LAW3601 Public International Law and World Order
4 Advanced Liberal Arts Elective Credits
This course considers public international law as a way of framing and understanding the larger world in which we live. We will consider foreign relations and the United Nations system, the implications of global interdependence, and an increasingly robust international judicial system. Does international law actually create global order, or does it merely reflect political order that exists in other settings? When should national sovereignty yield to the wider concerns of the global community? What role do non-state actors (multinational businesses, NGOs, advocacy groups) play in the global legal regime?
These questions (and many others) have been at the center of the quest to create order in a rapidly changing world where the pace of technological innovation, entrepreneurship, and the increasingly free movement of people, capital, and ideas often far outpace the capacity of any legal regime (domestic or international) to keep up. We will study these issues and related themes throughout the semester. Special emphasis is placed on understanding international institutions, human rights (including the intersection of human rights with global business), refugee law, the regulation of warfare (including “humanitarian” intervention and responses to global terrorism), international environmental law, transnational dispute settlement, and business ethics in the global setting.
Prerequisites: Foundation Law course, (LAW1000)