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Begin New Search Publishing Institution Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto

21. Legitimacy in Global Environmental Governance

Author:
Steven Bernstein
Publication Date:
12-2005
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Journal of International Law and International Relations
Institution:
Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto
Abstract:
Writing in 1999, Daniel Bodansky predicted that the question of legitimacy would 'emerge from the shadows and become a central issue in international environmental law.' Specifically, Bodansky worried that as authority over environmental policy moved increasingly from domestic to international settings, perceptions that decision-making processes are 'insufficiently democratic' would increase. Such concerns were already simmering in other arenas of global governance. Jürgen Habermas, for example, used similar language nearly ten years earlier in anticipating a legitimacy problem in Europe, commenting that, 'the democratic processes constituted at the level of the nation-state lag hopelessly behind the economic integration taking place at a supranational level.' Both authors, in different ways, worried that the reconfiguration of political authority might not keep pace or adapt appropriately to globalizing pressures. Few topics could be more appropriate for the inaugural issue of a journal devoted to the intersection of International Relations (IR) and International Law (IL).
Political Geography:
Europe

22. The World Trade Organization in 2020

Author:
Steve Charnovitz
Publication Date:
12-2005
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Journal of International Law and International Relations
Institution:
Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto
Abstract:
The inauguration of a new international journal and the commencement of the second decade of the World Trade Organization (WTO) together provide an opportunity to reflect on the WTO's legacy and its future. Government policies are always experiments, as Jan Tumlir explained. To date, the experiment of the WTO has achieved success beyond the expectation of many observers. What lies ahead? The leading international trade law casebook admits that '[i]t is hard to tell what may happen in the future.' Still, we should try to discern the horizon as part of our efforts to improve future conditions in international economic governance.

23. Why Constitutionalism Now? Text, Context and the Historical Contingency of Ideas

Author:
Jeffrey L. Dunoff
Publication Date:
12-2005
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Journal of International Law and International Relations
Institution:
Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto
Abstract:
I am pleased to contribute to the first issue of the Journal of International Law International Relations. In this short essay, I wish to comment upon the current debate over constitutionalism at the World Trade Organization (WTO), and use this debate to reflect on the interdisciplinary nature of trade law scholarship and some of the current challenges facing international law. To do so, I will review the three leading accounts of WTO constitutionalism found in the legal literature. I will then suggest that these otherwise divergent views of constitutionalism share an impulse to channel or minimize world trade politics. Paradoxically, however, the call for constitutionalism has sparked precisely the sort of politics that it seeks to pre-empt. Hence, one part of this article will be devoted to illustrating the self-defeating nature of the turn to constitutionalism.

24. Critiquing the Critics of Economic Globalization

Author:
Michael J. Trebilcock
Publication Date:
12-2005
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Journal of International Law and International Relations
Institution:
Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto
Abstract:
Globalization is the great buzz-word of our times, although it lacks any common or agreed definition. It could mean as many different things as globalization of human rights values through United Nations Declarations and Covenants, the creation of War Crimes Tribunals, the International Criminal Court and the Land Mines Treaty, or the globalization of core labour standards through the International Labour Organization (ILO), or the globalization of environmental values through the Kyoto Protocol, but typically this is not what the so-called anti-globalists have in mind. Rather, they fundamentally object to the process of international trade and investment liberalization (economic globalization) that has occurred in the post-war years as reflected in the following summary numbers: from 1950 to 1999 the average annual growth rate of world real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was 3.8 per cent; the average annual growth rate in the trade of goods over this period was 6.2 per cent; from 1980 to 1999 the average annual growth rate in the trade of services was 7.0 per cent; from 1982 to 1999 the average annual growth rate in the stock of foreign direct investment (FDI) was 13 per cent.

25. When you Come to a Fork in the Road, Take it; Reflections on North American Integration: Regional and Multilateral

Author:
Sylvia Ostry
Publication Date:
12-2005
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Journal of International Law and International Relations
Institution:
Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto
Abstract:
The title of this article was coined by the great American philosopher Yogi Berra. There are many roads that lead to greater economic integration or ever-tighter linkages among countries. Globalization is, indeed, an ongoing process of deepening integration fed by trade, financial flows, direct investment, production networks and increasingly by the technological revolution in information and communication. So it is not necessary to choose one route in, for example, trade policy. In the Western Hemisphere bilateral, regional and multilateral policies are all being pursued. Moreover, there are many facets of integration that go beyond economic linkage but we tend to think mainly of trade and investment as primary and pay far less attention to other avenues.
Political Geography:
North America

26. Marriage and Civil Partnership for Same-Sex Couples: The International Imperative

Author:
Kenneth McK. Norrie
Publication Date:
12-2005
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Journal of International Law and International Relations
Institution:
Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto
Abstract:
Within the single month of November 2004, Saskatchewan became the latest Canadian province to accept same-sex marriage, South Africa's Supreme Court of Appeal held the limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples to be unconstitutional, the United Kingdom became the latest European country to introduce civil partnerships as an institution for same-sex couples analogous to marriage, and the government of New Zealand presented a Bill to the New Zealand Parliament to do the same thing in that country. In the 15 years since Denmark became the first country in the world to introduce such an institution most jurisdictions in Western Europe and in Canada, and a handful of states in the United States of America, have followed Denmark's innovation and some have opened up the institution of marriage itself to same-sex couples. The peculiarly North American debate whether civil partnership is a second-rate alternative to marriage as a means of achieving gay and lesbian equality has not been engaged with elsewhere in the world, and it will not be engaged with here. This article intends, rather, to explore the remarkable phenomenon that such a debate is today one of practical reality rather than hypothetical aspiration.
Political Geography:
United States, United Kingdom, Europe, Canada, South Africa, Denmark, and New Zealand

27. Canada is a Blue State: Global Jurisprudence and Domestic Consciousness in American Gay Rights Discourse

Author:
Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller
Publication Date:
12-2005
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Journal of International Law and International Relations
Institution:
Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto
Abstract:
Over the past century we have seen many changes in American culture. We have witnessed an explosion of new travel opportunities, access to information and advances in medicine. Certainly social norms have shifted. We have made progress, in the truest sense, such as recognizing the fundamental human rights of all people no matter their color or creed. And we have also made egregious regressions such as legalizing the aborting of unborn children. Even in this advanced age, we must continue to wage battles against injustices. … If we do nothing and allow the courts to re-define marriage, State and Federal governments will soon have little or no authority to ultimately restrain any imaginable form of marital contract between couples and groups of people and even animals.
Political Geography:
America

28. We are the World? What United States Courts Can and Should Learn from the Law and Politics of Other Western Nations

Author:
Evan Gerstmann
Publication Date:
12-2005
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Journal of International Law and International Relations
Institution:
Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto
Abstract:
The United States is often perceived as a nation that prefers not only to go its own way, but also to take almost a perverse pride in ignorance of foreign ways and indifference to the opinion of our international peers. Until recently, this perception has certainly extended to America's most powerful court, the Supreme Court of the United States of America. In 2003, for example, an article in The Legal Times, referred to the Court as an 'ostrich' that had only just begun to take its head out of the sand. This perception, however, is likely to change over the next several years. In a single seven-day period in 2003, the United States Supreme Court cited international sources, such as foreign laws and documents, in three high-profile cases in which it interpreted the American constitution.
Political Geography:
United States and America

29. The West Bank Barrier Debate: Concept, Construction and Consequence

Author:
Michael Bell
Publication Date:
12-2005
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Journal of International Law and International Relations
Institution:
Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto
Abstract:
Debate over the construction of the West Bank separation barrier has been ongoing and acrimonious since its inception in June 2002, when the Israeli government announced its intention to erect a fence to control strictly Palestinian entry into Israel and thereby impede terrorist activity directed against the citizens of the Jewish state. Strikes by Palestinian terrorists groups, most notably the fundamentalist Hamas and Islamic Jihad, had reached unparalleled levels against the civilian population following the commencement of the Palestinian uprising against Israel, the Al Aqsa Intifada, in the fall of 2000.
Political Geography:
Israel and Palestine

30. A Sacred Trust of Civilization

Author:
Frédéric Mégret
Publication Date:
12-2005
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Journal of International Law and International Relations
Institution:
Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto
Abstract:
In its advisory opinion on the Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the International Court of Justice (hereinafter, 'the Court' or 'the ICJ') reminds us that Palestine—'certain communities, formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire'—was once a class 'A' mandate entrusted to Great Britain by the League of Nations. The Court also reminds us that the Pact of the League once described 'the well-being and development of … peoples (under mandates) as forming “a sacred trust of civilization.”'
Political Geography:
Turkey and Palestine