Print Archive
This Comment argues that courts should adopt a rebuttable presumption against Hague Convention Article 13(b) defenses to international child abduction that are predicated on the risks of an infectious disease, or “zone of disease” defenses. Taking parents facing Hague Convention litigation have invoked Article 13(b), which provides a defense against a child’s return if there is “a grave risk that his or her return would expose the child to physical or psychological harm or otherwise place the child in an intolerable situation," based on the risks associated with international travel during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This short Essay is a comment on the Lead Essay of the Symposium. It argues that approaches to international law depend on the lawyer's purpose, and that the social science approach overlaps with other methodologies.
The Limits of International Law received a great deal of criticism when it was published in 2005, but it has aged well. This Essay reflects on the book’s reception and corrects common misperceptions of its arguments.
This Essay takes up Abebe, Chilton, and Ginsburg’s invitation to use a social science approach to establish or ascertain some facts about international law scholarship in the United States. The specific research question that this Essay seeks to answer is to what extent scholarship has addressed international law’s historical and continuing complicity in producing racial inequality and hierarchy, including slavery, as well as the subjugation and domination of the peoples of the First Nations.
This Comment argues that legal sex work, when regulated adequately, comports with international law and promotes the human rights of sex workers that are curbed when the practice is outlawed.
This Essay brings Abebe, Chilton, and Ginsburg’s Lead Essay into conversation with the literature on comparative international law to ask whether the social scientific approach to international law is “international.” In particular, this Essay takes the case of scholarship on international law in China to examine why or why not particular methodological and theoretical perspectives on international law may gain traction in certain jurisdictions’ legal academies.
This Essay argues that an uncritical embrace of social science methods risks losing much of what draws people to international law and what has, over the centuries, given it value. As a work in progress in which academics have a special role to play, a commitment merely to take international law “as it is” is not neutral; it is a value statement in itself.
This Essay offers a critical yet constructive reading of the social science approach to international law.
This Essay critically assesses how and why one might use socio-legally inspired methods (analytical, empirical, and normative) for the study of international economic law (IEL) in Africa.
This Essay describes the rise of the social science approach in international law scholarship and advocates for its continued adoption.