The object of this paper is to describe the negotiating process during the United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court. It is told from the perspective of those that were ex officio at the center of negotiations, as members of the Bureau of the Committee of the Whole (CW).1 It describes the main issues under consideration at the conference and the evolution of the negotiations, including an inside view of the development of the final package containing the principal elements of the statute of the court.

In this essay I suggest a correlation between the integration level of an international institution and the public discourse about the lack of democracy and legitimacy in the institution’s structure and functioning. This discourse includes ideas for remedial action at both the national and international levels; it also becomes inevitably intertwined with other reform proposals that may call for an incremental or—particularly in the case of a more integrated organization—a radical restructuring. Having originated in the highly integrated European Community, the debate on the “democracy-legitimacy deficit” has reached other institutions, particularly the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the international financial bodies, and has become one component of the backlash rhetoric against “globalization.”

What duties, if any, does international human rights law establish for individuals, corporations, and other private actors? For many years, the conventional answer has been that it places duties on states to respect the rights of individuals and creates few or no private duties. In other words, human rights law is aligned vertically, not horizontally. But that view has regularly been challenged. Most recently, in 2003, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (Commission), historically the most important incubator of human rights agreements, received two proposed instruments that might appear to realign human rights law horizontally: private actors would have duties as well as rights, and they would owe those duties to society as a whole or to individuals within it. The draft Declaration on Human Social Responsibilities (Declaration) would identify duties that all individuals owe to their societies; and the Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights (draft Norms) would set out duties of businesses under human rights law. The Human Rights Commission did not embrace the proposals before its replacement by the Human Rights Council in 2006, and the Council has not considered them. Both received some support, however, and it seems likely that their proponents will continue to pursue adoption of their principles in one form or another. This article argues that if adopted, those principles would cause serious damage to human rights law.

There is probably no branch of international law which is so calculated to encourage the skeptic as that mass of contradictory precedents, dogmatic assertions, and vague principles which are collected under the common head of "intervention," and perhaps there is no more potentially dangerous ground of intervention than that which is variously described as "self-preservation" and "self-defence." It was in the Caroline case that self-defence was changed from a political excuse to a legal doctrine. At a time when the law has become once more fluid and is undergoing rapid change, a reconsideration of the Caroline controversy, and of McLeod's case to which it is so closely allied, may serve a useful end.

Should all internationally recognized human rights—economic, social, and cultural rights, as well as civil and political rights—be subject to the same individual-complaints procedures? This issue is now before a newly convened working group of the UN Commission on Human Rights. At its first meeting, from February 23 to March 5,2004, the Working Group debated the feasibility of elaborating an optional protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) that would provide for the adjudication of individual and group complaints against states under that Covenant. Participating states were in sharp disagreement over the viability of the proposal, however, and the session ended in disarray. Since the Commission has recommended renewal of the Working Group’s mandate for two years, the issue remains open.

A myriad of specialized and fragmented global regulatory bodies wield ever-increasing power and influence. In making decisions, these mission-oriented authorities tend systematically, due to deep-seated structural factors, to give greater regard to the interests and concerns of some actors, especially powerful states and well-organized economic actors, and lesser regard to the often peripheral interests and concerns of more weakly organized and less powerful groups and of vulnerable individuals. The overall pattern of global regulation reflects a similar bias. The most powerful global regulatory regimes promote the objectives of dominant states and economic actors, whereas regimes to protect weaker groups and individuals are often less effective or virtually nonexistent and are thus unable to protect their interests and concerns. As a result of these two types of disregard, the dominant actors in global regulatory governance enjoy disproportionate benefits from international cooperation, while weaker groups and individuals suffer deprivation and often serious harm.

The extent to which foreign sovereigns are entitled to immunity in municipal courts has attracted a vast literature, in recent years especially. The majority view now seems to be that immunity need not extend to commercial transactions entered into by the state, although the precise scope of this “exception” remains unsettled, and the role of international law in “extending” or “withholding” immunity has not yet, perhaps, been clearly analyzed. Indeed, it has been denied that there is any international law rule at all on the subject, a view that would presumably leave each state free to formulate, or negotiate, its own rule.

Since the close of the Cold War, the international community has created a variety of legal institutions designed to step in when state justice systems fail to prosecute genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. The ad hoc criminal tribunals, the hybrid tribunals (such as the Special Court for Sierra Leone), the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the use of universal jurisdiction by national courts are among a new generation of courtly mechanisms designed to hold wrongdoers criminally accountable, state justice systems notwithstanding. These mechanisms represent an era of international judicial involvement in what used to be a more exclusively sovereign matter—the response to mass crimes against civilian populations. Accordingly, they have engendered a slew of scholarship devoted to analyzing their strengths and weaknesses, individually and as a group.

The Working Group on Indigenous Populations, an organ of the United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, ended its fourth annual session last August by distributing seven “draft principles” to governments and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) for comment as the first step in preparing “a draft declaration on indigenous rights, which may be proclaimed by the General Assembly.” For the first time since indigenous organizations took their concerns to the international level in 1977, a formal commitment has been made to the development of new law, probably in time for the “cinquecentennial” in 1992 of the “discovery” of the Americas and a proposed international indigenous year.

Nongovernmental organizations are playing an increasingly important role in international litigation. This study will analyze the participation of nongovernmental organizations, primarily as amici curiae, in the proceedings of four permanent international courts: the International Court of Justice, the European Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. After discussing the impact of amici in national and regional courts, it recommends that the International Court of Justice expand its acceptance of submissions from nongovernmental organizations in appropriate cases. The Court has a jurisdictional basis to do so and amici have usefully contributed to cases before other courts.

Why do international institutions behave as they do? International organizations (IOs) have emerged as significant actors in global governance, whether they are overseeing monetary policy, setting trade or labor standards, or resolving a humanitarian crisis. They often execute international agreements between states and markedly influence domestic law, which makes it important to analyze how international institutions behave and make policy. Conducting an ethnographic analysis of the internal dynamics of IOs, including their formal and informal norms, incentive systems, and decision-making processes, can usefully aid in understanding institutional behavior and change. This article analyzes the organizational culture of one particularly powerful international institution—the World Bank (the Bank)—and explores why the Bank has not adopted a human rights policy or agenda.

There is enough freshwater in the world to meet the existing and future needs of the world’s population. Water, however, is poorly distributed: there are regions that suffer severe drought, while others are heavily flooded; regions that have ample water in winter, but not enough in summer; and regions that abound in water during certain years, but are threatened by droughts in others. Thus, the management of freshwater is largely a question of redistribution of a natural resource, given certain physical, economic, environmental and social constraints. Such management inevitably brings into play the competing priorities of different uses and users; and, since most water resources traverse political boundaries, these competing priorities often become regional conflicts between riparian states.

The United Nations Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court (ICC) took place in Rome at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization from June 15 to July 17, 1998. The participants numbered 160 states, thirty-three intergovernmental organizations and a coalition of 236 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The conference concluded by adopting the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court by a nonrecorded vote of 120 in favor, 7 against and 21 abstentions. The United States elected to indicate publicly that it had voted against the statute. France, the United Kingdom and the Russian Federation supported the statute.

The Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III) is important not only because of the scope and substance of the issues with which it is concerned, but also because it represents a major international experiment in decision making by consensus. Most of the attention it has attracted so far has been focused on the problems, progress, and prospects of the conference as a unique event. Given the magnitude of the matters at stake, not to mention the drama of the proceedings, this is natural enough. In addition, there is the risk of a severe blow to the process of international negotiation in general, and to the United Nations system in particular, should UNCLOS III fail. Only a few writers have so far begun systematically to discuss procedural developments at UNCLOS in terms other than those relating to the success or failure of the conference itself. Jonathan Charney and Bernard Oxman have pointed out the significance of procedural developments and precedents, Robert Eustis has begun the exploration of UNCLOS as a model of multinational negotiation, and Edward Miles has argued that nothing similar to UNCLOS should be tried again. United Nations concern about problems in the process of international negotiation in general is demonstrated by General Assembly Resolution 32/48 (December 8,1977), requesting a report on the techniques and procedures used in the elaboration of multilateral conventions.

Although much criticized, the concept of “sovereignty” is still central to most thinking about international relations and particularly international law. The old “Westphalian” concept in the context of a nation-state’s “right” to monopolize certain exercises of power with respect to its territory and citizens has been discredited in many ways (as discussed below), but it is still prized and harbored by those who maintain certain “realist” views or who otherwise wish to prevent (sometimes withjustification) foreign or international powers and authorities from interfering in a national government’s decisions and activities. Furthermore, when one begins to analyze and disaggregate the concept of sovereignty, it quickly becomes apparent that it has many dimensions. Often, however, the term “sovereignty” is invoked in a context or manner designed to avoid and prevent analysis, sometimes with an advocate’s intent to fend off criticism orjustifications for international “infringements” on the activities of a nation-state or its internal stakeholders and power operators.

“Hyperownership” describes in a word the present international legal landscape with respect to genetic material. At issue is who should own or control access to the subcellular genetic sequences that direct the structure and characteristics of all living things, or, in popular usage, nature’s or God’s blueprints for life. Traditionally, genetic material belonged to a global commons or open system. No one exclusively owned this material and countries freely shared it. In sharp contrast, today exclusive ownership and restrictions on the sharing of genetic material are the international norm.

The most salient feature of dispute settlement in the World Trade Organization (WTO) is the possibility of authorizing a trade sanction against a scofflaw member government. This feature, however, is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it fortifies WTO rules and promotes respect for them. On the other hand, it drains away the benefits of free trade and provokes “sanction envy.” Undoubtedly, putting teeth in the WTO was one of the key achievements of the Uruguay Round ending in 1994, and a very significant step in the evolution of international economic law.1 Yet after six years of experience, WTO observers are questioning whether the availability of trade enforcement is sensible.2 This article undertakes an appraisal of trade sanctions as a WTO instrument, and concludes that this practice undermines the trading system. In view of this dysfunction, the article explores alternatives to trade enforcement and points to some softer measures that might have promise.