(DOWNLOAD) "Customary International Law As U.S. Law: A Critique of the Revisionist and Intermediate Positions and a Defense of the Modern Position." by Notre Dame Law Review * Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Customary International Law As U.S. Law: A Critique of the Revisionist and Intermediate Positions and a Defense of the Modern Position.
- Author : Notre Dame Law Review
- Release Date : January 01, 2011
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 674 KB
Description
INTRODUCTION In a recent referendum, the citizens of Oklahoma overwhelmingly approved a State constitutional amendment providing that the courts of the State "shall not consider international law or Sharia law" in rendering their decisions. (1) The amendment's exclusion of Sharia law has garnered most of the media attention, (2) but more consequential by far is the measure's directive to the State courts to disregard international law. Similar measures have been proposed in other States, some of them merely barring consideration of Sharia law or foreign law, (3) but others barring consideration of international law as well. (4) These measures are clearly unconstitutional insofar as they would prohibit the State courts from enforcing one of the two main forms of international law--treaties--as the U.S. Constitution by its terms requires State courts to give effect to the nation's treaties, "any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." (5) But the federal Constitution does not expressly address the status of the other principal form of international law--customary international law, or the unwritten law that governs the relations among states and "results from a general and consistent practice of states followed by them from a sense of legal obligation." (6) These proposed State laws thus starkly raise the question whether the States may prohibit their courts from giving effect to the United States' obligations under customary international law. (7)