World Literatures in Temporal Perspective

In his article World Literatures in Temporal Perspective David Damrosch discusses the vexed problem of how to shape a literary history into definable and meaningful periods without simply projecting old Western patterns onto new ages and distant areas of the world. This problem becomes acute when one seeks to create a genuinely global literary history. Damrosch surveys some early periodizations according to patterns of infancy, growth, maturity, and decline, and discusses the often unrealized persistence of biblical and classical models in modern accounts of the literary histories of Egypt, Mesoamerica, and India

Medellin v. Dretke: Federalism and International Law

This is an edited version of a debate held at Columbia Law School on February 21, 2005

Politics Across Borders: Nonintervention and Nonforcible Influence over Domestic Affairs

It is time for a fresh look at the norm of nonintervention in domestic affairs, as applied to nonforcible efforts to influence another state\u27s internal politics. The existence of such a norm is widely proclaimed, and it is commonly assumed to be a legal obligation rather than a mere practice of comity or aspirational objective. For governments, scholars and international organs alike, the rule against interference in internal politics seems to be an article of faith; but despite the frequency of its incantation in international discourse, how the norm applies to nonforcible conduct is inadequately understood. This article considers the norm of nonintervention in relation to nonforcible support for political movements, political parties or political candidates in other states, focusing on two concrete problems of current concern. The first is transnational campaign funding: does a state violate international law when it sends money to influence a political contest in another state? The second is economic leverage applied for political purposes: does international law prohibit states from implementing policies affecting trade, aid or other economic relations, where their objective is to affect the outcome of another state\u27s internal political process

Richard N. Gardner (1927–2019)

Richard Gardner occupies a unique place in the history of United States diplomacy, in the teaching and practice of international law, in scholarship across a wide range of fields of interest to our discipline, and in the life of this Society. He was my valued colleague and mentor at Columbia University for many years, not just at the Law School, but also at the School of International and Public Affairs, where he nurtured and inspired generations of diplomats and policy experts to follow the call of public service. Having ascended the academic ladder to ever more dazzling heights — from Harvard (B.A.), to Yale (J.D. 1951), to Oxford (Rhodes Scholar and D. Phil. 1954) — he began teaching international law at Columbia in 1955, where he remained for six decades, through and beyond his retirement from teaching in 2012. He was the Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organization at Columbia, teaching international law and a legendary seminar, “Legal Aspects of U.S. Foreign Economic Policy.

The Role of the United States Senate Concerning Self-Executing and Non-Self-Executing Treaties

This essay concerns a pattern in treaty actions of the U.S. Senate which tends to weaken the domestic legal effect of treaties. Under this pattern, the Senate qualifies its consent to U.S. ratification of the treaty with a declaration or other condition to the effect that the treaty shall be non-self-executing, or otherwise expresses its intention that the treaty shall not be used as a direct source of law in U.S. courts. Such qualifications, referred to hereinafter as non-self-executing declarations, give rise to important questions about the place of the affected treaties within the fabric of U.S. law, especially in light of Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, which provides that treaties of the United States shall be the supreme Law of the Land

Congress and the Executive: Who Calls the Shots for National Security? – Remarks by Lori Fisler Damrosch

Professor Firmage\u27s reaffirmation of the Framers\u27 conception of a President who would wait for congressional instructions appeals to traditional values of democratic control and congressional primacy that have deep roots in our national consciousness. But this model of presidential passivity has some of the same strengths and weaknesses as the advocacy of chastity to solve today\u27s problems of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease. The basic values may be sound, but when one moves from the assertion of those values to the identification of policy prescriptions, then it becomes clear that contemporary problems are too complex to be solved by simply returning to traditional values. Even though Professor Firmage made a strong case for reassertion of congressional prerogatives, the difficult questions facing the political system today need to be examined in their real-life complexities

Nationalism and Internationalism: The Wilsonian Legacy

No twentieth-century leader has had greater influence on the parallel development of both nationalism and internationalism than Woodrow Wilson. Wilson gave expression to the nationalist aspirations of peoples around the world, through is endorsement of the principle of self-determination. He also initiated the first institution that had as its objective the organization of the international community to apply concerted power in support of universal values. My task is to examine one contemporary problem – intervention – in the light of some of the themes implicit in the Wilsonian legacy. Among these themes will be the establishment (and now the invigoration) of collective organs for the achievement of community objectives; the engagement of the United States in those collective activities; the advancement of democracy through U.S. initiatives, whether alone or in combination with like-minded states; and the articulation of normative principles against which all the above activities could be measured

GATT Membership in a Changing World Order: Taiwan, China, and the Former Soviet Republics

My introduction to questions of GATT membership came in 1979 when, as an attorney in the U.S. Department of State, I was immersed in a series of issues concerning trade relations with the People\u27s Republic of China ( China or PRC ) and Taiwan ( Republic of China or ROC ). I kept hearing about the Chinese seat in the GATT as if it were some piece of furniture waiting to be taken out of storage and put back in the dining room. The image of a chair is hardly an apt way of visualizing the extraordinarily complex network of legal relationships that exists within the GATT, but the unfortunate metaphor persists. The People\u27s Republic of China has applied to the GATT to resume the seat that no one has sat in for more than forty years, and a separate application from Taiwan leads some to wonder whether there can be two Chinese chairs in what seems to be a rather crowded banquet hall. With the same imagery, questions are also being asked about the Soviet seat on the U.N. Security Council and in other international bodies. Let\u27s have an antique dealer cart off all the chairs so that we can think sensibly and imaginatively about complex structures of legal relationships – within the GATT, with GATT Contracting Parties in their evolving trade relations with China and Taiwan, between China and Taiwan, within the disintegrating Soviet empire, and between the emergent ex-Soviet entities and the rest of the world. I would like to focus on a set of problems suggested by the China-Taiwan-GATT problem, but which also cut across a number of other relationships. These are the problems of inclusion in the multilateral trading structure (GATT-based) of entities (not just states, but a broader set of political units) that are basically market-oriented or striving to be market-oriented, but which stand in an unresolved political relationship with a giant non-market economy ( NME ). Taiwan is of course the principal example for purposes of today\u27s conference, but we could also include Hong Kong and Macao in the shadow of China, and any number of entities in the shadow of the Soviet Union – the three Baltic republics, other former Soviet republics struggling to sort out their political and economic future, and the East European states which were formerly integrated into the COMECON trading bloc and which are now trying to figure out how to privatize their economies without suffering a complete rupture of longstanding relationships within the former bloc. This set of problems can illuminate a more basic issue that the world community will have to face increasingly in the next few years – the question of reconceptualizing participation in international organizations in a changing world. International organizations were created by states to serve the needs of states, but pressures are mounting on the state system as we have known it, and new solutions to novel questions will have to be found. In the first two parts of this paper I isolate the questions of Taiwan and the GATT and non-market economies and the GATT. Then in the third part I take up the complications that arise when the place in the GATT system of a market-oriented entity, such as Taiwan, cannot be isolated from that entity\u27s political relationship with a major non-market economy

Sanctions Against Perpetrators of Terrorism

Since the title for this panel is Presidential Uses of Force and Other Sanction Strategies, I will begin with other sanction strategies – that is, other than use of force. I would rather not be cast in the role of the dove on the panel to comment on illegitimacy of uses of force (presidential or otherwise), because I do not want to rule out or necessarily oppose presidential uses of force for counter-terrorism purposes in all circumstances. Indeed, I find myself in considerable agreement with Professor Reisman\u27s lecture. Although I have disagreed with some of his writings and positions on uses of force in other contexts, I share a large measure of support for the positions he has articulated today. Thus, I will focus on other nonforcible legal strategies