Meaning of a Global Perspective

“The inquiry in this essay thus begins not with classical international law, but with the dominant positive analytical framework shared by both international lawyers and political scientists - Realism. Part I outlines the basic tenets of Realism and introduces the principal alternative to Realism in international relations scholarship — Liberalism. […] The project here, consistent with an overall commitment to a new generation of interdisciplinary scholarship, is to reimagine international law based on an acceptance of this distinction and an extrapolation of its potential implications. Part II distills various factors that political scientists have correlated with the 'liberal peace', factors that can be translated into assumptions about political and economic relations among liberal States. Part III introduces the concept of a world of liberal States, acknowledging the distance between such a world and the present international system but arguing that the hypothesis may nevertheless describe an important dimension of the current system. Part IV constructs a model of international law based on a hypothetical world of liberal States, integrating assumptions about relations among such States with the broader assumptions of Liberal international relations theory.”

"This symposium has sought to examine the fragmentation of the international legal system.  Such a task presupposes that international law is, in fact, undergoing some form of fragmentation. A range of recent scholarship has described this so-called fragmentation in various ways and generally considered it a negative development, a threat to the legal system as we know it.  This commentary challenges both these assumptions by suggesting that international law is not fragmenting, but rather is being transformed into a pluralist system. Instead of being undermined by fragmentation, the rules, the institutions, and practices of the international legal order can be strengthened by the emergence of an international legal pluralism."

"Judicial globalization, by contrast, describes a much more diverse and messy process of judicial interaction across, above and below borders, exchanging ideas and cooperating in cases involving national as much as international law. This essay sets forth five different categories of judicial interaction: relations between national courts and the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in the European Union (EU); interactions between the European Court of Human Rights and national courts; the emergence of "judicial comity" in transnational litigation; constitutional crossfertilization; and face-to-face meetings among judges around the world. The contexts are very different, involving both "vertical" relations between national and international tribunals and "horizontal" relations across national borders. The factors driving these forms of interaction also vary widely, including a structural provision in an international treaty, the globalization of commerce, and the need for judicial training in many fledgling democracies."

"Part II of this article sets a background for the possibilities of regional international criminal law enforcement by exploring regionalization of other substantive areas of international law enforcement. Part III argues that regionalization of international criminal law could be a normatively positive development as it might better balance the benefits and drawbacks of national and supranational enforcement. Part IV applies political science and international relations methods, particularly from a neo-functionalist perspective, to develop a theory of regionalization of international criminal law, arguing that states are highly likely to support regionalization. Part V explores various pathways to regionalization including the creation of regional criminal courts as well as a variety of softer forms of regionalism. Part VI considers two possible impacts of regionalization on  substantive international law and suggests the likely development of procedural differentiation within a universal system."

Chapter 12 of Human Rights in the Administration of Justice, a manual and facilitator’s guide developed by the UN OHCHR in collaboration with the IBA, pertains to the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, opinion, expression, association and assembly. The learning objectives of this chapter are: “1.) To familiarize the participants with some other key rights, namely freedom of thought, conscience, religion, opinion, expression, association and assembly, and their importance in a society that is respectful of human rights in general; 2.) To illustrate how these freedoms, as well as the limitations attached to the exercise of most of them, are interpreted by the international monitoring bodies; 3.) To explain the role of judges, prosecutors and lawyers in safeguarding the freedoms dealt with in this chapter.”