Our moderator's questions begin with “in what sense is international law and in what sense isn't it universal?” and continue with whether international law may be “different in different places” and what the implications of such differences may be. I am here to defend the “universalist” perspective, as the immediate past president of the American Society of International Law and before that, editor-in-chief of the American Journal of International Law. Though both the Society and the Journal have “American” in their titles and our geographic headquarters is in the United States, the Society's mission statement commits us to pursue “a just world under law,” which I interpret as a global vision for a universal system of international law.

China and Russia stated in 2016 that “It is crucial for the maintenance of international legal order that all dispute settlement means and mechanisms are based on consent and used in good faith and in the spirit of cooperation, and their purposes shall not be undermined by abusive practices.” Does this sentence reflect their shared view of the signing states or are these ideas endorsed by other international players?

Does a more powerful and assertive China threaten the universality of international law? Maybe, but not yet clearly so. The answer depends on China's still-emerging positions, on whether a universal system will accommodate China's preferences, and on one's net assessment of China's complex and ambiguous behavior. Any Chinese challenge to universality is national, not regional. There is no coherent Asian international law, and China is not leading its emergence.

At 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, May 7, 1994, the first trial under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) began. Dusko Tadić was charged, on the basis of individual criminal responsibility, with grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949, violations of the laws or customs of war, and crimes against humanity. Tadić escaped only the charge of genocide.

Ten years ago, in December 2006, the WTO created a new Transparency Mechanism for Regional Trade Agreements, an early harvest of the Doha Development Round of trade negotiations. The objective was to try to understand RTAs better and permit the Committee on Regional Trade Agreements (CRTA) to perform one of its key functions of monitoring RTAs in a more efficient manner.

After decades of focusing largely on multilateral trade rules, the past fifteen years witnessed a surge of free trade agreements by East Asian governments. Regional production networks benefit from harmonization of rules and lowering trade barriers. Yet several features stand out in these agreements—they focus on goods trade and are not embedded in strong regional institutions for shared decision making. This reflects both the divergent preferences among widely different countries and the reluctance of Japan or China to advocate any policies beyond liberalization of trade and investment. The TPP broke the mold of East Asian PTAs largely due to the leadership of the United States, which pushed others to adopt new rules on labor, environment, digital trade, state-owned enterprises, and competition policy. Yet, surprisingly, these features may persist in trade law despite the exit of the United States from the agreement. A key reason is the transformation of Japan, which began as a bystander to the agreement and now stands as one of its strongest advocates. A second reason is the use of templates in trade agreements, which can transfer the negotiated terms from one deal into subsequent agreements.

These remarks are derived from a forthcoming work considering the future of international trade law. Compared with most features of the international legal system, the regional and bilateral trade law system is in the early stages of its evolution. For example, the United States is a party to fourteen free trade agreements currently in force, all but two of which have entered into force since 2000. The recent proliferation of agreements, particularly bilateral and regional agreements, is not unique to the United States. The European Union recently concluded trade agreement negotiations with Canada, Singapore, and Vietnam to add to its twenty-seven agreements in force and is negotiating approximately ten additional bilateral or multilateral agreements. In the Asia-Pacific Region, the number of regional and bilateral free trade agreements has grown exponentially since the conclusion of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Free Trade Area of 1992. At that time, the region counted five such agreements in force. Today, the number totals 140 with another seventy-nine under negotiation or awaiting entry into force. The People's Republic of China is negotiating half a dozen bilateral trade agreements at present to top off the sixteen already in effect. India likewise is engaged in at least ten trade agreement negotiations. The World Trade Organization (WTO) reports 267 agreements of this sort in force among its members as of July 1, 2016.

This panel examined the operation of International Mass Claims Commissions (IMCC), which are ad hoc international judicial institutions created to resolve specific international disputes. IMCCs generally involve a great variety and number of claims and claimants, thus providing a distinctive means to resolve international disputes. This panel seeks to evaluate the effectiveness and viability of IMCCs as international dispute resolution mechanisms. Looking in particular at the examples set by the Iran-U.S. Claims Tribunal, the UN Claims Commission, and the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission, the speakers assess strengths and weaknesses of these unique institutions. Panelists also considered the use of IMCCs in future situations, as an alternative to standing international tribunals.

John Crook's remarks highlighted key recurring problems faced by mass claims programs. His remarks drew on his personal experience, but also on the writings of experts who have designed and administered mass claims programs, notably Dr. Norbert Wühler, whose visa apparently fell victim to “extreme vetting” because of his work for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) on a mass claims program in Iraq.

Good morning. It is an honor to be here today. I would like to begin by thanking the chair of this panel, Professor Natalie Klein, and my copanelists: Professor Lea Brilmayer, John Crook, and Jeremy Sharpe.

I want to consider the European Commission's proposed multilateral investment court as an international claims tribunal. The commission is not promoting its investment court as a claims tribunal, but that is essentially what it is. The commission seeks to establish a mechanism to allow foreign investors to submit future disputes under international law to binding dispute resolution before a standing tribunal. The proposed court differs from most claims tribunals, as it is intended to be multilateral and to apply to future disputes. But that is what makes the proposal so interesting and potentially useful.

In June 2014, the African Union adopted a treaty (referred to as the Malabo Protocol) that would establish the first regional court with jurisdiction over human rights, general matters, and criminal matters. Its substantive jurisdiction included international and transnational crimes, as well as corporate criminal liability. This development sparked a debate as to whether other regions (notably Latin America) should also adopt a regional criminal court to prosecute transnational organized crime in Latin America. Moreover, the adoption of the Malabo Protocol raised questions concerning the relationship between regional criminal courts, national (domestic) courts, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the enforcement of international criminal law.

Most Latin American states have submitted to the jurisdiction of both the International Criminal Court and the Inter-American human rights system, including the Inter-American Court and Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. This allows us to observe and compare the different ways in which a well-institutionalized regional human rights system and an international criminal system work—through different treaties, different interlocutors, and different working methods—toward the same goals. In particular, Colombia and Mexico, both states that are experiencing high levels of violence, allow us to observe the two systems in play at once.

Thanks to everyone for joining us for this late breaking panel on the Missile Strikes Against Syria. And special thanks to the program committee, in particular Saira Mohamed, for pulling this session together so quickly.

The legality of unilateral humanitarian intervention raises three questions:

President Donald J. Trump's first war seemed a short one. To many, it commenced on April 7, 2017 (local time) and, after fifty-nine cruise missiles struck, seemingly ended the same day. The president received good marks for the stunning strike against the Syrian air base, with many members of the foreign policy establishment applauding his attack as a means of punishing Bashar al-Assad's regime for its use of chemical weapons. Even some Obama administration veterans were full of praise for the president, apparently drawing a contrast between President Donald J. Trump's strike and President Barack Obama's unwillingness to enforce his chemical weapons “red line.”

First, a huge thanks to ASIL for facilitating this timely and important conversation. I am honored to be part of this panel.

We are having this conversation now because of the April 7 strikes on the Shayrat Airfield in Syria, but the question of how one justifies forcible measures in the context of a humanitarian emergency, and in the face of a deadlocked Security Council, is one that deserves urgent attention beyond the context of any single event. Progress toward answering this question has, however, been mired in a long-standing debate between those who believe that there is no credible international law justification for humanitarian intervention—and that the U.S. government should instead justify interventions like those taken at Kosovo and Shayrat as morally “legitimate”—and those who believe a legal justification can and should be put forward. I am very much in the latter camp and will use my time now to explain how I arrived at this position as a policy and as a legal matter by looking at three questions: the first question is whether legal justification is the direction that the United States should go in as a matter of policy. The second question is whether legal justification is credibly available as a matter of international law. The third question (which assumes the answer to the first and second is yes) is how to go about articulating and disseminating such a justification. Let me take these in order.

International courts and tribunals having compulsory jurisdiction over disputes between states is more important than ever. As the theme indicates, it is the way that David and Goliath are placed on an equal footing for the purposes of the resolution of a legal dispute between them.