Determining Interfaces Using Type Inference

Porting software usually requires understanding what library functions the program being ported uses since this functionality must be either found or reproduced in the ported program's new environment. This is usually done manually through code inspections. We propose a type inference algorithm able to infer basic information about the library functions a particular C program uses in the absence of declaration information for the library (e.g., without header files). Based on a simple but efficient inference algorithm, we were able to infer declarations for much of the PalmOS API from the source of a twenty-seven-thousand-line C program. Such a tool will aid in the problem of program understanding when porting programs, especially from poorly-documented or lost legacy environments

Treaties as Law of the Land: The Supremacy Clause and the Judicial Enforcement of Treaties

Courts in recent years have perceived threshold obstacles to the enforcement of treaties deriving from their nature as contracts between nations that generally depend for their efficacy on the interest and honor of the parties, rather than on domestic adjudication. This approach to treaty enforcement is in tension with the Constitution’s declaration that treaties are part of the law of the land and its instruction to judges to give them effect. The Founders understood that treaties depended on interest and honor on the international plane, but they made treaties enforceable in our courts anyway in order to avoid the international friction that could be expected to result from treaty violations and to capture the benefits of a reputation for treaty compliance. The Supremacy Clause gives treaties a domestic judicial sanction that they would otherwise lack. It makes treaties enforceable in the courts in the same circumstances as the other two categories of norms specified in the clause—federal statutes and the Constitution itself. The sole exception to this rule is for treaties that are non-self-executing in the sense contemplated by the Court in Foster v. Neilson. The concept of a non-self-executing treaty fits uneasily with the Supremacy Clause, as reflected in the common but untenable view that non-self-executing treaties lack the force of domestic law. According to Foster, a non-self-executing treaty is not enforceable in the courts because it is addressed to the political branches. But determining which treaties are so addressed has been challenging. Treaties generally leave the question of domestic implementation to the domestic laws of the states-parties, and our domestic law (the Supremacy Clause) directs judges to give them effect. The author argues that the Supremacy Clause establishes a default rule that treaties are directly enforceable in the courts like other laws, rebuttable only by a clear statement that the obligations imposed by the treaty are subject to legislative implementation. If the stipulation had to appear in the text of the treaty, the clear statement rule would present problems for U.S. treaty makers seeking to control the domestic consequences of multilateral treaties. To address this problem, the treaty makers have developed a new form of clear statement, the “declaration” of non-self-execution. However, scholars have questioned the compatibility of such declarations with the Supremacy Clause. The author concludes that the treaty makers have the power to limit the domestic effects of treaties through declarations of non-self-execution. On the other hand, if the Constitution were understood to establish a default rule of non-self-execution, declarations of self-execution would stand on more tenuous ground. Thus, a default rule of self-execution is not only more consistent with the constitutional text and structure and with Supreme Court precedent, it is also normatively attractive because it leaves the treaty makers with the power to control the domestic consequences of the treaties they conclude

Four Problems with the Draft Restatement’s Treatment of Treaty Self-Execution

The American Law Institute has embarked on the challenging task of restating the confounding distinction between self-executing and non-self-executing treaties. In some respects, the current draft of the Fourth Restatement of Foreign Relations Law represents an advance from the treatment of the subject in the Third Restatement (Third). At the same time, the current draft retains, and may even aggravate, some of the flaws of that earlier treatment. This Essay suggests four ways the current draft could be improved. First, the draft should explicitly recognize that the concept of self-execution is not a unitary one. The self-executing label encompasses four distinct types of reasons why a treaty might require implementing legislation. Second, the draft should abandon the claim that the self-executing or non-self-executing nature of a treaty is “essentially” about the treaty’s judicial enforceability. Third, the draft should qualify its claim that self-execution turns on the intent of the U.S. treaty makers. Finally, the draft should modify its claim that there is no presumption either in favor or against self-execution. There is substantial support in case law for a presumption in favor of self-execution with respect to one of the four categories of self-execution— the “intent-based” category

The Necessity for Non-Challenge Visits

YesIn the discussions that have taken place over the past six years since the establishment by the Third Review Conference1 in 1991 of the Ad Hoc Group of Governmental Experts,known as VEREX, to identify and examine potential verification measures from a scientific and technical viewpoint, there has been an increasing debate about the role of non-challenge visits in a regime for a strengthened Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC). The arguments as to why on-site investigations are an essential and central element to such a strengthened regime were addressed in the Briefing Paper issued2 in July 1997. In this Briefing Paper, the necessity for non-challenge visits is addressed drawing upon the previous VEREX, Ad Hoc Group (AHG), Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) experience. The advantages and disadvantages of a regime containing non-challenge visits are considered and the conclusion is reached that the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages and that non-challenge visits are an important element which could contribute significantly to the effectiveness of a future legally binding instrument to strengthen the BTWC

The significance of the qualifying declarations under the Cape Town Convention

This article outlines and critically examines the relationship between the qualifying declarations and the economic advantages of the Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment. It shows that the qualifying declarations operate rather differently from how they are perceived in academic literature and practice. Specifically, the article shows that the critical advantage of the Convention and the qualifying declaration is the potential to reduce enforcement risk relating to different States in a specific transactional setting and not, as some observers might wrongly perceive, from the Cape Town Discount. Thus, if States are not prepared to make the qualifying declarations, this should not deter them from ratifying the Convention and the Protocol. States and society may benefit from adoption of the Convention and its related protocols with partial—or even without—adoption of the qualifying declarations, bearing in mind of course the interdependency of the Convention’s remedies

Self-Execution and Treaty Duality

The Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution states that, along with the Constitution and laws of the United States, treaties made by the United States are part of the supreme Law of the Land. At least since the Supreme Court\u27s 1829 decision in Foster v. Neilson, however, it has been understood that treaty provisions are enforceable in U.S. courts only if they are self-executing. The legitimacy and implications of this self-execution requirement have generated substantial controversy and uncertainty among both courts and commentators. This Article attempts to clear up some of the conceptual confusion relating to the self-execution doctrine and, in the process, better explain the contemporary practice of the courts and political branches relating to treaty enforcement. To that end, the Article makes three claims. First, the Supremacy Clause does not by itself tell us the extent to which treaties should be judicially enforceable. Second, the relevant intent in discerning self-execution is the intent of the U.S. treatymakers (that is, the President and Senate), not the collective intent of the various parties to the treaty. Third, even if treaties and statutes have an equivalent status in the U.S. legal system in the abstract, there are important structural and functional differences between them that are relevant to judicial enforceability. These three claims are interconnected in that each of them reflects the fact that treaties have a dual nature, operating both within the domain of international politics as well as within the domain of law, a feature that is in turn relevant to the scope of their domestic judicial enforceability. The three claims are also complementary, in that each of them is best understood along with the other two, and together they present a relatively coherent explanation for the precedent and practice in the area. The Article concludes by discussing how the Supreme Court\u27s recent decision in Medellin v. Texas, despite certain ambiguities, is generally consistent with the three claims

Refinement Types for Logical Frameworks and Their Interpretation as Proof Irrelevance

Refinement types sharpen systems of simple and dependent types by offering expressive means to more precisely classify well-typed terms. We present a system of refinement types for LF in the style of recent formulations where only canonical forms are well-typed. Both the usual LF rules and the rules for type refinements are bidirectional, leading to a straightforward proof of decidability of typechecking even in the presence of intersection types. Because we insist on canonical forms, structural rules for subtyping can now be derived rather than being assumed as primitive. We illustrate the expressive power of our system with examples and validate its design by demonstrating a precise correspondence with traditional presentations of subtyping. Proof irrelevance provides a mechanism for selectively hiding the identities of terms in type theories. We show that LF refinement types can be interpreted as predicates using proof irrelevance, establishing a uniform relationship between two previously studied concepts in type theory. The interpretation and its correctness proof are surprisingly complex, lending support to the claim that refinement types are a fundamental construct rather than just a convenient surface syntax for certain uses of proof irrelevance