This book provides the first detailed history of the Constitution's treaty supremacy rule. It describes a process of invisible constitutional change. The treaty supremacy rule was a bedrock principle of constitutional law for more than 150 years. It provided that treaties are supreme over state law and that courts have a constitutional duty to apply treaties that conflict with state laws. The rule ensured that state governments did not violate U.S. treaty obligations without authorization from the federal political branches. In 1945, the United States ratified the UN Charter, which obligates nations to promote human rights “for all without distinction as to race.” In 1950, a California court applied the Charter’s human rights provisions along with the traditional supremacy rule to invalidate a state law that discriminated against Japanese nationals. The implications were shocking: the decision implied that the United States had abrogated Jim Crow laws throughout the South by ratifying the UN Charter. Conservatives reacted by lobbying for a constitutional amendment, known as the Bricker Amendment, to abolish the treaty supremacy rule. The amendment never passed, but Bricker's supporters achieved their goals through de facto constitutional change. Before 1945, the treaty supremacy rule was a mandatory constitutional rule that applied to all treaties. The de facto Bricker Amendment converted the rule into an optional rule that applies only to “self-executing” treaties. Under the modern rule, state governments are allowed to violate national treaty obligations — including international human rights obligations — that are embodied in “non-self-executing” treaties.

The Act of State Doctrine holds that a state is legally supreme within its own boundaries and its sovereign is wholly immune to the judgments of other nations. The acts that the sovereign power's agents perform as part of their official duties and responsibilities cannot be called into question in the courts of another nation. If a state possesses not final and complete power over its own territory and citizens it is a dependency, a colony, or an occupied area. As nations moved into the modern world nations began to have second thoughts about maintaining and supporting sovereign absolutism. This study investigates past, current, and emerging meanings of the act of state doctrine. It also examines exceptions to the act of state doctrine.

The Function of Law in the International Community, first published in 1933, is one of the seminal works on international law. Its author, Sir Hersch Lauterpacht, is widely considered to be one of the great international lawyers of the 20th century. It continues to influence those studying and working in international law today. This republication once again makes this book available to scholars and students in the field. It features a new introduction by Professor Martti Koskenniemi, examining the world in which the Function of Law was originally published and the lasting legacy of this classic work.

A runner-up for the 2018 Chadwick Alger Prize, International Studies Association's International Organization Section, this provocative reassessment of the rule of law in world politics examines how and why governments use and manipulate international law in foreign policy.

While its importance in domestic law has long been acknowledged, transparency has until now remained largely unexplored in international law. This study of transparency issues in key areas such as international economic law, environmental law, human rights law and humanitarian law brings together new and important insights on this pressing issue. Contributors explore the framing and content of transparency in their respective fields with regard to proceedings, institutions, law-making processes and legal culture, and a selection of cross-cutting essays completes the study by examining transparency in international law-making and adjudication.