Water Conflicts and the Role of International Law in Their Prevention

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Leb
Author(s):  
Lawrence O. Gostin ◽  
Benjamin Mason Meier

This chapter introduces the foundational importance of human rights for global health, providing a theoretical basis for the edited volume by laying out the role of human rights under international law as a normative basis for public health. By addressing public health harms as human rights violations, international law has offered global standards by which to frame government responsibilities and evaluate health practices, providing legal accountability in global health policy. The authors trace the historical foundations for understanding the development of human rights and the role of human rights in protecting and promoting health since the end of World War II and the birth of the United Nations. Examining the development of human rights under international law, the authors introduce the right to health as an encompassing right to health care and underlying determinants of health, exploring this right alongside other “health-related human rights.”


Author(s):  
Thomas Kleinlein

This contribution reflects on the role of tradition-building in international law, the implications of the recent ‘turn to history’ and the ‘presentisms’ discernible in the history of international legal thought. It first analyses how international legal thought created its own tradition in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These projects of establishing a tradition implied a considerable amount of what historians would reject as ‘presentism’. Remarkably, critical scholars of our day and age who unsettled celebratory histories of international law and unveiled ‘colonial origins’ of international law were also criticized for committing the ‘sin of anachronism’. This contribution therefore examines the basis of this critique and defends ‘presentism’ in international legal thought. However, the ‘paradox of instrumentalism’ remains: The ‘better’ historical analysis becomes, the more it loses its critical potential for current international law. At best, the turn to history activates a potential of disciplinary self-reflection.


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):  
Dan Jerker B. Svantesson

This chapter explores the role geo-location technologies may play on the road towards achieving jurisdictional interoperability. The relevant technologies involved are introduced briefly, their accuracy examined, and an overview is provided of their use, including the increasingly common use of so-called geo-blocking. Attention is then given to perceived and real concerns stemming from the use of geo-location technologies and how these technologies impact international law, territoriality, and sovereignty, as well as to the role these technologies may play in law reform. The point is made that the current ‘effect-focused’ rules in both private international law and public international law (as those disciplines are traditionally defined), are likely to continue to work as an incentive for the use of geo-location technologies.


Author(s):  
Dan Jerker B. Svantesson

This chapter takes us into the domain of legal theory and legal philosophy as it places the questions of Internet jurisdiction in a broader theoretical, and indeed philosophical, context. Indeed, it goes as far as to (1) present a definition of what is law, (2) discuss what are the law’s tools, and (3) to describe the roles of law. In addition, it provides distinctions important for how we understand the role of jurisdictional rules both in private international law and in public international law as traditionally defined. Furthermore, it adds law reform tools by introducing and discussing the concept of ‘market sovereignty’ based on ‘market destroying measures’––an important concept for solving the Internet jurisdiction puzzle.


Author(s):  
Jeffrey L Dunoff ◽  
Mark A Pollack

This chapter discusses the inner working of ICs, such as the drafting of judicial opinions; practices concerning separate opinions; the role of language and translation; and the roles of third parties. It also presents a preliminary effort to identify and examine the everyday practices of international judges. In undertaking this task, the authors draw selectively upon a large literature on ‘practice theory’ that has only rarely been applied to international law in general or to international courts in particular. A typology and synoptic overview of practices is presented.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document