Sands - Lawless World (2005) - Synopsis

UFPPC (www.ufppc.org) Digging Deeper LVIII @ Mandolin Café (Tacoma, WA) 22, 2008, 7:00 p.m.

September

Philippe Sands, Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules from FDR’s Atlantic Charter to George W. Bush’s Illegal War (New York: Viking, 2005). Preface. The 1940s saw the beginning of a 50year effort “to replace a world of chaos and conflict with a new, rules-based system” that was “broadly speaking, successful” (xi). But the Bush administration’s challenge to global rules has “turned into a full-scale assault, a war on law” (xii). Catalyst to the book: witnessing the refusal of the U.S. in 1998 to recognize the authority of the International Court of Justice in The Hague when it tried to delay an execution in Virginia (xiii-xvi). This book seeks to make better known and to advocate for “international rules” (xvi-xx).

World Climate conference (1990; Sands was a legal advisor for St. Lucia), the Earth Summit (1992), the Kyoto Protocol (1997), and the Bush administration’s opposition (69-94).

Acknowledgments. Colleagues, friends, family (xxi-xxv).

Ch. 6: A Safer World, for Investors. Rules for protecting foreign investments developed out of claims commissions and undergird globalization; the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes Convention (1966) and investment treaties like NAFTA (1992; in force 1994) (117-42).

List of Abbreviations. Ch. 1: International Law: A Short and Recent History. Do the actions of Bush and Blair mean the abandonment by the U.S. and the U.K. of the post-WWII commitment to international law? (1-3). The Pinochet case brought international law into public consciousness in Britain (3-6). The U.S. & Britain were midwives to modern international law; “the Atlantic Charter was the starting point” on Aug. 14, 1941 (8; 7-15). Globalization, telecommunications, and democratization also contributed; then came 9/11 (15-21). Sands denies he is naïve (21-22). Ch. 2: Pinochet in London. Augusto Pinochet’s arrest in the U.K. on Oct. 16, 1998, for the murder of Spanish citizens in Chile; background; five law lords from the House of Lords ruled 3-2 on Nov. 25, 1998, that Pinochet could not invoke immunity; a second panel reached the same 6-1 ruling on Mar. 24, 1999; but eventually Pinochet was sent back to Chile on grounds for reasons of poor health (23-45). Ch. 3: A New International Court. Sands participated in negotiation of the 1998 Rome Statue establishing, in 2002, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, with jurisdiction over genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, with the agreement of the relevant state; the Bush administration has campaigned against it, however (46-68). Ch. 4: Global Warming: Throwing Precaution to the Wind. Sketches the history of international environmental law, the 1987 Montreal Protocol on ozone, the attempts to address global warming with the IPCC and the

Ch. 5: Good Trade, Bad Trade, Cheap Shrimp. History of the GATT system (19471994), the World Trade Organization (the result of the 1986-94 Uruguay Round negotiations) and its judicial arm, the Appellate Body, with attention to the 1989-98 shrimp-turtle case with the U.S. eventually lost (95-116).

Ch. 7: Guantánamo: The Legal Black Hole. The Geneva Conventions grew out of international humanitarian law (143-53). The Bush administration’s attempt to create a new legal regime (153-58). The U.K. response, in which Sands has played a role (158-71). Supreme Court ruling in Rasul v. Bush (171-73). Ch. 8: Kicking Ass in Iraq. After a review of efforts to bring state use of force within the rule of law and Britain’s mysterious decision to go along with the Iraq war, focus on U.N. Security Council Res. 1441, on which the U.S. and U.K. relied for their legal justification for going to war, which Sands finds ingenious but “absurd” (192; 174-201). The war constitutes a historic and decisive fork in the road; the arguments for the legality of the war must be recognized as “unsustainable” (202; 201-04). Ch. 9: Terrorists and Torturers. U.S. lawyers evaded the legal prohibitions on torture in the name of the “phony ‘war’” on terror (206; 20522). “Disdain for global rules underpins the whole enterprise” (222). Ch. 10: Tough Guys and Lawyers. Refutation of three arguments against global rules (they are inadequate; they are undemocratic; power trumps); global rules are needed in “this globalizing, interdependent world” (238; 223-39). Ch. 11: Window Dressing. While U.S. officials have been evasive and hypocritical when they talk about international law, it is a hopeful sign that extreme Bush administration positions have

evolved with time, and the U.S.’s return to a rules-based system is only a matter of time (24056). APPENDICES I. Atlantic Charter (1941). Signed by FDR & Churchill (257-58). II. Charter of the United Nations (1945). Preamble & Articles 1, 2, 39, 41, 42, 51 (259-62). III. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). Preamble & Articles 1-12 & 29. IV. Geneva Convention III Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (1949) and Geneva Protocol I (1977) (1941). Articles 1, 3, 4, 5, 13, 17, 129, 130 of the former and Articles 72 & 75 of the latter (266-72). V. Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment of Punishment (1984). Preamble and Articles 1-8 (273-76). VI. Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court (1998). Preamble and Articles 1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12, 17, 98 (27785).

VII. The North American Free Trade Agreement (1994). Articles 1101-05, 1110 (286-88). VIII. The Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization (1994), General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (1994). Articles I, III, XI, XX (289-90). IX. U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992) and the Kyoto Protocol (1997). Articles 2, 3, 4 of the former and Articles 2, 3, and Annex B of the latter (29196). Notes. 18 pp. Index. 10 pp. [On the Author. Philippe Sands was born in 1960. Since 2002 he has taught international law at University College London. He was on the faculty of New York University from 1995 to 2003. He appears frequently on BBC and CNN and in the Op-Ed pages of papers like the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. He is also the author of Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values (May 2008). Sands is married with three children. — Lawless World has been translated into Arabic and Farsi, and a Chinese publication is in preparation.]