrategy with respect to immigration and refugees, and human rights; the Paris Climate Change Agreement, the Iran Nuclear Deal, and trade diplomacy; with countries of concern such as North Korea, Russia, and Ukraine; and with respect to America’s wars: Al Qaeda, Islamic State, Afghanistan, and Syria. Third, it reviews what broader issues are at stake in the looming battle between maintaining the post-World War II framework of Kantian global governance versus shifting to an Orwellian system of authoritarian spheres of influence.

What’s at Stake

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold Hongju Koh
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Good Effect ◽  
World War ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Legal Process ◽  
Spheres Of Influence ◽  
The Right ◽  
Transnational Legal Process

This closing chapter argues that what is ultimately at stake is a struggle between the post–World War II system of Kantian global governance versus an Orwellian vision of spheres of influence supported by President Donald Trump and other global authoritarians. Thus far, history shows that various techniques of resistance can be marshaled to good effect. The foreign policy tally thus far shows that Trump has not been winning and that the rope-a-dope is working. The book closes by arguing that Trump does not own transnational legal process; we all do. But our understanding of transnational legal process carries with it a normative edge. It confers on all of us a continuing obligation to keep pushing the arc of history in the right direction.

Do Religion and Human Rights Interact?

2008 ◽  
Vol 15 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 403-411
Author(s):  
Natan Lerner
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
International Law ◽  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
World War ◽  
Considerable Part ◽  
Individual Contributions ◽  
The Subject

AbstractThe two reviewed books belong to a series of “Studies in Religion, Secular Beliefs and Human Rights” published by Martinus Nijhoff. Both constitute a significant contribution to the literature on religion and human rights that developed in the last decade, after many years of neglect of the subject. Both are collective books and the outcome of international conferences. They deal with diverse aspects of the interaction between religion and human rights and international law. A recurrent question is to what extent has religion influenced human rights or if these are a post World War II and post-Holocaust phenomenon, strictly secular. Does God Believe in Human Rights? contains an introduction and 14 essays. The volume Religion, Human Rights and International Law is subtitled A Critical Examination of Islamic State Practices, a subject to which a considerable part of the volume is devoted. It contains 18 individual contributions, in addition to introductory reflections by the editors.

scholarly journals The Trump Administration and International Law

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold Hongju Koh
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Legal Process ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Legal Adviser ◽  
The Many ◽  
Transnational Legal Process ◽  
Trump Administration

Will Donald trump international law? Since Trump’s administration took office in January 2017, this question has haunted almost every issue area of international law. This book, by one of our leading international lawyers—a former Legal Adviser of the U.S. State Department, former Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, and former Yale Law Dean—argues that President Trump has thus far enjoyed less success than many believe, because he does not own the pervasive “transnational legal process” that governs these issue areas. This book shows how those opposing Trump’s policies in his administration’s first two years have successfully triggered transnational legal process as part of a collective counterstrategy akin to Muhammad Ali’s famous “rope-a-dope.” The book surveys many fields of international law: immigration and refugees, human rights, climate change, denuclearization, trade diplomacy, relations with North Korea, Russia and Ukraine, and America’s “Forever War” against Al Qaeda and the Islamic State and its ongoing challenges in Syria. This tour d’horizon illustrates the many techniques that other participants in the transnational legal process have used to blunt Trump’s early initiatives across a broad area of issues. While this counterstrategy has been wearing, the book concludes that the high stakes, and the long-term implications for the future of global governance, make the continuing struggle both worthwhile and necessary.

The Evolving International Human Rights System

2006 ◽  
Vol 100 (4) ◽  
pp. 783-807 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Buergenthal
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
International Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
World War ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
International Human ◽  
American Society

Few, if any, branches of international law have undergone such dramatic growth and evolution as international human rights in the one hundred years since the founding of the American Society of International Law. This branch of international law did not really come into its own until after World War II. Before then, what today we would broadly characterize as human rights law consisted of diffuse or unrelated legal principles and institutional arrangements that were in one way or another designed to protect certain categories or groups of human beings. Included in this mix prior to World War I were state responsibility for injuries to aliens, international humanitarian law (as we know it today), the protection of minorities, and humanitarian intervention.

scholarly journals Finland’s Continuation War (1941–1944): War of Aggression or Defence? War of Alliance or Separate War?

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-121
Author(s):  
Lauri Hannikainen
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Law ◽  
Peace Treaty ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
World War ◽  
Spheres Of Influence ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Winter War

In September 1939, after having included a secret protocol on spheres of influence in the so-called Molotov- Ribbentrop Pact, Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland and divided it between themselves. It was not long before the Soviet Union approached Finland by proposing exchanges of certain territories: ‘in our national interest we want to have from you certain territories and offer in exchange territories twice as large but in less crucial areas’. Finland, suspicious of Soviet motives, refused – the outcome was the Soviet war of aggression against Finland by the name of the Winter War in 1939–1940. The Soviet Union won this war and compelled Finland to cede several territories – about 10 per cent of Finland’s area. After the Winter War, Finland sought protection from Germany against the Soviet Union and decided to rely on Germany. After Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, Finland joined the German war effort in the so-called Continuation War and reoccupied the territories lost in the Winter War. Finnish forces did not stop at the old border but occupied Eastern (Soviet) Karelia with a desire eventually to annex it. By that measure, Finland joined as Germany’s ally in its war of aggression against the Soviet Union in violation of international law. In their strong reliance on Germany, the Finnish leaders made some very questionable decisions without listening to warnings from Western States about possible negative consequences. Germany lost its war and so did Finland, which barely avoided entire occupation by the Soviet Army and succeeded in September 1944 in concluding an armistice with the Soviet Union. Finland lost some more territories and was subjected to many obligations and restrictions in the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty, dictated by the Allies. This article analyses, according to the criteria of international law, Finland’s policy shortly prior to and during the Continuation War, especially Finland’s secret dealings with Germany in the months prior to the German attack against the Soviet Union and Finland’s occupation of Eastern Karelia in the autumn of 1941. After Adolf Hitler declared that Germany was fighting against the Soviet Union together with Finland and Romania, was the Soviet Union entitled – prior to the Finnish attack – to resort to armed force in self-defence against Finland? And was Finland treated too harshly in the aftermath of World War ii? After all, its role as an ally of Germany had been rather limited.

scholarly journals Reconciling State Immunity with Remedies for War Victims in a Legal Pluriverse

2021 ◽  
pp. 3-35
Author(s):  
Anne Peters ◽  
Valentina Volpe
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
International Law ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
World War ◽  
State Immunity ◽  
Modest Proposal ◽  
War Victims ◽  
Domestic Law

AbstractThe chapter explains the threefold aspiration of the book as an academic, societal, and diplomatic project. It introduces the three interwoven themes of international law arising in the German-Italian saga: state immunity, reparation for serious human rights violations committed during World War II, and the interplay between international and domestic law, notably the role of courts therein. The chapter proposes an approach of ‘ordered pluralism’ to coordinate this interplay, and finally tables a ‘modest proposal’ for a way out of the current impasse.

scholarly journals WATER FOR ALL? DEVELOPING A HUMAN RIGHT TO WATER IN NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

2016 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 771-789 ◽  
Author(s):  
The Rt Hon Lady Justice Arden
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
International Law ◽  
Universal Declaration ◽  
European Convention ◽  
World War ◽  
Human Right ◽  
The World ◽  
The Way

Human rights are one of the great ideas of the twentieth century. After World War II, first Eleanor Roosevelt in relation to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (‘the Universal Declaration’), and then later the drafters of the European Convention on Human Rights (‘the European Convention’) saw human rights as the way to make the world fairer and safer.

scholarly journals Self-Determination in Regional Human Rights Law: From Kosovo to Cameroon

2011 ◽  
Vol 105 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dinah Shelton
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
International Law ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
Human Rights Law ◽  
World War ◽  
Territorial Integrity ◽  
The Right ◽  
Right Of Self Determination

The right of self-determination has long been celebrated for bringing independence and self-government to oppressed groups, yet it remains a highly controversial norm of international law. From the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires after World WarI to the struggle of colonial territories for independence following World War II and the later dissolution of the former Yugoslavia, there has been an unavoidable conflict between the efforts of peoples to achieve independence and the demands of existing states to preserve their territorial integrity.

scholarly journals Member State Compliance with the Judgments of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

2005 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morse Tan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Member State ◽  
International Law ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Legal Process ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
State Compliance ◽  
Transnational Legal Process

This essay fills a gap by exploring compliance theory in international law to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. After introducing the topic and setting the context, it delves into the question of why nations follow international law. Interacting with prominent theoretical models (including the managerial model, fairness and legitimacy, transnational legal process, self-interest, and a comparative perspective with Europe), it arrives at a critical synthesis in the conclusion.

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