Why promulgating international law is a key US interest

Political realists tend to be wary of international law, seeing it as an artificial and foreign encroachment on domestic sovereignty. Goldsmith and Posner argue that states’ commitment to international law is illusory; states will only comply with any particular provision of international law as long as their self-interest so warrants, and will abandon it as soon as this ceases to be the case.[1] Such views are especially prominent in the US, where constitutional obstacles and political conservatism have kept the US from playing as active a role in the international legal order as one might expect for a country of its stature. For instance, the US is one of only two countries (along with Somalia) that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and one of only three countries (along with Sudan and Israel) to have withdrawn its signature from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court; both are major treaties which the US itself played an active role in drafting. There has even been sporadic (if mostly marginal) talk over the years of withdrawing from the United Nations.

US conservative opposition to international law can best be summarized in the words of John Bolton, former ambassador to the UN:

It is a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest

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The Changing Landscape of International Law: Investor-State Arbitration and the Case of Pac Rim Cayman LLC v. El Salvador

Traditionally, the only actors in the realm of public international law were sovereign states. In the late 1940s, the group of actors was widened to include international organizations, which were also deemed to possess legal personality by the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) ruling in the Reparations Case. [1] With the dawn of investor-state arbitration, the number of claimants able to assert rights based on language contained in international treaties has expanded exponentially.

Investor-state disputes present essentially a hybrid between public international law and traditional fields of private law, such as contract and property. Relationships between investors and sovereign states come into existence when two or more states agree to a bilateral (or multilateral) investment treaty (BIT), or the provisions which are normally included in a BIT form part of a free trade agreement (FTA). Chapter eleven of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), for instance, contains the relevant provisions concerning investor-state disputes in the context of North American investors operating in another NAFTA state. [2] The provisions in NAFTA essentially allow an investor to sue a sovereign state through the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), a branch of the World Bank based in Washington D.C., in the event that its property was expropriated. BITs are ostensibly beneficial to both investors and the signatory states. Investors gain from the legal certainty which the BIT provides in…

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Les limites de la « dissuasion » en droit pénal national et international

Payam Akhavan, dans son article « Beyond Impunity: Can International Justice Prevent Future Atrocities »[1], s’interroge sur la façon dont la justice pénale peut prévenir la perpétration de crimes de guerre et de crimes contre l’humanité ou empêcher leur répétition[2]. Il estime entre autres que la crainte de représailles – qu’il s’agisse de mesures judiciaires ou de sanctions politiques – peut finir par dissuader certains acteurs de commettre des atrocités.

Il va sans dire que cet argument s’applique aux hommes d’État et leaders politiques. D’une part, la création de tribunaux spéciaux en ex-Yougoslavie (TPIY) et au Rwanda (TPIR) et les emprisonnements qui ont suivi ont contribué à miner la culture d’impunité qui régnait jadis chez certains hommes politiques assoiffés de pouvoir. D’autre part, comme l’ont démontré les succès électoraux de Vojislav Koštunica en Serbie et de Stjepan Mesic en Croatie lors des années 1990, il n’est désormais plus rentable sur les plans politique et économique d’être associé aux anciens leaders accusés ou condamnés pour crimes commis en temps de guerre[3]. En effet, malgré la pression de certaines franges endoctrinées souhaitant la réhabilitation d’anciens « héros » ultranationalistes, la crainte d’être isolé à l’échelle internationale suffit souvent à convaincre les leaders politiques de quitter les marges et de reconnaître la compétence des institutions judiciaires internationales telles que le TPIY et, plus récemment, la Cour pénale internationale (CPI).

Or, Akhavan…

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Ecuador opens its borders to universal citizenship: a step forward on the way to equality of peoples?

In principle, open borders might tend toward the respect of international equality; but in practice it does not necessarily provide more equality for vulnerable populations. It can actually enable profiteers to benefit from less supervised borders and trick desperate people into leaving their home for the American dream. Opening borders may not be enough: if an immigrant finds himself inside the country but excluded from the local community, like those who do not have papers in Ecuador, he may not be illegal but he is not legal either. Future experiences of open-borders may be more positive, who knows; but the Ecuadorian situation can hardly be called a success.[i]

Borders are quite representative of the current state of international affairs: each state, as the supreme authority, decides who comes in and who gets to stay on its territory. Some countries are lucky, like Canada: being very attractive to most, Canada can pick and choose as it pleases. For immigrants, coming to Canada generally means an important improvement of living conditions and revenue. Thus, Canada has strict immigration policies that allow it to discriminate against immigrants that may not be as “desirable” for the Canadian society.

Now this raises the question: are borders and discriminatory immigration legitimate? Is it possible to administrate a country without borders? Does international equality require open borders? If a country suddenly changes its policy and opens…

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Criticizing the field of international investment law: A simple story made complex

The system of international investment law is often criticised by civil society organizations and legal academics. The Guardian recently described this system as a “legal weapon that gives corporations the edge on government”; it emphasized that there is a “growing concern among legal experts” that the investment regime “favours corporations over the public interest, puts sovereignty at stake, is chronically lacking in transparency and accountability and has been mis-sold to many developing countries that only realize exactly what they have signed up for when they get sued.”[1]

A Public Statement on the International Investment Regime, signed by a group of forty eight academics from around the world, has added, “We have a shared concern for the harm done to the public welfare by the international investment regime, as currently structured, especially its hampering of the ability of governments to act for their people in response to the concerns of human development and environmental sustainability”. [2] It argues, inter alia, that investment treaty arbitrations are unfair and unbalanced,[3] and that states should withdraw from investment treaties.[4] International investment law has even been described by a distinguished academic as “a law of greed”.[5]

Although perhaps somewhat exaggerated, these critiques are certainly not baseless. Several recent developments, most notably the disputes between tobacco giant Philip-Morris and the governments of Australia and Uruguay, indeed demonstrate how foreign investors can…

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UN blacklist a stain on international justice

Abousfian Abdelrazik has overcome another hurdle in his long struggle for justice.

On November 30, the Montreal resident was finally removed from the United Nations Security Council 1267 List. The blacklist imposes an asset freeze, travel ban and arms embargo on alleged associates of Al Qaida and the Taliban.

But despite his new freedom, Abdelrazik’s fight is far from over.

Still outstanding are a $27-million lawsuit against the Canadian government, a constitutional challenge to the legislation implementing the 1267 list sanctions, and an apology from the Canadian government for its role in Abdelrazik’s almost decade-long saga that could have been written by Kafka.

Arriving in Canada as a refugee, Abdelrazik was given Canadian citizenship in 1995. He returned to Sudan, where he is a dual citizen, to visit his sick mother in 2003. There he was arrested, imprisoned, interrogated, and tortured. He was never charged with any crime and was eventually cleared by both the Sudanese government and Canada’s RCMP and CSIS of any criminal wrongdoing.

However the Canadian government refused to issue Abdelrazik a passport to return to Canada, using the 1267 List as an excuse. Abdelrazik’s name had been added to the list in 2006 at the request of the United States.

Abdelrazik spent the next 14 months sleeping on a cot in the Canadian embassy. Finally in 2009, Federal Court of Canada judge Russel…

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Netzai Sandoval, un jeune avocat mexicain, se lance contre Goliath

Un avocat de 28 ans, Netzai Sandoval, a déposé le 25 novembre une plainte à la Cour pénale internationale contre des membres du gouvernement mexicain ainsi que des cartels de la drogue. En 8 mois de travail, il a amassé de la preuve sur 470 violations du droit international, montant un dossier de 700 pages. Il a reçu les signatures de 23 000 citoyens  mexicains pour appuyer sa plainte, ce nombre ayant aujourd’hui augmenté à 27 000. Toute l’information sur la plainte est disponible sur leur blogue.

Les plaintes déposées à la CPI proviennent généralement d’États. L’avocat a ainsi présenté une plainte avec l’objectif que Luis Moreno Ocampo, le Procureur en chef de la CPI, ouvre une enquête selon son pouvoir discrétionnaire de le faire (art. 15 du Statut de Rome). Le Procureur devra donc évaluer le sérieux de la preuve, et s’il est d’avis qu’il dispose de bases raisonnables pour ouvrir l’enquête, il devra demander une autorisation de la Chambre préliminaire. Celle-ci se prononcera également sur la base raisonnable de la demande.

Les violations auxquelles il réfère sont traduites par Global Voices, un blogue francophone : « Nous réclamons que la Cour enquête sur les disparitions, le recrutement d’enfants de moins de 15 ans, sur les exécutions sommaires opérées par des soldats, sur la mutilation en tant que forme d’intimidation, sur les attaques perpétrées contre la population civile, sur les déplacements…

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Depoliticizing international criminal law

Realists frequently challenge the legitimacy of public international law as a bona fide legal discipline, contending that it is merely a political tool wielded by powerful states to enforce their diktats on the third-world. To Louis Henkin, “law is politics;”[1] elaborating on that theme, John Austin posited that international law is not really “law” because breaches do not engender legally-enforceable sanctions.[2] Such positions merit due attention, as they pose a serious challenge to efforts to promote adherence to international legal norms.

To respond effectively to Austin and Henkin, it is necessary to consider not only whether international law is possessed of “teeth”, but also the extent to which these teeth operate consistently and independently of political intervention. I will focus here on what I consider to be the two most significant developments in international criminal law over the last two decades: the creation of the International Criminal Court (ICC) through the Rome Statute of 1999, and the rise and fall of the doctrine of universal jurisdiction across various national legal systems. In many respects, both appear to have been rather successful in promoting individual accountability. For the first time, there exists a permanent and independent entity at the global level capable of prosecuting individuals charged with grave violations of international humanitarian law. Similarly, at the national level, many individual states have begun asserting the authority to prosecute such…

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“Mapiripán Massacre Scandal” Affair

A scandal happened recently relating to an Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) case, raising interesting issues of lawyers’ ethics, among others. Here is a summary of the facts drafted by Lawyers Without Borders Canada (LWBC), coming from the statement they have made concerning the recent events.

“A recent testimony of Ms. Mariela Contreras is at the root of the present affair. Ms. Contreras declared before the Colombian justice system in 2002, and before the Inter- American Court on Human Rights (IACHR), in 2005, that she had lost her husband and two sons in the massacre perpetrated by paramilitaries in July 1997 in the village of Mapiripán, with the complicity of regular military forces. On October 25th, 2011, she testified at Court that she had in fact lied and fraudulently benefited from the monetary compensation paid by the Colombian State as a result of the historical ruling in this case.”[i]

LWBC has not been personally involved in the case, so critics were not aimed at the organization in particular. LWBC is however closely linked to the Colectivo de abogados « José Alvéar Restrepo » (CAJAR), with whom they are partners in several projects. CAJAR is a Colombian human rights law firm, and they were representing some victims in the Mapiripan case in front of the IACHR, Ms. Mariela Contreras being one of those alleged victims. LWBC has thus expressed…

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On tuna, dolphins and all sorts of barriers

Trade lawyers’ interest in tuna and dolphins began in the early 1990s, when Mexico threw the first punch in what later became the long saga (going on 20 years now) known today as the tuna-dolphin disputes. The battleground was (and still is) the waters of the Eastern Tropical Pacific (“ETP”) Ocean, extending from California in the north to Chile in the south and Hawaii in the west. These waters are known for their abundance of sea-life, including numerous types of fish, dolphins, sharks, whales and sea turtles. Where fish are plentiful usually fisheries arise, and economic interests enter the game. This short note is written following the latest of a line of trade disputes between the United States and other states (most notably Mexico) concerning fisheries, morals and influence.

The tuna-dolphin disputes revolve around unilateral measures taken by the United States in order to combat the use of purse-seine fishing nets. Purse-seine fishing nets are used for commercial fishing. When used for tuna harvesting, not only tuna but also dolphins (and other species as well) are often trapped, injured, and even killed. It was argued by the United States that due to the use of these nets, the population of dolphins at the ETP was dramatically reduced.

Luckily for the dolphins, two types of U.S. pressure groups did not intend to let them disappear from the waters of the ETP.…

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