Derek Jinks

• University of Texas at Austin

During the last decade, international humanitarian law has acquired a new vigor in the jurisprudence of international and domestic courts and tribunals. Alongside standard application in cases concerning refugees or war crimes prosecutions, recent jurisprudence has seen international humanitarian law acquiring an assertive stance on highly debated...

The work analyzes the impact and implementation of international humanitarian law in judicial and quasi judicial bodies. Moreover, acknowledging the high impact domestic jurisdictions have in the configuration of international law, the book does not rest only in an analysis of the international jurisprudence, but delves also into the question of ho...

The Power of Human Rights (published in 1999) was an innovative and influential contribution to the study of international human rights. At its center was a 'spiral model' of human rights change which described the various socialization processes through which international norms were internalized into the domestic practices of various authoritaria...

Over the last 20 years, the social scientific understanding of human behavior has taken a significant leap forward. Important advances in several fields have increased the complexity and accuracy of prevailing models of individual actors, group dynamics, and communication. Yet too few of the key insights of that scholarship have been incorporated i...

What deference is due the executive in foreign relations? Given the considerable constitutional authority and institutional virtues of the executive in this realm, some judicial deference is almost certainly appropriate. Indeed, courts currently defer to the executive in a large number of cases. Professors Eric Posner and Cass Sunstein nevertheless...

The study of the international human rights regime has increasingly emphasized how this regime matters rather than if it matters. An especially productive turn focuses on the importance of multiple forms of influence on state behavior. The Power of Human Rights provided a foundation for such studies by bringing attention to the significance of diff...

The 20th Century is often said to be the bloodiest century in recorded history. In addition to its wars, the century witnessed many grave and widespread human rights abuses. But what stands out in historical accounts of those abuses, perhaps even more than the cruelty of their perpetration, is the inaction of bystanders. Why do people and their gov...

In earlier work, we argue that acculturation is a distinct social process by which international law influences states and that human rights law might harness this mechanism in designing effective global regimes. In this article, we consider an important objection to our work. The concern is whether acculturation institutionalizes non-compliance. T...

In How to Influence States: Socialization and International Human Rights Law, we argue that (1) acculturation is a conceptually distinct social process through which law might influence state behavior; and (2) the elements of the acculturation process suggest several regime design characteristics unorthodox to human rights law. More generally, we m...

Do the Geneva Conventions apply to the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT)? Of course, many object to the suggestion that the laws of war, including the Geneva Conventions, apply to the GWOT. There are three important reasons to question whether the GWOT is governed by the Conventions: (1) adverse legal and policy consequences might follow from characte...

In Congressional Authorization and the War on Terrorism, Curtis Bradley and Jack Goldsmith provide a useful framework for interpreting the contours of the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF). As Bradley and Goldsmith point out, the AUMF is a broad, general authorization to wage war against certain states, organizations, and individuals....

This essay reviews Martha Finnemore's most recent book, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force (Cornell University Press, 2003). Finnemore's thoughtful study of military intervention explains how and why the legitimate purposes of war-making have changed over time - emphasizing the role that international law and insti...

This Term, the Supreme Court addressed several important questions regarding the role of law and legal institutions in the "war on terrorism." Specifically, the Court issued important rulings concerning (1) the scope of the President's war powers; (2) the rights of enemy combatants; and (3) the proper role of courts in time of war. Much remains unr...

Traditionally, protective schemes in the law of war are tightly coupled to rigid status categories. The contours of these status categories (and the content of corresponding protective schemes) reflect the dual normative commitments of this body of law: military necessity and humanitarianism. Formal protection varies along a number of axes (includi...

What is the significance of prisoner-of-war status? Drawing on the substance, universal acceptance, broad-based institutionalization, and enforcement machinery of the Geneva Convention for the Protection of Prisoners of War, conventional wisdom maintains that denial of POW status to combatants has drastic protective (and policy) consequences. Contr...

Regime design choices in international law turn on empirical claims about how states behave and under what conditions their behavior changes. Substantial empirical evidence suggests three distinct mechanisms whereby states and institutions might influence the behavior of other states: coercion, persuasion, and acculturation. Several structural impe...

The United States is party to several treaties that regulate the conduct of war, including the 1949 Geneva Conventions on the Protection of War Victims. These treaties require belligerent states, as a matter of international law, to accord fair and humane treatment to enemy nationals subject to their authority in time of war. Moreover, these treati...

Scholarship in international law is preoccupied with the structural tension between state sovereignty and international obligation. This preoccupation presupposes that states incur sovereignty costs when entering binding international commitments. In our view, this presupposition requires substantial qualification. In this Article, we propose a soc...

Do human rights treaties improve human rights conditions on the ground? In the end, this critical question is empirical in character. The effectiveness of any regulatory strategy turns on whether its rules and institutions actually mitigate the problems they are designed to address. Although empirical questions require empirical study, bad data is...

Do the laws of war govern the September 11 attacks? Did the attacks constitute "war crimes"? These questions are difficult because they touch upon complex legal problems involving deep conceptual ambiguities in international humanitarian law. It is unclear under what conditions the laws of war apply. This ambiguity arises from the combination of tw...

Under what circumstances should international law impute to states the acts of private armed groups? Although states as a general rule are not liable for the conduct of non-state actors, it is now well-settled that the acts of de facto state agents are attributable to the state. That is, the conduct of ostensibly private actors may be sufficiently...