- Posted March 05, 2012
- Tweet This | Share on Facebook
Examining the structure of power
Law Professor Jacob Katz Cogan recently spoke at Wayne State University Law School as part of the Program for International Legal Studies' continuing Winter 2012 Lecture Series.
By Steve Thorpe
Legal News
According to a legal scholar, the "humanization of international law" since the 1950s that led to an emphasis on human rights is now being countered by a "regulatory turn" that is marking the enhancement of the regulatory power of governments in relation to the individual.
Law Professor Jacob Katz Cogan of the University of Cincinnati College of Law lectured on "The Regulatory Turn in International Law" and described how the relationship between state power and international law has shifted since the end of World War II.
Wayne State University Law School featured the talk on Wednesday, Feb. 22, as part of its continuing Winter 2012 Lecture Series.
Cogan earned his law degree from Yale Law School and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University. After clerking in the U.S. Court of Appeals, he did a stint in the Office of the Legal Adviser of the U.S. State Department.
Cogan argues that, in the post-war era, governments have increased their focus on individuals and are less likely to defer to the wishes of other governments.
"There is a restructuring of power to and from the states and international institutions," Cogan said. "International control has, in some respects, replaced state control. And that shift, from national to the international, can threaten some state elites. But it empowers international institutions and their secretariats. It also empowers some domestic institutions, especially executive branches of some countries that exert considerable influence over international organizations. "
This effect, he argues, has significantly changed the landscape of international law.
As he said in his article on the subject in the Harvard International Law Journal in 2011, "The regulatory turn represents a fundamental challenge to the assumptions and dynamics of traditional international law. While once the international system shied away from acting directly on individuals, it now asserts such authority with regularity through the articulation of rules and the adoption of decisions. And while once international law deferred to states ... it now often eschews state discretion and instead dictates with increasing specificity the provisions to be adopted at the national and sub-national levels."
Published: Mon, Mar 5, 2012
headlines Washtenaw County
- National Center for State Courts supports new legislation to protect state court judges from escalating threats
- ABA Commission on Women in the Profession announces five recipients of the 2024 Margaret Brent award
- CDAM Honors
- ACLU launches interactive map that tracks book bans and other forms of censorship in Michigan
- Bodman attorney enjoys ‘code driven’ tax law
headlines National
- New Legalese: You may have heard a deepfake, but what about ‘Twiqbal’?
- From Intake to Outcome: An in-house lawyer’s guide to matter management solutions
- 2 BigLaw firms in merger talks that could produce 1,600-lawyer firm with top 50 revenue
- Send in the paralegals
- Lawyer reprimanded after mistakenly emailing opposing counsel with plan to avoid judge’s call
- ‘I don’t play well’ judge who threatened to track down, jail misbehaving litigant gets tossed from case