Kal Raustiala

University of California, Los Angeles | UCLA · School of Law

Explaining the drivers of compliance with international law has been a central concern of international lawyers (and many others) for decades. As international agreements have proliferated—exact numbers are elusive, but there may be 75,000 or more—understanding compliance has only grown in importance. In previous work we each have explored the ques...

The signature feature of twenty-first-century international cooperation is arguably not the regime but the regime complex. A regime complex is an array of partially overlapping and nonhierarchical institutions that includes more than one international agreement or authority. The institutions and agreements may be functional or territorial in nature...

This essay explores why the United States is relinquishing an important source of power over the Internet, and what this means for both users of the Internet and scholars of global governance. The Internet began as a niche tool of engineers and academics, funded by the Department of Defense. Governance was loosely exercised by an insular group of e...

During the Cold War, international relations and international law were deeply shaped by the struggle for global dominance between the United States and the Soviet Union. The clashes between the superpowers reverberated in legal issues relating to the functioning of the United Nations, the use of force, nuclear nonproliferation, human rights, etc....

Since the cataclysm of World War II, the international order has grown increasingly institutionalized. Hundreds of international organizations and tens of thousands of treaties now exist, many with widespread – and in some cases nearly universal – membership. Compared to earlier eras, the international system today is far more densely populated by...

From the shopping mall to the corner bistro, knockoffs are everywhere in today's marketplace. Conventional wisdom holds that copying kills creativity, and that laws that protect against copies are essential to innovation -- and economic success. But are copyrights and patents always necessary? In The Knockoff Economy, we argue that creativity can n...

This essay, forthcoming in the Oxford Guide to Treaties, surveys the role of NGOs in treatymaking. It asks four key questions. First, what roles do NGOs play today in treaty processes, and how have these roles changed? Second, what explains the increased prominence of NGOs? Third, are NGOs a salutary addition to treatymaking or illegitimate special...

Powerful nations have long sought empires. The United States is no exception, though its imperial experience is distinctive. In this brief essay I examine the American approach to empire in the 20th century. In the early years of the century the U.S. experienced a brief burst of traditional empire-building. By the Second World War, however, America...

Does the constitutional right to habeas corpus reach to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan? In Boumediene v. Bush, the Supreme Court held that noncitizens detained at the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba could avail themselves of the constitutional right of habeas corpus. In Al Maqaleh v. Gates the DC Circuit faced the same question with reg...

U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decision on jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from detainees at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan

The Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements is a global, multi-disciplinary effort intended to help identify the key design elements of a scientifically sound, economically rational, and politically pragmatic post-2012 international policy architecture for addressing the threat of climate change. It has commissioned leading scholars to...

Fashion design presents a significant challenge to the current enthusiasm for expansive intellectual property rights. Despite an absence of protection under American copyright law, creativity and innovation in fashion design remain vibrant. Nonetheless there is substantial sentiment in favor of some form of copyright for fashion design, and a “Desi...

Should traditional knowledge - the understanding or skill possessed by indigenous peoples pertaining to their culture and folklore and their use of native plants for medicinal purposes - receive protection as intellectual property? This Article examines nine major arguments from the moral, political and legal philosophy of property for intellectual...

Offshoring is usually thought of in the context of globalization and economic activity. Yet a signal feature of the Bush Administration's "war on terror" was the offshoring of core security functions. The most famous example is the use of Guantanamo Bay as a detention center, but many other examples of extraterritorial activity exist, such as the p...

This is the preface and opening chapter of a forthcoming book on Oxford University Press about the way that geography shapes legal rules and understandings - and how fundamental changes in American power and in world politics have challenged and sometimes altered the traditionally territorial system of legal jurisdiction. Do the laws of the United...

Any international regime aimed at the mitigation of global climate change must solve three problems: 1) secure sufficient participation; 2) achieve agreement on meaningful rules; and 3) ensure compliance with those rules. That is, it must solve problems of participation, effectiveness, and compliance. In this paper, prepared for the Harvard Project...

This paper, written for a forthcoming volume on climate change, provides a positive analysis of the roles and impact of non-state actors (NGOs) in the global climate change regime. It first identifies some of the major actors and distinguishes between two main types of nonstate actors: NGOs and epistemic or expert/scientific communities. Special at...

Geographic indications (GIs) stand at the intersection of three hotly debated issues in international law: international trade, intellectual property and agricultural policy. Akin to a trademark, a GI identifies a good as originating in a particular region, where a given quality of the good is attributable to its place of origin. Well-known GIs inc...

The orthodox argument for IP proceeds in three steps. First, creative works are often difficult and expensive to create - think of the poet in pursuit of the right verse, or pizza-fueled late nights spent programming a new video game. Second, once the author or inventor produces the first version of a work, others will find it quick and cheap to co...

The aim of this paper is to analyze developing countries' participation thus far in the current round of services negotiations under the Doha Development Agenda. The chapter analyzes developing countries' negotiating positions, as evidenced by their multilateral negotiating proposals; their initial offers; and, to the extent allowed by the incomple...

One of the signal features of contemporary world politics is that intellectual property rights are increasingly an arena for global cooperation and conflict. The proper role, scope, and stringency of international intellectual property (IP) rules are highly contested questions, questions that more and more arouse both passions and interests. Once l...

The WTO TRIPs Agreement heralded a landmark and controversial change in international law. It significantly increased the power of international intellectual property law and simultaneously engendered debate over the status and scope of intellectual property rights. Perhaps the most theoretically-contested such right relates to 'geographic indicati...

The study of globalization is burgeoning across the academy, and is increasingly a topic of legal scholarship. While critiques and defenses of globalization are myriad, the theme most commonly propounded in legal circles is that of a democratic deficit. As decisions previously taken at the national level are constrained by, or undertaken through, t...

The orthodox justification for intellectual property is utilitarian. Advocates for strong IP rights argue that absent such rights copyists will free-ride on the efforts of creators and stifle innovation. This orthodox justification is logically straightforward and well reflected in the law. Yet a significant empirical anomaly exists: the global fas...

Jack Goldsmith and Eric Posner's "The Limits of International Law" is not an uplifting read for most international lawyers, who are trained to think international law makes an important difference and generally believe more international law is better. The authors' overarching message is that international law is an endogenous outgrowth of individu...

An overview is given of a set of reasons for supposing that postnational citizenship will in practice resemble the ideal of citizenship that is structured around the maximization of individual choice, discovery, and invention. By examining the relationship between law and territory in the nation-state, it is shown that the postwar wave of globaliza...

A common critique of international agreements is that they lack enforcement and are weak. A key element of this purported weakness is the lack of effective monitoring of state compliance. This Article explores two modes of treaty monitoring: "police patrols" and "fire alarms." These concepts, drawn from the literature on congressional oversight in...

Recent litigation over Guantanamo has turned on whether the detainees there have any constitutional rights cognizable by American courts. Why is geographic location thought to be determinative of the rights of aliens abroad? The supposition that law and legal remedies are connected to, or limited by, territorial location - a concept I term legal sp...

Territoriality is decreasingly important as a jurisdictional principle. Since the 1940s, federal statutes in a wide range of areas - antitrust, securities, criminal law, intellectual property, to name just some - have been frequently understood to have extraterritorial effect. Similarly, the protections of the Bill of Rights, once believed to apply...

International agreements exhibit a wide range of variation. Many are negotiated as legally binding agreements, while others are expressly nonbinding. Some contain substantive obligations requiring deep, demanding policy changes; others demand little or simply ratify the status quo ante. Some specify institutions to monitor and sanction noncomplianc...

This article examines the implications of the rising density of international institutions. Despite the rapid proliferation of institutions, scholars continue to embrace the assumption that individual regimes are decomposable from others. We contend that an increasingly common phenomenon is the regime complex: a collective of partially overlapping...

Many observers argue that sovereignty is threatened by the ongoing expansion of international economic institutions. This article explores a school of thought that counterintuitively argues that institutions such as the World Trade Organization in fact strengthen sovereignty. These theories collectively highlight an under-explored proposition: that...

Commitments are a persistent feature of international affairs. Disagreement over the effect of international commitments and the causes of compliance with them is equally persistent. Yet in the last decades the long-standing divide between those who believed that international rules per se shaped state behavior and those who saw such rules as epiph...

The prevailing form of international cooperation in the 20th century, known as liberal internationalism, is increasingly under attack. Based on multilateral treaties, often coupled to formal organizations, liberal internationalism has drawn fire from many quarters. Some critics argue that international organizations threaten national sovereignty an...

The proliferation of multilateral environmental agreements, up from about 140 in 1970 to more than 350 today, has increased the demand for data on almost every aspect of the Earth's biophysical systems. However, accurate and up-to-date environmental data for treaty monitoring, national reporting, and international environmental assessment are limit...

Conflitti alimentari: le indicazioni geografiche del commercio internazionale (by Kal Raustiala e Stephen R. Munzer) - Nel dibattito internazionale, attualmente le indicazioni geografiche sintetizzano tre delle questioni dominanti: l’international trade, la tutela delle proprietà intellettuali e le politiche agricole nazionali. Ed infatti, simile a...

Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are increasingly important participants in international environmental institutions. NGOs have been formally—but not fully—incorporated into what were previously “states-only” activities. This article surveys these new participatory roles and offers an analytical framework for understanding the pattern, terms, a...

In 1992 governments negotiated a multilateral treaty regime to manage biological diversity. Unlike the United Kingdom, the United States rejected this treaty. Yet both nations were equally at risk from biodiversity loss and equally likely to benefit from its protection. This empirical puzzle is used to explore state choice in regulatory cooperation...

A central feature of the biodiversity debate is the recognition that diversity is important coupled with disagreement over the exact definition of bio-diversity and the extent of the crisis.(2) Most of the scientists working on the issue believe that today's storehouse of biological resources is being rapidly depleted as human development increasin...

The purpose of this commentary is to explore the implications for democratic values and the governance of evolving modes of international cooperation. Nearly 25 yr ago Karl Kaiser raised this issue only to have subsequent scholarship mostly ignore it; it is time to revisit this question. While the authors share the concern of most analysts working...

The Convention on Biological Diversity has serious conceptual and practical shortcomings, and it will take a special effort to make it an effective instrument for preserving biodiversity.

Abstract will be provided by author.

Authors Jack L. Goldsmith and Eric A. Posner joined other top international law scholars in the fall of 2005 to discuss and critique The Limits of International Law, recently published by Oxford University Press.

Later this month, when you and your family are tucking into your holiday dinner, take a moment to think about where the food and drink on your table comes from, and the deep significance of geography to cuisine. Perhaps this connection is most evident in the wine on many holiday tables. "Burgundy," "Champagne," "Bordeaux": these words refer not onl...