Hurst Hannum

International Law and Cambodian Genocide: The Sounds of Silence

This article examines the feasibility of bringing an application to the International Court of Justice, under the terms of Article IX of the Genocide Convention or Article 36 of the Statute of the Court. It concludes that such an application would be legally feasible and political desirable and that the failure of any state thus far to institute proceedings before the Court is an indefensible abdication of international responsibility.

Pollution from the carriage of oil by sea : liability and compensation

The legislative status prior to the advent of the international convetions the advent of the international conventions and the voluntary agreements the extrinsic obstacle to application of the international conventions - the existence of the US regime, as an example of a unilateral solution the intrinsic difficulty in applying the international conventions - compensation for damage due to a pollution incident -who should be paid for?

The Advisory Opinion on Kosovo: An Opportunity Lost, or a Poisoned Chalice Refused?

The ICJ’s Advisory Opinion adopted a very narrow approach to the question posed by the General Assembly, but its basic response – that Kosovo’s declaration of independence did not violate general international law – was correct. While it might have been preferable if the Court had given more guidance regarding the contemporary scope of self-determination, neither supporters nor opponents of Kosovo’s independence gained much from the opinion. No definitive conclusion about Kosovo’s status can be drawn without agreement between Pristina and Belgrade, and outsiders should avoid prejudging or interfering in that outcome.

Peace versus Justice: Creating Rights as well as Order out of Chaos

While ‘peace’ and ‘justice’ advocates share ultimate goals, the short-term concerns and strategies of practitioners in the two fields may differ dramatically. The potential contradictions of pursuing peace and justice are a particular challenge in the context of large-scale conflict, whether internal or international. Both mediators and human rights advocates could use more humility and less arrogance, since neither group can create world (or even local) peace on their own. This article argues that the two disciplines need to build on their shared values of impartiality and independence, while maintaining the distinctive features of each approach, including their concern with ensuring that the less powerful are adequately protected and represented. Neither group should be tolerant of injustice. It concludes that collaboration, or at least mutual appreciation, is certainly feasible, particularly as greater empirical knowledge is gained about both the limits and possibilities of outside interventions.

The Twilight of Human Rights Law by Eric A. Posner (review)

Professor Eric A. Posner is a prolific writer and the Kirkland & Ellis Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago. From his CV, it appears that he has spent essentially his entire career in academia. This provocative book is thus primarily a philosophical, quasisocial science critique of international human rights law based on theory, not practice or experience. This very brief biographical summary is necessary because The Twilight of Human Rights Law is based on fundamental misunderstandings of the human rights project, which began in the 1940s, gained political traction in the 1970s, and today influences the rhetoric of practically every government in the world. These misunderstandings are both conceptual and analytical, and they undermine the attention that should be given to a number of difficult questions that Posner raises. The conceptual misunderstanding emerges from the first sentence of Chapter 1: “The animating idea behind human rights is the moral obligation not to harm strangers, and possibly the moral obligation to help them if they are in need.”1 This view of human rights as a legal-moral obligation on outsiders to impose their will or sense of justice on “strangers” leads fairly easily to Posner’s ultimate conclusion that “human rights law has failed to accomplish its objectives,” as discussed more fully below.2 The analytical misunderstanding is shared by many of the new “quantifiers” of human rights compliance, whether they are critical or supportive of human rights in general. It is the assumption that attempting to measure the impact of human rights treaties is a useful means of measuring the impact of human rights. A corollary is that the weakness of legally binding or other enforcement mechanisms is a measure of their failure. In reality, those who draft international human rights texts and who work to implement human rights norms have much more modest goals. Human rights law was not created to justify outside intervention (whether by force or otherwise); it was “animated” by the simple proposition that every human being has rights simply by being human, and that these rights belong to each person equally. While concepts of justice, fairness, and equality have appeared within societies since the beginning of time, the revolution wrought by international human rights was to expand these notions to include those who had been excluded from protection in any given society due to race, caste, gender, religion, or similar characteristics. A second important feature of international human rights law is its origin in the mid-twentieth century, a time when the state was becoming more powerful and increasingly ubiquitous. Human rights focuses on the relationship between the government and the individual (and occasionally groups), both to protect the individual from the power of the state and to identify the positive responsibility of the state to concern itself with the socioeconomic welfare of its population. The changes in government behavior envisaged by human rights are potentially

Self-Determination in the Post-Colonial Era

Nationalism — the principle of homogeneous cultural units as the foundations of political life, and of the obligatory cultural unity of rulers and ruled — is indeed inscribed neither in the nature of things, nor in the hearts of men, nor in the pre-conditions of social life in general, and the contention that it is so inscribed is a falsehood which nationalist doctrine has succeeded in presenting as self-evident. But nationalism as a phenomenon, not as a doctrine presented by nationalists, is inherent in a certain set of social conditions; and those conditions, it so happens, are the conditions of our time.1

Ethnic Conflict and Human Rights: A Comparative Perspective, The Rapporteur’s Account of the Seminar

This report seeks to summarize the contributions made by the various participants in the seminar. It will also address in general terms the primary objectives of the seminar: to examine the causes, structure, dynamics, and consequences of the conflicts ; to analyze the human rights behaviour of the parties; to examine the extent, if any, of external involvement in each conflict by governmental and nongovernmental actors; to consider the prospects for peaceful solutions; and to discuss ways in which the international community can contribute