Curriculum Guide · Courses

Professor David Stewart

J.D. Seminar 1010 (cross-listed) | 3 credit hours

How does international law apply in domestic legal systems? When are treaties and customary international law binding in national courts? What are the rules and mechanisms of “incorporation”? Do judges have a responsibility to follow generally accepted rules of international law? This seminar offers students an opportunity to research, write and make presentations about specific issues related to the status of international law in domestic legal systems. The primary focus will be on the U.S. system, but a comparative approach is included and students are encouraged to investigate the treatment of international law in foreign legal systems that directly incorporate customary international law as well as those where international legal rules always require legislative enactment.

These issues arise in varying contexts, from human rights litigation under the Alien Tort Statute to habeas proceedings concerning GTMO detainees, from compliance with ICJ decisions to displacement of state law under ratified treaties and executive agreements, from the impact of rulings by the International Criminal Court to questions of sovereign immunity and Acts of State, from using international law to interpret domestic statutes to the proof of foreign law in civil and commercial cases. More broadly, we will be exploring whether domestic courts can or should act as enforcers of international law, whether domestic courts should be considered part of an emergent “global judiciary,” the importance of transnational cooperation between courts, etc.

This course is open to J.D. and LL.M. students and requires a paper and an oral presentation.

Recommended: International Law I.

J.D. students must register for the 3 credit section of the seminar if they wish to write a paper fulfilling the J.D. Upperclass Legal Writing Requirement. The paper requirements of the two-credit section will not fulfill the J.D. Upperclass Legal Writing Requirement.