Sovereignty and Multilateralism

In the remainder of this essay I explore several issues raised by the linkages between sovereignty and multilateralism. In Part II, I critique McGinnis\u27 positive claims about multilateral cooperation, and his attempt to normatively distinguish international trade law from other forms of multilateralism. Part III then inquires into the nature of the democracy problem in international law. I argue that a focus on the substance of international legal agreements is not compelling. I present a basic framework for analysis of the democracy problem, and use it to suggest a better approach, which instead focuses on the structure and process of international lawmaking. Part IV then briefly considers the question of sovereignty in light of recent theorizing on the changing nature and meaning of sovereignty. Part V concludes

Constitutional Analogies in the International Legal System

This Article explores issues at the frontier of international law and constitutional law. It considers five key structural and systemic challenges that the international legal system now faces: (1) decentralization and disaggregation; (2) normative and institutional hierarchies; (3) compliance and enforcement; (4) exit and escape; and (5) democracy and legitimacy. Each of these issues raises questions of governance, institutional design, and allocation of authority paralleling the questions that domestic legal systems have answered in constitutional terms. For each of these issues, I survey the international legal landscape and consider the salience of potential analogies to domestic constitutions, drawing upon and extending the writings of international legal scholars and international relations theorists. I also offer some preliminary thoughts about why some treaties and institutions, but not others, more readily lend themselves to analysis in constitutional terms. And I distinguish those legal and political issues that may generate useful insights for scholars studying the growing intersections of international and constitutional law from other areas that may be more resistant to constitutional analogies

The L&E of Intellectual Property – Do we get maximum innovation with the current regime?

Innovation is crucial to economic growth – the essential path for lifting much of the world population out of dire poverty and for maintaining the living standard of those who already have. To stimulate innovation, the legal system has to support the means through which innovators seek to get rewarded for their efforts. Amongst these means, some, such as the first mover advantage or 'lead time,' are not directly legal; but secrets and intellectual property rights are legal institutions supported for the specific purpose of stimulating innovation. Whilst the protection of secrets has not changed very much over recent years, intellectual property (or IP) has. IP borrows some features from ordinary property rights, but is also distinct, in that, unlike physical goods, information, the object of IP, is not inherently scarce; indeed as information and communication technologies expand, the creation and distribution of information is becoming ever cheaper and in many circumstances abundant, so that selection is of the essence ('on the internet, point of view is everything'). Where rights on information extend too far, their monopolising effect may hamper innovation. The paper investigates the underlying structure of IP rights and surveys what we know empirically about the incentive effects of IP as about industries that flourish without formal IP

The Limits of International Law Symposium

Authors Jack L. Goldsmith and Eric A. Posner joined other top international law scholars in the fall of 2005 to discuss and critique The Limits of International Law, recently published by Oxford University Press