Benvenisti & Downs: Prospects for the Increased Independence of International Tribunals

Eyal Benvenisti (Tel Aviv Univ. - Law) & George W. Downs (New York Univ. - Politics) have posted Prospects for the Increased Independence of International Tribunals (German Law Journal, Vol. 12, No. 5, 2011). Here's the abstract:

In this essay we draw upon the theoretical and empirical literatures on the evolution of court independence within modern democratic states to identify aspects of their political environments that have fostered judicial independence at the domestic level. We then extend that analysis to examine the role that these or similar factors are likely to play in facilitating the independence and legitimacy of international tribunals at the global level. We focus on two such broad aspects of the global environment not normally associated with the independence of international tribunals: the extent of political division between states that are parties to an international tribunal (interstate competition), and the extent of political division within states between state executives and national courts (inter-branch competition). We suggest further that the conditions that facilitate independence have increased in recent years and are likely to continue to do so.

Source: International Law Reporter

Raustiala: Institutional Proliferation and the International Legal Order

Kal Raustiala (Univ. of California, Los Angeles - Law) has posted Institutional Proliferation and the International Legal Order (in Interdisciplinary Perspectives on International Law and International Relations:
 The State of the Art, Jeffrey L. Dunoff & Mark A. Pollack eds., forthcoming). Here's the abstract:

Since the cataclysm of World War II, the international order has grown increasingly institutionalized. Hundreds of international organizations and tens of thousands of treaties now exist, many with widespread – and in some cases nearly universal – membership. Compared to earlier eras, the international system today is far more densely populated by rules and institutions.

Globalización del Derecho. Aspectos jurídicos y derechos humanos, de William Guillermo Jiménez

En el presente trabajo se explora la relación entre derecho y globalización, con el propósito de establecer futuros campos de investigación. Se inicia con una introducción acerca de los efectos de la globalización sobre el Estado nacional, para pasar luego a una breve mirada sobre el significado de la globalización. En tercer lugar, se presentan los principales temas, problemas y focos de interés encontrados sobre la relación entre derecho y globalización, especialmente el tema de los derechos humanos. Finalmente, se realizan algunas conclusiones, en las que se destaca la importancia de abrir nuevos campos de estudio sobre globalización debido a la necesidad de regulación que requieren los fenómenos globalizados.

Enlace para la publicación:  ESAP, Revista Nova et Vetera

The Structure of Global Law: Fracture, Fluidity, Permeability, and Polycentricity

Larry Catá Backer
The Pennsylvania State University Dickinson School of Law
July 1, 2012
CPE Working Paper No. 2012-7

Abstract:     

Global law can be understood as the systematization of anarchy, as the management of a loosely intertwined universe of autonomous governance frameworks operating dynamically across borders and grounded in functional differentiation among governance communities. Global law is a way of pointing to an emerging universe of systems that share characteristics and whose interactions lend them to organization; it is the as the law of non-state governance systems. The structure of global law can be understood as an amalgamation of four fundamental characteristics that together define a new order in form that is, in some respects, the antithesis of the orderliness and unity of the law-state system it will displace (though not erase). The essay considers the structure of global law in this context, understood as an amalgamation of four fundamental characteristics that together define a new order in form that is, in some respects, the antithesis of the orderliness and unity of the law-state system it will displace (though not erase). These four fundamental characteristics — fracture, fluidity, permeability, and polycentricity — comprise the fundamental structure of global law. Fracture, fluidity, permeability and polycentricity are the basic characteristics of global law, the systematization of which marks its field boundaries. These also serve as the structural foundations of its constitutional element, its substantive element, and its process element. From that systematization one can derive a method of theorizing the emerging framework of the unity of disunity in governance, in which law and governance systems multiply within a discernible internal logic, while the objects of regulation remain constant. This essay continues work on the evolution of a "law" beyond that of the domestic legal orders of states and the international law frameworks that serve as an expression of state based collective governance. To that extent, it seeks to liberate theory both from the ideological constraints of the state system and as well from the limitations of earlier work in transnational law. To consider the possibility of global law, of law/governance beyond the state, it is necessary to avoid attaching its framework either to the state or to law (as traditionally and narrowly understood as a product of the state).

Source with link for the publication: Social Science Research Nework

Humanity’s Law, Ruti G. Teilel

Reviewed by Gerd Hankel, Research Fellow, Hamburg Institute for Social Research

In Ruti Teitel’s view there is absolutely no doubt that we live in a world in which legal relationships are undergoing ever more significant change, a fact of which she informs the reader right at the beginning of her book. States alone are no longer the main actors; instead persons and peoples are assuming greater prominence. Their interests and needs for protection increasingly dictate the content of international law which is becoming humanity’s law as a result.