The 2007 Stanford Law Review Symposium, "Global Constitutionalism," examines the interplay between the constitutional jurisprudence and principles of the United States and other nations. The articles presented in this Issue focus on global influences on U.S. jurisprudence, the creation of constitutions, and national security and constitutional protections. These themes were further explored at the live…
Writing against the subjugation of women in 1869, John Stuart Mill wrote that "laws and institutions require to be adapted, not to good men, but to bad."1 You cannot justify an institution on the basis that good men will not abuse it. So too with times: laws and institutions need to be adapted not to…
As globalization runs its course, the domestic world is becoming full of international law. One of the mechanisms by which international law penetrates domestic law is largely unproblematic: our own political actors—Congress and the President through statutes, or the Senate and President through treaties— can incorporate international law into the domestic legal order. But international…
The proper role of international law in domestic constitutional adjudication is a hot issue in legal circles and beyond, particularly in light of attacks on an "activist" judiciary, presently the fad among pundits, politicians, and pulpitarians. While the contest has been simmering for years in Congress, on the Court, and among academics, the top blew…
In two of the most controversial cases of the past decade, the Supreme Court relied on foreign law to help determine the meaning of the United States Constitution. These foreign citations caused quite a stir. Several Justices have spoken extrajudicially about whether such reliance on foreign law is proper, and Justices Scalia and Breyer even…
Some people think that the practices of many courts in many countries, or in many relevant countries, offer helpful guidance to courts in other countries, when those courts are approaching hard or novel questions. In their view, the practices of many courts create a body of law in which other courts should be highly interested.…
We Iraqis are a people plagued by massacres, random killing, bombs, and fiery statements—all targeting the democratic and constitutional processes. According to my appraisal, the reason behind this is that we are swimming against the current of a backward region, which still lives in the era of early centuries where people are governed not by…
British tradition and the American Constitution guarantee trial by jury for serious crime. But terrorism is not ordinary crime, and the presence of jurors may skew the manner in which terrorist trials unfold in at least three significant ways. First, organized terrorist groups may deliberately threaten jury members so the accused escapes penalty. The more…
Though they often skirt the legal perimeter, the Bush Administration's national security policies are undoubtedly creative. The Administration's inventiveness demands a similar agility from the lawyers challenging these policies, particularly since the federal courts are understandably reluctant to interfere with the Executive in the midst of an armed conflict. While procedural arguments based on the…
More than five years since the cataclysmic events of September 11, 2001, two dynamics have affected patterns of terrorism and counter-terrorism. The first was identified from the outset and relates to the growing emphasis upon anticipatory risk. The second is the increasing threat of "neighbor" terrorism. The anticipatory risk of mass terrorism casualties or even…
