Search

Begin New Search Political Geography New York Publication Year within 25 Years

51. The End of Geography: The Changing Nature of the International System and the Challenge to International Law

Author:
Daniel Bethlehem
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
This lecture, inaugurating a lecture series in honour of Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, looks at the changing place of geography in the international system and the challenges that this poses to international law, from the central place of geography in the Westphalian legal order to its less certain place in the rapidly globalizing and diffuse international society of the present day. Examining these issues through the contrasting prisms of the principal political organs of the United Nations in New York, on the one hand, and the UN Specialized Agencies centred in Geneva, on the other, the lecture also explores these issues by reference to Thomas Friedman's thesis that The World Is Flat. The lecture concludes by identifying a number of areas of international law, and the international legal system, that will require creative thinking in the period to come to reflect the diminishing importance of geography.
Topic:
International Law
Political Geography:
New York

52. The End of Geography: The Changing Nature of the International System and the Challenge to International Law: A Reply to Daniel Bethlehem

Author:
David S. Koller
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
This article responds to Daniel Bethlehem's assertions that globalization is diminishing the importance of geography, and thereby challenging the Westphalian order on which international law is constructed. It contends that international law does not take geography as it is but actively creates and sustains a state-based geography. It argues that the challenges Bethlehem identifies are not new but are inherent in international law's efforts to impose a state-based order on a global world. The question is not whether international lawyers will respond to these challenges, but how they will respond. Will they follow Bethlehem in reinforcing a statist order, or will they place sovereignty of states in the service of the global human community?
Topic:
Globalization and International Law
Political Geography:
New York and Europe

53. The Ever-Ending Geography of International Law: The Changing Nature of the International System and the Challenge to International Law: A Reply to Daniel Bethlehem

Author:
Carl Landauer
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Daniel Bethlehem makes a convincing case in 'The End of Geography' that the growing challenges of our contemporary world require a move from our state-centred international legal system. This reply places Bethlehem's voice among a growing list of those who either describe or prescribe a move from the traditional Westphalian state system. It argues, however, that the challenges have always been transboundary and that the Westphalian state system has never been as strong or as long-lived as envisaged by its critics.
Topic:
International Law
Political Geography:
New York and Europe

54. A Constant Craving for Fresh Brains and a Taste for Decaffeinated Neighbours

Author:
Maria Artistodemou
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
This article is a radical rethinking of public international law through the use of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Its central thesis is that while contemporary scholarship addresses what Lacan calls the symbolic and imaginary registers including law, politics, and ideology, it continues to ignore and repress the dimension of the real. The article illustrates this with a clinical example examined by Kris and discussed by Lacan. Imagining public international law as an indefatigable neurotic in search of 'fresh brains', the article shows why meeting her in the domains of law and politics is not enough to satiate her appetite. What continues to resist is the 'extimate', the inhuman element within the human that the subject hides so well from herself that it is excluded in the interior. A major instance of the extimate is the 'caffeinated neighbour', that is, the neighbour who is not in our image because her disturbing core has not been subtracted. The article argues that unless international law comes to terms with this inevitably ugly and obscene core, in oneself as well as in the neighbour, it cannot hope to achieve any meaningful changes. That the need to recognize the extimate is the ethical demand facing international law now; unless we address it, our symptoms will continue to grow and we will continue to crave fresh brains.
Topic:
International Law
Political Geography:
New York

55. UN Immunity or Impunity? A Human Rights Based Challenge

Author:
Rosa Freedman
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
National courts have long understood the UN to have absolute immunity from their jurisdiction, based upon provisions in the UN Charter and the Convention on Privileges and Immunities of the UN. While state immunity has evolved over recent decades, allowing restrictive immunity that distinguishes between acts jure imperii and those jure gestionis, questions have arisen as to whether that doctrine applies to international organizations and, specifically, the UN. The counterbalance to the UN's absolute immunity is the requirement that it provide alternative mechanisms for resolving disputes. This raises concerns about accountability and internal review. Case law from various courts demonstrates an increasing willingness to attempt to challenge absolute immunity on the basis that the bar to jurisdiction violates claimants' rights to access a court and to a remedy. In all of those cases, individuals' ability to access alternative mechanisms for dispute resolution has been used to show that their rights have been realized. Recent events concerning the 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti may lead to a challenge to the UN's absolute immunity. The UN has deemed those claims to be 'not receivable', which denies the claimants their rights to access a court and to a remedy. In October 2013, lawyers for the Haiti cholera victims filed a class action in the Southern District of New York, seeking to challenge the UN's immunity by bringing the Organization before a national court. This article explores whether the events in Haiti may provide the first successful, human rights-based challenge to the UN's absolute immunity.
Topic:
Human Rights
Political Geography:
New York

56. An International Lawyer in Democracy and Dictatorship – Re-Introducing Herbert Kraus

Author:
Heiko Meiertöns
Publication Date:
02-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Herbert Kraus (1884–1965) is among the forgotten international lawyers of the 20th century. Kraus took part in a number of developments of great importance for the shaping of modern international law: he participated in the drafting process of the Versailles Peace Treaty and the Treaty on the European Coal and Steel Community and acted as defence counsel at Nuremberg. The founding director of the Institute for International Law at the University of Göttingen was forced to retire between 1937 and 1945 due to his criticism of National Socialism. The post-war perception of his work was coined by his forced retirement. However, his work between 1933 and 1937 sheds light on the dilemma of choosing between opposition and adjustment that Kraus was faced with during that period. This article re-introduces Kraus – a complex German character of international law – and the main features of his work.
Topic:
International Law
Political Geography:
New York

57. Timeline: Politicization of Sexuality

Author:
Meehyun Nam- Thompson
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
While international organizations and governments move to expand equality for all—regardless of sexual orientation—recent global developments threaten this progress. The timeline begins at a pivotal moment, the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York, widely regarded as a catalyst for the modern LGBT movement. Stonewall is considered the first instance of community solidarity against systematic, state-sponsored persecution of sexual minorities. While the struggle has been ongoing, the most significant developments have occurred in the last 25 years, including expansion of voting rights, social welfare benefits, and political power. We end our timeline, however, with a disturbing new trend—the passage of homophobic legislation in Africa, South Asia, and Russia.
Political Geography:
Africa, Russia, New York, South Asia, and Asia

58. Currency Wars

Author:
David A. Andelman
Publication Date:
03-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
At noon on August 10, 1978, I arrived at the frontier between Austria and Czechoslovakia in my rickety old Opel sedan that was The New York Times bureau car. I'd driven up from Belgrade, where I was then based, covering an Eastern Europe thoroughly in the grip of communism. Now, when I arrived at the frontier, I steeled myself. I was about to pass through what Winston Churchill had 32 years earlier dubbed the Iron Curtain, separating East from West. These were difficult times. Communism and capitalism were very much at each others' throats, and there was no more extreme a contrast than in some of these heavily-fortified border points where the favored few could cross in both directions, provided they had all the right papers. Indeed, I had my American passport, my Czechoslovak visa, a fistful of dollars, my notebooks, and some background material, from which I had carefully expunged any Czech contacts and sliced off the letterhead of Radio Free Europe Research, the virulently anti-communist, American-backed propaganda source, that would likely have landed me in hot water with the ever-vigilant border police.
Political Geography:
New York and Europe

59. Just Communicating

Author:
David A. Andelman
Publication Date:
06-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
PARIS—In March 1975, in what would turn out to be the final month of the war in Cambodia, I thought it might be a nice touch to place a call to my bride of six months and wish her a happy birthday. My interpreter/fixer/photographer, Dith Pranh, advised me to book the call a week or so in advance, which I did at the PTT (Post Telegraph)—the only locale where an international call had even a prayer of going through. At the appointed time, I appeared there and, after a wait of only several hours, the operator announced that my party was on the line in New York, and I could pick up "the apparatus" in Cabin #1. I lifted the phone and there, 7,000 miles away, was a very faint voice of Susan making its way through a cloud of electronic noise, crackles, and pops. We shouted at each other for a minute or so, before we finally gave up on any meaningful communication.
Political Geography:
New York, Paris, and Cambodia

60. Europe's Existential Threats

Author:
David A. Andelman
Publication Date:
09-2014
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
On Saturday, October 1, 1977, I arrived in Belgrade to take up my post as East European bureau chief of The New York Times. I'd timed my arrival to coincide with the opening of the conference of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), one of many efforts during the depths of the Cold War to facilitate dialogue between East and West—the two halves of a very much divided, and at times hostile, Europe.
Political Geography:
New York and Europe