Plausible Legality

Plausible Legality
Author: Rebecca Sanders
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2018-08-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0190870575

In many ways, the United States' post-9/11 engagement with legal rules is puzzling. Officials in both the Bush and Obama administrations authorized numerous contentious counterterrorism policies that sparked global outrage, yet they have repeatedly insisted that their actions were lawful and legitimate. In Plausible Legality, Rebecca Sanders examines how the US government interpreted, reinterpreted, and manipulated legal norms and what these justificatory practices imply about the capacity of law to constrain state violence. Through case studies on the use of torture, detention, targeted killing, and surveillance, Sanders provides a detailed analysis of how policymakers use law to achieve their political objectives and situates these patterns within a broader theoretical understanding of how law operates in contemporary politics. She argues that legal culture--defined as collectively shared understandings of legal legitimacy and appropriate forms of legal practice in particular contexts--plays a significant role in shaping state practice. In the global war on terror, a national security culture of legal rationalization encouraged authorities to seek legal cover-to construct the plausible legality of human rights violations-in order to ensure impunity for wrongdoing. Looking forward, law remains vulnerable to evasion and revision. As Sanders shows, despite the efforts of human rights advocates to encourage deeper compliance, the normalization of post-9/11 policy has created space for future administrations to further erode legal norms.

The United States and International Law

The United States and International Law
Author: Lucrecia GarcĂ­a Iommi
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2022-07-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0472220276

The United States spearheaded the creation of many international organizations and treaties after World War II and maintains a strong record of compliance across several issue areas, yet it also refuses to ratify major international conventions like the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Why does the U.S. often seem to support international law in one way while neglecting or even violating it in another? The United States and International Law: Paradoxes of Support across Contemporary Issues analyzes the seemingly inconsistent U.S. relationship with international law by identifying five types of state support for international law: leadership, consent, internalization, compliance, and enforcement. Each follows different logics and entails unique costs and incentives. Accordingly, the fact that a state engages in one form of support does not presuppose that it will do so across the board. This volume examines how and why the U.S. has engaged in each form of support across twelve issue areas that are central to 20th- and 21st-century U.S. foreign policy: conquest, world courts, war, nuclear proliferation, trade, human rights, war crimes, torture, targeted killing, maritime law, the environment, and cybersecurity. In addition to offering rich substantive discussions of U.S. foreign policy, their findings reveal patterns across the U.S. relationship with international law that shed light on behavior that often seems paradoxical at best, hypocritical at worst. The results help us understand why the United States engages with international law as it does, the legacies of the Trump administration, and what we should expect from the United States under the Biden administration and beyond.

The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Law

The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Law
Author: Peer Zumbansen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 1246
Release: 2021
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0197547419

A comprehensive compendium for the field of transnational law by providing a treatment and presentation in an area that has become one of the most intriguing and innovative developments in legal doctrine, scholarship, theory, as well as practice today. With a considerable contribution from and engagement with social sciences, it features numerous reflections on the relationship between transnational law and legal practice.

President's Kill List

President's Kill List
Author: Luca Trenta
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2024-05-31
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1399519522

From Fidel Castro to Qassem Soleimani, the US government has been involved in an array of assassinations and assassination attempts against foreign leaders and officials. The President's Kill List reveals how the US government has relied on a variety of methods, from the use of poison to the delivery of sniper rifles, and from employing hitmen to simply laying the groundwork for local actors to do the deed themselves. It shows not only how policymakers decided on assassination but also the level of Presidential control over these decisions. Tracing the history of the US government's approach to assassination, the book analyses the evolution of assassination policies and, for the first time, reveals how successive administrations - through private justifications and public legitimations - ensured assassination remained an available tool.

Perceptions of State

Perceptions of State
Author: Philip Moremen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2024-06-30
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1108835155

Explores when, why, and how the US and other countries comply with international law through interviews with senior US officials.

Freedom

Freedom
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 974
Release: 1911
Genre: Anarchism
ISBN:

The Force of Law

The Force of Law
Author: Frederick Schauer
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2015-02-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0674368215

Bentham's law -- The possibility and probability of noncoercive law -- In search of the puzzled man -- Do people obey the law? -- Are officials above the law? -- Coercing obedience -- Of carrots and sticks -- Coercion's arsenal -- Awash in a sea of norms -- The differentiation of law

Rome

Rome
Author: Robert Franklin Pennell
Publisher:
Total Pages: 250
Release: 1880
Genre: Rome
ISBN: