Suchergebnisse

Devika Hovell raises deeply significant questions about the role of due process in the legitimacy of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).[1] Hovell gives us a fine-grained analysis of what exactly makes due process so compelling; in her approach, the reasons why it is compelling will vary in different contexts, depending upon the particular value and function it serves. In particular, she discusses three ways of articulating the values underlying due process, and the models of due process that would follow from each. She then discusses how her analysis would play out in two situations: The Council's use of asset freezes, and the role of the UN in the cholera epidemic in Haiti. In her case studies, she looks at situations where due process has been insufficient, and discusses some of the UN's attempts to remedy this, and the organizational difficulties in doing so.

"For hard it is for high and stately buildings long to stand except they be upholden and staid by most strong shores, and rest upon most sure foundations"—Jean Bodin, The Six Books of a Commonweale (1576)It has been said of the redemptive quality of procedural reform that it is "about nine parts myth and one part coconut oil." Yet, as the recent history of the United Nations shows, failure to enact adequate procedural reform can have damaging consequences for an organization and its activities. In the targeted-sanctions context, litigation in over thirty national and regional courts over due process deficiencies has had a "significant impact on the regime," placing it "at a legal crossroads." In the peacekeeping context, the United Nations' position that claims in the ongoing Haiti cholera controversy are "not receivable" has been described in extensive and uniformly critical press coverage as the United Nations' "Watergate, except with far fewer consequences for the people responsible." Complacency in the face of allegations of sexual abuse by UN blue helmets led to the unprecedented ousting of a special representative to the secretary-general in the Central African Republic. Economizing on due process standards is proving to be a false economy.

Abstract
For better or for worse, the 'English school' or 'British tradition' of international law has eluded systematization or definition. This article examines the responses of a UK legal adviser, a British judge on the International Court of Justice and influential scholars to a particular case, the Corfu Channel case. In doing so, it is possible to identify clear synergies in the mainstream legal method of British international lawyers. It should not be surprising that this method follows in the common law tradition, displaying its three key hallmarks of connection to social practice, focus on courts and an anti-theoretical tendency. Identity and analysis of these characteristics helps us to understand the distinctive contribution of British approaches to international law and the work this 'common law method' has done in strengthening and shaping international law. Identifying these characteristics is also important in order to understand the more problematic implications of their application in the international legal context. The common law method has consequences for the structure and direction of the international legal system, including the parameters of its community, the site of its authority and the role of theory in its development. Reflection on these strengths and weaknesses helps us better understand British contributions to international law. Paradoxically, the route to a more universal international law requires us first to understand the ways in which it is plural.