Separating Powers International Law Before National Courts

The more international law, taken as a global answer to global problems, intrudes into domestic legal systems, the more it takes on the role and function of domestic law. This raises a separation of powers question regarding law–making powers. This book considers that specific issue. In contrast to other studies on domestic courts applying international law, its constitutional orientation focuses on the presumptions concerning the distribution of state power. It collects and examines relevant decisions regarding treaties and customary international law from four leading legal systems, the US, the UK, France, and the Netherlands. Those decisions reveal that institutional and conceptual allegiances to constitutional structures render it difficult for courts to see their mandates and powers in terms other than exclusively national. Constitutionalism generates an inevitable dualism between international law and national law, one which cannot necessarily be overcome by express constitutional provisions accommodating international law. Valuable for academics and practitioners in the fields of international and constitutional law.

This book explores the way domestic courts contribute to the maintenance of theinternational of law by providing judicial control over the exercises of public powers that may conflict with international law. The main focus of the book will be on judicial control of exercise of public powers by states. Key cases that will be reviewed in this book, and that will provide empirical material for the main propositions, include Hamdan, in which the US Supreme Court reviewed detention by the United States of suspected terrorists against the 1949 Geneva Conventions; Adalah, in which the Supreme Court of Israel held that the use of local residents by Israeli soldiers in arresting a wanted terrorist is unlawful under international law, and the Narmada case, in which the Indian Supreme Court reviewed the legality of displacement of people in connection with the building of a dam in the river Narmada under the ILO Indigenous and Tribal Populations Convention 1957 (nr 107). This book explores what it is that international law requires, expects, or aspires that domestic courts do. Against this backdrop it maps patterns of domestic practice in the actual or possible application of international law and determines what such patterns mean for the protection of the international rule of law.

Interest in international law has increased greatly over the past decade, largely because of its central place in discussions such as the Iraq War and Guantanamo, the World Trade Organisation, the anti-capitalist movement, the Kyoto Convention on climate change, and the apparent failure of the international system to deal with the situations in Palestine and Darfur, and the plights of refugees and illegal immigrants around the world. This Very Short Introduction explains what international law is, what its role in international society is, and how it operates. Vaughan Lowe examines what international law can and cannot do and what it is and what it isn't doing to make the world a better place. Focussing on the problems the world faces, Lowe uses terrorism, environmental change, poverty, and international violence to demonstrate the theories and practice of international law, and how the principles can be used for international co-operation.

The European Communities are only two decades old. The most important of the three Communities, the European Economic Community (EEC), is even younger, having come into existence in 1958. 1 Two decades have been hardly enough time to have more than reached, much less settled, the impor tant questions of the relationship between Community law and institutions and those of the Member States. Among the most challenging of the questions is the extent to which the courts of the Member States will fulfill the obligation of safeguarding the rights created by the Treaty of Rome in favor of private persons, both indivi dual and corporate, an obligation which the Court of Justice of the European Communities has said rests upon the national courts. This obligation flows naturally, though not necessarily, from the commitment of the Court of Justice to an effective Community. However, the result depends on that commitment, and there is a natural concern that the national courts may not share the commitment to an effective Community to a degree necessary to fulfill their obligations under Community law as those obligations have been defined by the Court of Justice. In order to fu1fi11 their obligations to Community law the courts of the Member States will have to solve some serious problems, and do it with comparatively little help from the Court of Justice.

Public international law is a system of binding obligations in international relations. This accessible volume identifies, explains, and justifies the generally accepted role of public international law in the application of United States law by United States courts. It rejects the trendy idea of international law as a sort of "super-constitution" that "controls" the President or Congress; it also rejects the opposite extreme, that international law is no more than a policy consideration for the courts to consider. The middle position is justified by a careful balancing of two important national interests: constitutional separation of powers, and the ability of the United States to benefit from international law. "International law and United States law" is descriptive with respect to the overarching principles of public international law and US constitutional law, yet critical with respect to applications of (and failures to apply) public international law in specific cases. This authoritative work is an invaluable tool for judges and lawyers who rarely encounter international law, and also for students and others interested in the role of international law.

In countries and supranational entities around the globe, constitutional reform has transferred an unprecedented amount of power from representative institutions to judiciaries. The constitutionalization of rights and the establishment of judicial review are widely believed to have benevolent and progressive origins, and significant redistributive, power-diffusing consequences. Ran Hirschl challenges this conventional wisdom. Drawing upon a comprehensive comparative inquiry into the political origins and legal consequences of the recent constitutional revolutions in Canada, Israel, New Zealand, and South Africa, Hirschl shows that the trend toward constitutionalization is hardly driven by politicians' genuine commitment to democracy, social justice, or universal rights. Rather, it is best understood as the product of a strategic interplay among hegemonic yet threatened political elites, influential economic stakeholders, and judicial leaders. This self-interested coalition of legal innovators determines the timing, extent, and nature of constitutional reforms. Hirschl demonstrates that whereas judicial empowerment through constitutionalization has a limited impact on advancing progressive notions of distributive justice, it has a transformative effect on political discourse. The global trend toward juristocracy, Hirschl argues, is part of a broader process whereby political and economic elites, while they profess support for democracy and sustained development, attempt to insulate policymaking from the vicissitudes of democratic politics.

Winner of the Walther Hug Prize 2021. Read more. In Domestic Courts and the Interpretation of International Law, Odile Ammann examines how domestic judges do and must interpret international law. She analyzes their interpretative methodology and the predictability, clarity, and consistency of their reasoning. Highlighting the main gaps in contemporary international legal scholarship regarding international law in domestic courts, Ammann offers a fresh and thorough theoretical reflection on this topic. Based on a detailed study of the judicial practice, she shows how courts' interpretative method and reasoning can be further improved. She also argues that interpretative methods must be taken more seriously in international law. While she primarily uses the Swiss example to illustrate her claims, the basic tenets of her analysis apply to any domestic legal context.

Beyond Human Rights, previously published in German and now available in English, is a historical and doctrinal study about the legal status of individuals in international law.