Since 1975 the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law has presented the Wolfgang Friedmann Memorial Award to a distinguished scholar or practitioner who has made outstanding contributions to the field of international law.

“We are thrilled to have as this year’s Friedmann Award recipient a person with such stature and expertise in the field of international criminal justice,” said P. Nicholas Kourides ’71, deputy general counsel of American International Group, Inc., and a member of the journal’s board of directors.

“Professor Bassiouni’s contributions to the creation of the International Criminal Court are widely acclaimed,” Kourides added. “He has written extensively on violations of human rights and criminal law and is one of the renowned authorities in this field. Being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in the field of international criminal law is confirmation of his significant contributions.”

Cherif Bassiouni

Bassiouni, who was born in Cairo, is a distinguished research professor of law emeritus at DePaul University College of Law in Chicago. As a practicing lawyer, he has handled many international cases on extradition and international cooperation in criminal matters, and coordinated complex litigation on matters involving international law. He has served the United Nations in a number of capacities and has been a consultant to the U.S. Department of State and U.S. Department of Justice.

In 1999, Bassiouni was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in the field of international criminal justice and for his contribution to the creation of the International Criminal Court.

“I am honored to follow a long line of distinguished recipients of an award which preserves the memory of a distinguished internationalist,” Bassiouni said.

Former Friedmann award recipients have included George Mitchell, the former U.S. special envoy for Middle East peace, and Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the former secretary-general of the United Nations.

The award is given in memory of the Journal’s founder, Columbia Law School Professor Wolfgang Friedmann. Friedmann, a native of Germany, emigrated to the United States and taught at the Law School from 1955 until his death in 1972. He passionately advocated for a world order based on mutual respect among nations, and is best known for his denunciations of the Nazi Party when he worked as a jurist in Germany in the early 1930s.

Founded in 1961, the Journal has showcased the work of generations of international law scholars. It now has more than 1,000 subscribers, one-third of whom live outside the U.S. in more than 60 countries.

From the time of its enactment until today, the Republic of Korea’s Labor Standards Act (LSA), which outlines the minimum standards governing full-time employment relationships, has been plagued by controversy due to its statutory ambiguity, structural deficiencies and the social inequities the legislation creates.  Criticism of the LSA has, thus far, mainly focused on its economic inefficiencies, leaving its role in amplifying the problem of Korean labor market dual- ism by gender largely ignored.  In particular, the historical adherence to Confucian values coupled with the LSA’s text has created a truly contradictory piece of legislation that purportedly protects women, but in practice only augments gender imbalances through the differential production of workers based on sex through its essentialist, paternalistic and discriminatory provisions.  This Note traces the evolution of the LSA and its current effects on the Korean working population though a gendered lens and suggests directions for legal reform that may deinstitutionalize gender differentials in employment.

These spin-off questions range from well-established concerns about the impact of climate change on biodiversity, human health and human rights, to newer questions about the intersections between climate change law and other areas of law, to critical questions about how climate change is revealing new governance gaps.  Many of these collateral questions raise pressing legal and political issues that cannot be resolved through ongoing climate negotiations.  This Article examines two particularly important areas in which climate change is exposing fundamental gaps in existing systems of global governance.  The first of these is governance of the Arctic Ocean at the edges of the existing regulatory reach of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.  The second of these is the complete absence, for all practical purposes, of a governance regime applicable to geoengineering research and experimentation.  These seemingly distinct issues are examined together for two reasons. First, they raise two of the most pressing global governance challenges today.  Second, global efforts to address Arctic and geoengineering governance gaps pose discreet opportunities for the global community to debate, refine and advance the normative framework and institutional structures for management of the global commons.  In both contexts, the questions asked and the answers offered will offer insight into larger questions of global environmental governance.

This Book Review explores the central idea “now traveling the planet,” “that ordinary people have the right to go to court to defend their environment.”  It examines Professor Oliver Houck’s new book recounting eight cases from eight countries where attorneys went to court to protect irreplaceable landscapes and preserve national treasures.  The Review examines four central features of Houck’s book tied to international and environmental scholarship.  The first is the metaphor of Eden that both names the book and provides an ethical core for each of the legal battles Houck recounts.  Second is the importance of democracy in providing political context and tactical opportunities in environmental cases.  Houck shows us environmental citizen suits at work not only in countries historically associated with popular democracy but also in the far less democratically-fertile political contexts of post-colonial India, post-Soviet Russia, post-Marcos Philippines, post-Pinochet Chile and post-imperial Japan.  The third feature is the idea that sustainable development, a touchstone of public international law, has important limits.  At a time when policymakers are preoccupied with the size of footprints (carbon footprints, water footprints, development footprints), Houck argues for no footprints at all.  The final feature is the book’s description of international law being made through transboundary networks and epistemic communities.  While Houck does not explicitly tie his work to the growing literature about the nature of international lawmaking and transboundary legal process, he contributes case studies that help to ground that literature.  The Review concludes that, as moral allegory, the collection of stories is appropriately named for Eden.  Yet the book’s stories emphasize struggle rather than loss.  Houck reinforces through the cases what he proffers in the title:  law (as an instrument) is not about losing paradise; it is about taking it back.

The dramatic expansion of technology and globalization over the last thirty years has not only facilitated transnational terrorist operations, but also has transformed the countermeasures utilized by law enforcement and amplified the need for counterterrorism coordination between foreign and domestic authorities.  Crucially, these changes have altered the fourth amendment calculus, set out by the international silver platter doctrine, for admitting evidence seized in U.S.-foreign cooperative searches abroad.  Under the international silver platter doctrine, courts admit the evidence gathered by foreign authorities abroad unless the unreasonable search is deemed a “joint venture” between U.S. and foreign authorities.  Notably, the legal framework governing joint ventures is based on standards and guideposts used when coordination between different law enforcement entities was almost always physical rather than technological.  This Note argues that in the twenty-first century, technology and the pervasive transnational terrorist threat have broadened the scope of the international silver platter doctrine, reduced the impact of its joint venture exception, and consequently rendered the Fourth Amendment, in practice, virtually inapplicable to most transnational terrorism investigations.  Applying this anti-quated legal doctrine to this novel context narrows the range of activities encompassed in the joint venture exception and in turn allows more evidence gathered in unreasonable searches to be presented in U.S. federal courts.  While this Note argues that the rise of international terrorism and heightened transnational law enforcement cooperation demands to some extent a broad international silver platter doctrine and a narrow joint venture exception, it also stresses that at some point Congress must legislate to preserve a baseline of fourth amendment values governing cooperative searches of Americans abroad.

Foreign bribery represents a serious impediment to global prosperity and development.  For decades, the United States remained one of the few industrialized nations to combat this threat, criminalizing the payment of bribes abroad under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.  In recent years, however, as the United States has strengthened its enforcement efforts, other nations have begun drafting anti-bribery legislation based on the American model; the United Kingdom is perhaps the most significant example of this trend.  After facing international criticism for its failure to prosecute bribery of foreign officials by British companies, the U.K. government passed a new Bribery Act that in many ways mirrors the provisions of the FCPA.  It remains to be seen, however, if simply exporting and expanding on the American model will prove sufficient to sustain increased international enforcement of anti-bribery norms.  This Note traces the development of British anti-bribery law over the past decade, analyzing and critiquing the recently adopted U.K. Bribery Act in comparison to the FCPA and discussing the prospects for continued global enforcement under both legislative regimes.

On July 22, 2010, the International Court of Justice (the court or the ICJ) rendered an Advisory Opinion, Accordance with International Law of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Respect of Kosovo (Kosovo Advisory Opinion or Opinion), considering whether the unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo is in accordance with international law.  This Paper contrasts the court’s narrow interpretation of the question put to it by the General Assembly, and its subsequent narrow conclusions, with the broader consequences of its reasoning, in particular in relation to the questions of the legality of Kosovo’s attempted secession and the legality of the recognition of Kosovo’s independence by third States.  By analyzing the court’s reasoning in relation to the scope and meaning of the question as well as to whether the adoption of the declaration of independence was in violation of general international law, Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999) and the Constitutional Framework, this Paper reveals an Opinion far more damaging to Serbia’s interests than its narrow conclusions might suggest.  The Paper concludes that the court’s ultimate message is that while secessionist movements are free to declare independence, achieving it in practice should be left to the international community to decide through political fora.  In this light, this Paper urges Serbia and Kosovo to take up the European Union’s (EU) offer to facilitate a dialogue and begin their journey on the path towards peace, security and stability in the region.