scholarly journals Denial and Rejection: International Law and Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Agenda

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 28-76
Author(s):  
Shadi Alshdaifat
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Hard Power ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Transnational Actors ◽  
National Governments ◽  
Domestic Law ◽  
Trump Administration

Since Trump’s Administration took office, this elusory question has haunted most issues in the international law. So far, the Trump Administration has been in office for a little over forty-four months, a tumultuous period that has disrupted international law and international politics. Another looming question is whether the Trump Administration’s many initiatives will permanently change the nature of America’s foreign policy? In particular, this paper will discuss Trump’s foreign policy, since his emerging philosophy seems to be a general rejection of the Obama approach: not “engage-translate-leverage,” but rather, “disengage black hole-hard power.” Wherever possible, the Trump instinct seems to be to disengage-unilateralism or, as he calls it, “America First.”  The United States of America and Trump are sturdy actors in the making and unmaking of international law. But the basic idea underlying international law is that international law is no longer just for nation-states or national governments. What Jeremy Bentham once called “inter-national law”, the law between and among sovereign nations, has evolved into a hybrid body of international and domestic law developed by a large number of public and private transnational actors.

International Law in American Courts

2020 ◽  
pp. 145-178
Author(s):  
Gary Born
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Current Treatment ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
National Interests ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
State Involvement ◽  
System P ◽  
The Status

This chapter looks at the grave flaws in the current treatment of international law in American courts. Both the status and content of public and private international law in the United States are uncertain, frequently governed by contradictory or parochial rules of State law; the resulting body of international law that is applied by U.S. courts is unpredictable and incoherent. Over the past fifty years, U.S. federal courts have also increasingly marginalized both international law and the role of American courts in resolving international disputes. This treatment of international law threatens serious damage to historic U.S. values and frustrates vitally important national policies. The chapter then considers how the current treatment of international law in American courts is also contrary to the U.S. Constitution’s allocation of authority over the nation’s foreign relations and international trade, which vests the federal government with both plenary and exclusive authority over U.S. foreign relations and commerce, while, exceptionally, forbidding State involvement in either field. Moreover, this treatment conflicts with vital national interests and policies in both fields, frustrating long-standing national interests in the nation’s compliance with international law and development of the international legal system.

The United States under President Trump: Gravedigger of International Law

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 645-668 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Talmon
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Trump Administration ◽  
Do So

Abstract The United States’ recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Syrian Golan has been widely considered a flagrant breach of international law. This illegal act gives reason to examine the relationship between the United States under President Trump and international law more generally. Unlike its predecessors, the Trump administration has not just violated international law whenever U.S. economic, political, or strategic interests demanded it to do so, it has rather challenged international law and its institutions as such, and has actively undermined them. The attitude of the Trump administration towards international law and its institutions is marked by an unparalleled contempt or disdain. This article delivers a powerful “J’accuse” against this international law nihilism.

A Lack of Language – Waging War or Combatting Crime? The Blurred Rule of International Law in the Face of the Attacks of September 11, 2001

2001 ◽  
Vol 2 (17) ◽  
Author(s):  
Claus Binder
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
The Face ◽  
The United Nations

After the terrorists' attacks of September 11, 2001, a lot of war rhetoric came out of the public and private sphere within the United States of America. On October 7, 2001, however, the rhetoric turned into reality as President George W. Bush countered the terrorist attacks and the threat of future terrorism with military means. While waging that new war U.S. governmental officials constantly make one important point, and that is that the United States are just exercising their right of self-defense. Moreover, on the day after the attacks, the Security Council of the United Nations unanimously reaffirmed the inherent right of self-defense as recognized by the Charter of the United Nations. Does that mean that international law is just that clear?

Extraterritorial Jurisdiction at a Crossroads: An Intersection Between Public and Private International Law

1982 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 280-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold G. Maier
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Private International Law ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Public International Law ◽  
The Public ◽  
Nation States ◽  
International Legal System ◽  
Extraterritorial Jurisdiction ◽  
International Systems

Historically, public international law and private international law have been treated as two different legal systems that function more or less independently. Public international law regulates activity among human beings operating in groups called, nation-states, while private international law regulates the activities of smaller subgroups or of individuals as they interact with each other. Since the public international legal system coordinates the interaction of collective human interests through decentralized mechanisms and private international law coordinates the interaction of individual or subgroup interests primarily through centralized mechanisms, these coordinating functions are usually carried out in different forums, each appropriate to the task. The differences between the processes by which sanctions for violation of community norms are applied in the two systems and the differences in the nature of the units making up the communities that establish those norms tend to obscure the fact that both the public and the private international systems coordinate human behavior, and that thus the values that inform both systems must necessarily be the same.

James Brown Scott and the Rise of Public International Law

2008 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Hepp
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
International Law ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public International Law ◽  
International Lawyer ◽  
Legal Expertise ◽  
Insight Into

James Brown Scott played a key role in the growth of public international law in the United States from the 1890s to the 1940s. While little remembered today, he was well-known among his contemporaries as a leading spokesman for a new and important discipline. Scott rose from obscure middle-class origins to occupy a prominent and influential place as an international lawyer who shared his legal expertise with seven presidents and ten secretaries of state. By examining his life we gain insight into the establishment of public international law as a discipline and on the era when lawyersqualawyers began to help shape American foreign policy.

Policy Analysis in the United States

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Policy ◽  
Policy Analysis ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Institutional Settings ◽  
Public Policy Analysis ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Media ◽  
National Governments

Policy Analysis in the United States brings together contributions from some of the world’s leading scholars and practitioners of public policy analysis including Beryl Radin, David Weimer, Rebecca Maynard, Laurence Lynn, and Guy Peters. This volume is part of the International Library of Policy Analysis series, enabling scholars to compare cross-nationally concepts and practices of public policy analysis in the media, sub-national governments, and many more institutional settings. The book explores the current landscape of public policy in the US, its breadth and complexities, and the role of policy analysis. It highlights the role and importance of policy analysis in the present, especially in the context of “alternative facts”, as well as looking at the evolution of the discipline over time. It examines policy analysis from local to national levels, and includes specific chapters examining how public policies and policy analysis have been shaped by, and shapes, public opinion, the American political landscape, the media, public and private sectors, higher education, and more. It includes an examination of how the academic fields of policy training and policy analysis are changing, and how policy analysis as a discipline, which started in the US, has grown and developed internationally.

PRIVATE COMMERCIAL LAW CONVENTIONS AND PUBLIC AND PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW: THE RADICAL APPROACH OF THE CAPE TOWN CONVENTION 2001 AND ITS PROTOCOLS

2016 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 523-540 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy Goode
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Vienna Convention ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Private International Law ◽  
Commercial Law ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Conflict Of Laws ◽  
Domestic Law ◽  
Radical Approach

It is a remarkable circumstance that with a few honourable exceptions all writers on international law in general and treaty law in particular focus exclusively on public law treaties. Private law conventions, including those involving commercial law and the conflict of laws, simply do not come into consideration. Yet such conventions, like public law conventions, are treaties between States and are governed by the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and many of them are of great significance. Their distinguishing feature is, of course, that while only States are parties, private law conventions deal primarily, and often exclusively, with the rights and obligations of non-State parties. So while the treaty is international it does not for the most part commit a Contracting State to any obligation other than that of implementing the treaty in domestic law by whatever method that State's law provides, if it has not already done so prior to ratification.

The protection of refugees in international law post September 11 2001

2003 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 389-408
Author(s):  
Geoff Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
International Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
September 11 ◽  
Legal Obligations ◽  
The People ◽  
The Face ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Post September 11 ◽  
Domestic Law

The protection of refugees in international law is always a complex mix of legal obligations and policy considerations. Unfortunately, the reaction against refugees post September 11 has ignored both the facts and the pre-existing law.This paper addresses how refugees have fared in international and domestic law post September 11 2001. Given that a refugee, by definition, has lost the protection of her/his state, there is no body, other than the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), which is able to respond in the face of unjustified restrictions on the rights accorded to this most vulnerable group.The first thing to note is that none of the people involved in the events of September 11 was a refugee. Equally, immediately after the events of September 11, approximately 100,000 Afghans fled Kabul fearing revenge attacks by the United States. At the same time, under pressure from Pakistan and Iran, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees facilitated the repatriation of 215,000 Afghan refugees.

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