Delegation to ICs has increased rapidly since 1990, leading to a proliferation of international courts with a fundamentally different design. There are now 20 active ICs, plus eight more ICs that exist mostly on paper. "New style" international courts have compulsory jurisdiction, and often they have access for non-state actors...
This essay explores Nigerian women's negotiation of public and private spheres through the meanings of hibjab (Islamic head covering for women) has taken in different contexts, both liberating and limiting women. In the 1970s with the new oil economy, increasing migration to cities and the expansion of education for women,...
This essay analyzes the historical struggle of the Muslim community to have a voice in Kenyan politics and the Islamic topics that have surfaced during electoral periods. A minority group in Kenya, Muslims have faced political marginalization more on the basis of race and ethnicity than religion. The pre-independence period...
This essay discusses the role of the ulama (Islamic scholars) in the 2007 Nigerian elections. Based on interviews and the political activities and statements of the twelve members of the ulama, most of whom are from Kano, the author observes four areas of consensus among these scholars: 1) The compatiblity...
Among the linkages identified between human rights law and environmental protection, the problem of anthropogenic climate change has emerged as a central concern. Some of the early focus on climate change as itself a human rights violation has given way to a more complete and forward-looking approach that considers how...
This essay asks whether the existence of a viable public sphere hinges upon the banishment of religion to the private realm. While some scholars have suggested that the encounter between "public" Islam and the democratization inevitably produces political collapse (as in the case of Algeria), the author contends that the...
This paper discusses the recent (2007) declaration of the Caucasus Emirate by Islamist guerilla fighters waging jihad against Russia in several republics of the Northern Caucasus (Russian Federation). It analyzes the practical reasons and ideological agendas behind the creation of this new polity that remains largely virtual with the website...
This paper examines secularism in Senegal from a legal viewpoint and traces the history of the deliberate manner in which the Senegalese constitution was constructed to ensure the secular orientation of the state. The author emphasizes that Senegalese secularism is not anti-religious, but rather emphasizes mutual tolerance among diverse religious...
President Barack Obama is escalating an ambitious, U.S.-directed covert war, relying on Special Forces and high-tech strikes in Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other countries to track down and eliminate Al Qaeda leaders and militants around the world. Meanwhile, administration officials in Washington are attempting to create a legal framework for...
The proponants of international courts (ICs) expect that creating formal legal institutions will help to increase respect for international law. International relations scholars question such claims, since ICs have no tools to compel state compliance. Such views are premised on the notion that states have unique preferences that ICs must...
Traditional accounts in both the international law and international relations literature largely assume that great powers like the United States enter into international legal communities in order to resolve global cooperative programs or to advance objective state interests. Contrary to these accounts, this article suggests that an incumbent regime (or...
Canada's aboriginal peoples are one of the constituencies most affected by the oil sands boom that has swept across northeastern Alberta in western Canada since the mid-1990s. This paper considers the reaction of these First Nations to exploiting the oil sands. It argues that the conventional view of the First...
The International Criminal Court is considemring adding "aggression" to the crimes for which individuals can be prosecuted by the Court. Michael Glennon's recent article on the subject criticizes this effort from many angles, but a close consideration of his objections shows that each of them misses its target. I use...
This article challenges the role that successive generations of EU scholars have granted to the transnational networks of European federalists in the process of European integration. Whereas a first wave of scholarship has claimed that they played a huge role in the process (1) by convincing states to change their...
This paper opens the analysis of treaties in the security field to sociological and hermeneutic analyses of international lawmaking practices. In a legal world where tensions exist between legal regimes, it claims that the interpretive quality of past treaties determines which legal rules survive and which ones disappear when new...
This article offers a new interpretation of The Gift written by Marcel Mauss. It provides a contextual interpretation of the formation of Mauss' thinking about the international relations in the question of German reparations paid to the Allies. The article starts by showing the intellectual origins of the concept of...
This article examines how powerful policy actors defend themselves against opponents' strategies of conflict expansion through a case study of the Alberta oil sands subsystem. In response to changes in the key issues surrounding the oil sands subsystem, the provincial government along with industry have pursued a strategy of engaging...
The past decade has witnessed exponential growth in study abroad participation. During these same years the promise that studying abroad will make students into Global Citizens has been a nearly ubiquitous feature in the promotion of the experience. Yet, Global Citizenship remains a highly contested concept that is rarely defined,...
The surge in "unconventional" oil projects such as Alberta's Tar Sands in the last decade signals a shift in global production from relatively accessible conventional reserves to "frontier" oil. This paper examines one aspect of the oil/environment tension – the environmental regulatory system surrounding the tar sands – by adopting...