Toward a Theory of Effective Supranational Adjudication

Supranational adjudication in Europe is a remarkable and surprising success. Europe\u27s two supranational courts -- the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) -- issue dozens of judgments each year with which defending national governments habitually comply in essentially the same manner as they would with domestic court rulings. These experiences stand in striking contrast to those of many international tribunals past and present. Can the European experience of supranational adjudication be transplanted beyond Europe? Professors Helfer and Slaughter argue that the effectiveness of the ECJ and the ECHR is linked to their power to hear claims brought by private parties directly against national governments or against other private parties. Such supranational jurisdiction has allowed the European courts to penetrate the surface of the state, to forge direct relationships not only with individual citizens but also with distinct government institutions such as national courts. Over time, this penetration and the deepening relationships between supranational jurists and domestic legal actors have led to the evolution of a community of law, a web of nominally apolitical relations among subnational and supranational legal actors. The simple provision of supranational jurisdiction, however, is not a guarantee of effective adjudication. Drawing on the observations of scholars, practitioners, and judges, Professors Helfer and Slaughter develop a checklist of factors that enhance the effectiveness of supranational adjudication. They distinguish among those factors that are within the control of member states; those that are within the control of the judges themselves; and those that may be beyond the control of either states or judges. Isolating the factors in this way provides both a rough metric for evaluating the effectiveness of other supranational tribunals and a potential set of prescriptions for judges on those tribunals seeking to enhance their institutions\u27 effectiveness. After developing the checklist, Professors Helfer and Slaughter use it to analyze the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC). Although the UNHRC was established expressly as a committee of experts rather than a court, analysis of its recent practice reveals that it is becoming increasingly court-like. Moreover, within the constraints imposed by severely limited resources, UNHRC members are independently following many of the checklist prescriptions for increased effectiveness. The next step is for the organization to enter into a sustained dialogue with its European counterparts, harmonizing its decisions with theirs in some areas while consciously preserving its own distinctive jurisprudence in others. Structured and regular interaction between these tribunals would add additional voices to an emerging transjudicial conversation, potentially laying the foundation for a global community of law

Why States Create International Tribunals: A Response to Professors Posner and Yoo

A recent article in the California Law Review by Professors Eric Posner and John Yoo, Judicial Independence in International Tribunals, argues that the only effective international tribunals are dependent tribunals, by which the authors mean ad hoc tribunals staffed by judges closely controlled by governments through the power of reappointment or threats of retaliation. Independent tribunals, by contrast, meaning tribunals staffed by judges appointed on similar terms as those in domestic courts, pose a danger to international cooperation. According to Posner and Yoo, independent tribunals are suspect because they are more likely to allow moral ideals, ideological imperatives or the interests of other states to influence their judgments. In this response, we identify the many shortcomings in the theory, methodology, and empirics in Judicial Independence in International Tribunals. We do so to challenge the authors\u27 core conjecture: that formally dependent international tribunals are correlated with effective judicial outcomes. We then offer our own counter-theory; a theory of constrained independence in which states establish independent international tribunals to enhance the credibility of their commitments and then use more fine grained structural, political, and discursive mechanisms to limit the potential for judicial excesses

Telegram from Joyce R. Hart and Marie Creel, Leadership with the Business & Professional Women\u27s Club of New York, to Geraldine Ferraro

Telegram of endorsement from Joyce R. Hart and Marie Creel, respective President and ERA Coordinator for the Business & Professional Women\u27s Club of New York State, to Geraldine Ferraro. Includes two data entry sheets.https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/vice_presidential_campaign_correspondence_1984_new_york/1262/thumbnail.jp

A study to determine the number and types of decisions made by one head nurse in relation to the functional areas of nursing service administration.

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit

Acoustic signatures of the seafloor: Tools for predicting grouper habitat

Groupers are important components of commercial and recreational fisheries. Current methods of diver-based grouper census surveys could potentially benefit from development of remotely sensed methods of seabed classification. The goal of the present study was to determine if areas of high grouper abundance have characteristic acoustic signatures. A commercial acoustic seabed mapping system, QTC View Series V, was used to survey an area near Carysfort Reef, Florida Keys. Acoustic data were clustered using QTC IMPACT software, resulting in three main acoustic classes covering 94% of the area surveyed. Diver-based data indicate that one of the acoustic classes corresponded to hard substrate and the other two represented sediment. A new measurement of seabed heterogeneity, designated acoustic variability, was also computed from the acoustic survey data in order to more fully characterize the acoustic response (i.e., the signature) of the seafloor. When compared with diver-based grouper census data, both acoustic classification and acoustic variability were significantly different at sites with and without groupers. Sites with groupers were characterized by hard bottom substrate and high acoustic variability. Thus, the acoustic signature of a site, as measured by acoustic classification or acoustic variability, is a potentially useful tool for stratifying diver sampling effort for grouper census

Nucleation in finite topological systems during continuous metastable quantum phase transitions

Finite topological quantum systems can undergo continuous metastable quantum phase transitions to change their topological nature. Here we show how to nucleate the transition between ring currents and dark soliton states in a toroidally trapped Bose-Einstein condensate. An adiabatic passage to wind and unwind its phase is achieved by explicit global breaking of the rotational symmetry. This could be realized with current experimental technology.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure