The United States And International Law

The United States spearheaded the creation of many international organizations and treaties after World War II and maintains a strong record of compliance across several issue areas, yet it also refuses to ratify major international conventions like the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Why does the U.S. often seem to support international law in one way while neglecting or even violating it in another? The United States and International Law: Paradoxes of Support across Contemporary Issues analyzes the seemingly inconsistent U.S. relationship with international law by identifying five types of state support for international law: leadership, consent, internalization, compliance, and enforcement. Each follows different logics and entails unique costs and incentives. Accordingly, the fact that a state engages in one form of support does not presuppose that it will do so across the board. This volume examines how and why the U.S. has engaged in each form of support across twelve issue areas that are central to 20th- and 21st-century U.S. foreign policy: conquest, world courts, war, nuclear proliferation, trade, human rights, war crimes, torture, targeted killing, maritime law, the environment, and cybersecurity. In addition to offering rich substantive discussions of U.S. foreign policy, their findings reveal patterns across the U.S. relationship with international law that shed light on behavior that often seems paradoxical at best, hypocritical at worst. The results help us understand why the United States engages with international law as it does, the legacies of the Trump administration, and what we should expect from the United States under the Biden administration and beyond.

A must reference for the practitioner, judge, student, and serious scholar, this revised and updated work provides a thorough and readable text on various types and possibilities of incorporation of international law into our domestic legal processes. The second edition has retained and updated the first six chapters from the first edition and contains the most detailed exposition to date of cases, patterns of use, and trends concerning traditional topics such as customary international law and its incorporation into U.S. law; self-executing treaties and direct and indirect legal effects of treaties; the last-in-time rule and exceptions thereto; priorities among generally coequal laws of the land; presidential powers and duties; remedies or civil and criminal sanctions; and use of human right precepts throughout U.S. history (including attention to actual types of human rights utilized, the right of access to courts, and the right to an effective remedy). Chapters on human rights and the ninth amendment; jurisdiction and enforcement responsibilities with respect to international criminal law; and the peace power have also been retained and updated, while portions of other chapters have been shifted to other sections of the treatise or deleted. The comprehensive and highly useful index has been retained. The treatise is unique in terms of areas of coverage and its attention to detail, including heavily documented research into literally thousands of U.S. cases. "Professor Paust's new book is not only well-written, but it also contains a rich vein of resources that may be worked for profit by teacher, student, researcher, and practitioner." -- American Society of International Law Newsletter, on the first edition "Superlative. The idea is original, the execution exhaustive and the impact, simply overwhelming." -- W.M. Weisman, Wesley N. Hohfeld Professor of Jurisprudence, Yale Law School, on the first edition "This is an excellent work for scholarly law libraries...[and] for small- to mid-sized law libraries and academic libraries that emphasize American law and history." -- Legal Information ALERT "Paust's work reflects a vigorous defense of the cause of international law... [It] reflects an impressive mosaic of the author's views that will undoubtedly continue to spark controversy and debate within our community." -- The American Journal of International Law

International Law in the U.S. Legal System provides a wide-ranging overview of how international law intersects with the domestic legal system of the United States, and points out various unresolved issues and areas of controversy. Curtis Bradley explains the structure of the U.S. legal system and the various separation of powers and federalism considerations implicated by this structure, especially as these considerations relate to the conduct of foreign affairs. Against this backdrop, he covers all of the principal forms of international law: treaties, executive agreements, decisions and orders of international institutions, customary international law, and jus cogens norms. He also explores a number of issues that are implicated by the intersection of U.S. law and international law, such as treaty withdrawal, foreign sovereign immunity, international human rights litigation, war powers, extradition, and extraterritoriality. This book highlights recent decisions and events relating to the topic, including various actions taken during the Trump administration, while also taking into account relevant historical materials, including materials relating to the U.S. Constitutional founding. Written by one of the most cited international law scholars in the United States, the book is a resource for lawyers, law students, legal scholars, and judges from around the world.

Successive hegemonic powers have shaped the foundations of international law. This book examines whether the predominance of the United States is leading to foundational change in the international legal system. A range of leading scholars in international law and international relations consider six foundational areas that could be undergoing change, including international community, sovereign equality, the law governing the use of force, and compliance. The authors demonstrate that the effects of US predominance on the foundations of international law are real, but also intensely complex. This complexity is due, in part, to a multitude of actors exercising influential roles. And it is also due to the continued vitality and remaining functionality of the international legal system itself. This system limits the influence of individual states, while stretching and bending in response to the changing geopolitics of our time.

This survey draws upon the statements and actions of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the U.S. government. Topics include diplomatic and consular relations, jurisdiction and immunities, state responsibility and liability, international organizations, international economic law and human rights. Containing extracts from hard-to-find documents, generous citations to relevant sources, tables of cases and treaties, and a detailed index, this essential tool for researchers and practitioners is the first in a series of similar volumes.