Stanford University

Security

FSI scholars produce research aimed at creating a safer world and examing the consequences of security policies on institutions and society. They look at longstanding issues including nuclear nonproliferation and the conflicts between countries like North and South Korea. But their research also examines new and emerging areas that transcend traditional borders – the drug war in Mexico and expanding terrorism networks. FSI researchers look at the changing methods of warfare with a focus on biosecurity and nuclear risk. They tackle cybersecurity with an eye toward privacy concerns and explore the implications of new actors like hackers.

Along with the changing face of conflict, terrorism and crime, FSI researchers study food security. They tackle the global problems of hunger, poverty and environmental degradation by generating knowledge and policy-relevant solutions. 

Enhancing Implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1540

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The threat of the use of weapons of mass destruction by terrorist groups is perhaps the gravest threat confronting the international security system. In 2004, the United Nations Security Council, acting under Chapter VII, adopted Security Council Resolution 1540 (UNSCR 1540). UNSCR 1540 calls on UN member states to enact legislation and to take effective measures to prevent non-state actors, and terrorist groups in particular, from obtaining weapons of mass destruction. UNSCR 1540 also obligated states to report on measures they have taken to fulfill the substantive requirements of the resolution. In addition, UNSCR 1540 established an ad hoc committee ("the 1540 Committee") to receive states' reports and in turn to report to the Security Council on implementation of the resolution. In 2006, the 1540 Committee's initial two-year mandate was renewed for another two years.

UNSCR 1540, as administered by the 1540 Committee, has largely been effective in encouraging states to provide detailed descriptions of the domestic legal authorities and administrative structures they have in place to address the threat of WMD proliferation. Additional progress can and should be made by the Security Council and the 1540 Committee, however, to ensure that the maximum nonproliferation and security benefits that might be produced by UNSCR 1540 are achieved. Our recommendations address implementation, adaptation, international cooperation and assistance, information sharing and assessment, and organizational implications.

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Policy Briefs
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CISAC
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CDDRL has concluded its third year of the Stanford Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program

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The Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) has concluded its third year of the Stanford Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program held July 30th-August 17th, 2007.

This year's summer fellows program brought 26 leaders from 22 different countries in transition to Stanford for the three-week program. The fellows combined theory with practice as they studied democracy, development, and the rule of law and the links and interactions among the three areas. Not only did the fellows participate in morning seminars with leading Stanford faculty, but they also attended talks by keynote speakers including Carl Gershman and Judge Pamela Rymer to name a few. Furthermore, this year's summer fellows engaged in group discussions and presentations on key issues of democracy, development, and rule of law within their countries and regions. Fellows brought their experiences and knowledge from a wide background of different professions to the discussions and presented their proposals for addressing real-world problems of democratic and economic development.

Throughout their three-week stay, fellows enjoyed the surrounding Bay Area attractions including San Francisco and Monterey, and had the opportunity to visit institutions such as Google, the San Francisco Chronicle, and KQED Radio. The program closed with a graduation dinner on August 17th, 2007 and fellows departed, eager to put to practice what they had gained from their three-week interaction with each other, with the Stanford faculty, and with visiting speakers.

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Why a Democratic Russia Should Join NATO

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Michael A. McFaul
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Commentary
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For the last two decades, Soviet and the Russian leaders worked with Western leaders to integrate the former Soviet empire, and above all else Russia, into the western community of states. Disputes over NATO expansion, the wars in Chechnya, or the bombing campaign against Serbia periodically slowed the process of integration. Nonetheless, leaders in both Russia and the West never let the long-term economic, security, and even ideological benefits of integration be jeopardized by these intermittent disagreements.

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Weiner co-authors new edition of popular International Law casebook

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Thoroughly updated to keep pace with the many new developments in international law, the Fifth Edition of this popular casebook covers the core topics, basic doctrines, and a broad range of foreign policy issues relevant to the contemporary public international law course. Reflecting the many recent developments in this area of the law, the Fifth Edition features SCICN Co-Director Allen S. Weiner as a new co-author who brings extensive first-hand knowledge of international legal institutions.
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If Citizenship is Political Community, then Which Communities Count? Borders and boundaries in France and Indonesia

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Excerpt from page 4 of John R. Bowen's "If Citizenship is Political Community, then Which Communities Count? Borders and boundaries in France and Indonesia":

But these acts of invoking citizenship as participatory membership in order to support citizenship as the territorial state can open the door to other, alternative claims about political community, claims that challenge the postulates of territorial boundedness and legal uniformity.

It is these challenges to the national model that I wish to address, doing so by looking at some current developments in the two places where I continue to work, France and Indonesia. In France efforts to strengthen territorial control and internal uniformity have the upper hand, but they have encountered claims that cities should run their own affairs and that long-term residents must be fully incorporated into the political community. In Indonesia it is rather arguments based on participatory membership that are on the rise, and they draw on pre-national institutions of local control and Islamic norms; in turn, however, they are challenged by those in the state and the army who privilege a logic of the territorial state. The objects of debate are in some sense, mirror images - in France, external borders; in Indonesia, internal boundaries - but both debates concern the legitimacy of alternative ideas of political community.

About the Author

John R. Bowen is the Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. His research explores broad social transformations now taking place in the worldwide Muslim community, including special emphasis on Muslim life in Indonesia. His research focuses on the role of cultural forms (religious practices, aesthetic genres, legal discourse) in processes of social change. In most of his work he has looked outward from a longterm research site in the Gayo highlands of Sumatra, Indonesia, to the broader transformations taking place in the Indonesian nation and elsewhere around the globe.

Sponsored by the Program on Global Justice and the Stanford Humanities Center

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John Bowen Dunbar Van Cleve Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology Speaker Washington University, St. Louis
Workshops
Linda Randall Meier Research Workshop on Global Justice

Applying the Odious Debts Doctrine While Preserving Legitimate Lending

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Abstract of Seema Jayachandran's "Applying the Odious Debts Doctrine while Preserving Legitimate Lending":

Odious debts are debts incurred by the government of a nation without either popular consent or a legitimate public purpose. While there is some debate within academic circles as to whether the successor government to a regime which incurred odious debts has the right to repudiate repayment, in the real world this is currently not an option granted legitimacy either by global capital markets or the legal systems of creditor states. There are compelling reasons to reform the law of odious debts to allow for such a repudiation in citizens of a tyrant to repay their oppressor's personal debts, but the burden of odious-debt servicing can perpetuate the cycle of state failure which has direct national security consequences. In addition, a properly designed odious debt reform could function as an alternative sanctions mechanism to trade sanctions with fewer harmful implications for the general population of the targeted state. Classical proponents of odious debt reform advocate for recognition of a legal rule under which successor governments could challenge the validity of debts incurred by prior regimes against the odious debt legal standard in a judicial-style forum. We make the case for an alternative "Due Diligence" model of reform which provides far greater ex ante certaining for lenders both as to which investments from subsequent invalidation. The Due Diligence Model also solves certain time-consistency problems inherent to the Classical model.

Seema Jayachandran is assistant professor of economics at Stanford University. She received her PhD in economics from Harvard University. She specializes in development economics, labor economics, and political economy.

Sponsored by the Program on Global Justice and the Stanford Humanities Center

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Seema Jayachandran Assistant Professor of Economics Speaker Stanford University
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Linda Randall Meier Research Workshop on Global Justice

International Law, Fifth Edition

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Thoroughly updated to keep pace with the many new developments in international law, the Fifth Edition of this popular casebook covers the core topics, basic doctrines, and a broad range of foreign policy issues relevant to the contemporary public international law course.

Proven in the classroom, clearly organized, and with a distinctively accessible style, International Law offers

  • a comprehensive and effective blend of current issues and materials with basic international law principles and concepts
  • a balanced combination of relevant cases, excerpts, notes, questions, and other interdisciplinary materials representing a variety of perspectives and disciplines
  • an analysis of the relationship between international and domestic law and public and private law
  • treatment of such substantive topics as International Dispute Resolution, Criminal Law, Human Rights, Environmental Law, and the Use of Force
  • a complete teaching package, including a Teacher's Manual and a biannual Document Supplement
  • Reflecting the many recent developments in this area of the law, the Fifth Edition features:
  • a new co-author, Allen S. Weiner, who brings extensive first-hand knowledge of international legal institutions
  • a new chapter on International Criminal Law that includes current materials on extradition and rendition, the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, torture, and the emergence of international tribunals, including the International Criminal Court
  • new cases, including Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Sanchez-Llamas v. Oregon, Sosa v. Alvarez-Machain, American Insurance Assoc. v. Garamendi, Republic of Austria v. Altmann, Case Concerning Israel s Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (International Court of Justice), and Prosecutor v. Krstic (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia)
  • an updated case study in Chapter 1 on the international law and policy implications of the September 11 attacks and the U.S. and world response to the attacks and to terrorism in general, with other materials on the war on terrorism throughout the book
  • expanded treatment of active areas of litigation, including the Alien Tort Statute and suits against foreign government officials and state agencies
  • an extensive updating of the European Union sections, including the implications of the addition of twelve new member states and the failure to pass the new Constitution
  • major revisions to the environmental law chapter that reflect the rapid developments in this area e.g., the Kyoto Protocol and efforts to combat global warming

Table of Contents

  1. What Is International Law?
  2. The Creation of International Norms Treaties, Customary Law, International Organizations, and Private Norm-Creation
  3. International Law in the United States
  4. International Dispute Resolution
  5. States and Other Major International Entities
  6. Foreign Sovereign Immunity and the Act of State Doctrine
  7. Allocation of Legal Authority Among States
  8. International Human Rights
  9. Law of the Sea
  10. International Environmental Law
  11. Use of Force and Arms Control
  12. International Criminal Law
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Books
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Aspen Publishers
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0735562784

Africa's Revolutionary Deficit

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Somalia is once again on the front page--and the news isn't pretty. Since 2003, the country's seaside capital of Mogadishu has served as an arena for a battle of gladiators, pitting U.S.backed warlords against guntoting Islamic revolutionaries. With no capable or legitimate state to counter it, the Union of Islamic Courts emerged victorious last June, only to be felled in December by an enfeebled transitional government, formed in exile and backed by the Ethiopian military. A recent spate of assassinationstyle killings and suicide bombings herald the arrival of a new resistance movement intent on ejecting these foreign forces and the African Union troops now being dispatched to the country. Caught in the midst of this violent morass is Somalia's longsuffering population of 8.5 million, seeking order from whomever can provide it, simply hoping that the bully who comes out on top will care enough to reverse the country's economic collapse.

Somalia may be garnering headlines today, but the country's strife parallels the bloodshed in far too many of Africa's struggling nations.

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Foreign Policy
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A Diplomatic Offensive for Iraq

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While the debate to "surge" or "withdraw" troops continues, Larry Diamond, Coordinator of the Democracy Program at CDDRL, along with Carlos Pascual, writes on the need for a diplomatic strategy to achieve a sustainable peace in Iraq. Diamond asserts that U.S. troops should aim to provide security needed to create an environment to negotiate a peace agreement to end the war and warns that if the parties in Iraq cannot reach a political settlment to reduce the violence and achieve peace, then military force must be redeployed to contain the regional spillover from the conflict.

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Policy Briefs
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The Brookings Institution
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Larry Diamond
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