Is EU Policy Eroding the Sovereignty of Non-Member States?

In the long run, the most important tensions between Europe and the United States may not derive from differing policies toward Russia, or China, or the Middle East. The most important issues may arise over something that is fundamental to the European Union\u27s own structure and legitimacy-namely, its systematic program of eroding or reconfiguring national sovereignty. This EU posture has many practical ramifications for US policy. But it also presents a clear ideological alternative. A world more in accord with EU designs will be a world in which national sovereignty has less and less meaning. Is that the kind of world Americans want to inhabit? Some hints of what that world might look like are already apparent in EU-sponsored proposals regarding international criminal justice, international environmental regulation, and international trade regulation. After a brief look at the distinctive features of EU politics, we look at the way developments in each of these fields have come to reflect the peculiar policy penchants of EU-style governance

Book Review: in Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU. by Samuel Walker.

Book review: In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU. By Samuel Walker. Oxford University Press. 1990. Pp. xiii, 479. Reviewed by: Jeremy Rabkin

Anglo-American Dissent From the European Law of War: A History with Contemporary Echoes

These episodes in the history of international humanitarian law deserve to be recalled. They may challenge contemporary dogmas. They remind us that, just below the surface, claims for “humanitarian” principle remain disputable and uncertain, even in today’s world. What “everyone agrees” may not be right. It may not even be what everyone—even everyone of relevant experience and moral seriousness—actually agrees upon. The exposition here proceeds in six parts. Part II describes the contemporary setting of the legal issue, in the “Basic Rule” of Additional Protocol I, highlighting that this rule has no counterpart in earlier conventions on the law of war. Part III describes the historic roots of this doctrine, in theories originally advanced in Napoleonic France, claiming the authority of Rousseau, then developed and “codified” by German commentators in the mid-Nineteenth Century. Part IV describes the arguments advanced in opposition to this doctrine in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries by legal commentators in Britain. Part V describes the evolution of American views in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century, starting from a position not all that far from the British view, in principle, then driven to embrace very far-reaching applications of the British view in the stress of all-out war. Part VI describes the evolution of German views, showing connections between the seemingly idealistic formulas of German legal commentators in the Nineteenth Century and the brutalities of German war tactics in subsequent practice. Part VII shows that the historic Anglo-American view was invoked to defend British and American tactics in the world wars and argues that this traditional view remains quite relevant to contemporary debates over humanitarian limits on military action

Global Criminal Justice: An Idea Whose Time Has Passed

In this article in the Symposium on Milosevic & Hussein on Trial, the author argues that not only is global justice brain dead as a possible reality, but the concept was always an unreachable dream in a world with no global authority to be held accountable for the world\u27s misery. Explanation of the author\u27s assertions locates the source of the dream in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), since it was the only truly international tribunal in history. The advantage of local or national justice over issues of moral hazard, challenges to justice, the political responsibility of new governments, & the glacial pace of tribunals are contextualized in the international environment that offers no incentives for international community such as the cases of Chile, South Africa, the ICTY, & Nazi war criminals. The author concludes that justice for humanity is not justice, & is a responsibility far too serious to be left to an entity as distracted, divided, & diffuse as the international community. J. Harwel