The Law of U.S. Foreign Relations is a comprehensive and incisive discussion of the rules that govern the conduct of U.S. relations with foreign countries and international organizations, and the rules governing how international law applies within the U.S. legal system. Among other topics, this volume examines the constitutional and historical foundations of congressional, executive, and judicial authority in foreign affairs. This includes the constitutional tensions prevalent in legislative efforts to control executive diplomacy, as well as the ebb and flow of judicial engagement in transnational disputes - with the judiciary often serving as umpire but at times invoking doctrines of abstention. The process of U.S. adherence to treaties and other international agreements is closely scrutinized as the authors examine how such law, as well as customary international law and the law-making acts of international organizations, can become a source of U.S. law. Individual chapters focus on the special challenges posed by the exercise of war powers by the federal government (including during recent incidents of international armed conflict), the complex role of the several states in foreign affairs, and the imperative to protect individual rights in the transnational sphere. Among the contemporary issues discussed are the immunity of foreign heads of State, treatment of detainees at Guantánamo, movement of the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, state-level foreign compacts to address climate change, bans affecting refugees and asylum-seekers, and recent interpretations of key statutes, such as the Alien Tort Statute, the Torture Victim Protection Act, and the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.

A fresh look at the bridges and boundaries between foreign relations law and public international law.

International Law in the U.S. Legal System provides a wide-ranging overview of how international law intersects with the domestic legal system of the United States, and points out various unresolved issues and areas of controversy. Curtis Bradley explains the structure of the U.S. legal system and the various separation of powers and federalism considerations implicated by this structure, especially as these considerations relate to the conduct of foreign affairs. Against this backdrop, he covers all of the principal forms of international law: treaties, executive agreements, decisions and orders of international institutions, customary international law, and jus cogens norms. He also explores a number of issues that are implicated by the intersection of U.S. law and international law, such as treaty withdrawal, foreign sovereign immunity, international human rights litigation, war powers, extradition, and extraterritoriality. This book highlights recent decisions and events relating to the topic, including various actions taken during the Trump administration, while also taking into account relevant historical materials, including materials relating to the U.S. Constitutional founding. Written by one of the most cited international law scholars in the United States, the book is a resource for lawyers, law students, legal scholars, and judges from around the world.

Covers the entire range of the history of U.S. foreign relations from the colonial period to the beginning of the 21st century. A Companion to U.S. Foreign Relations is an authoritative guide to past and present scholarship on the history of American diplomacy and foreign relations from its seventeenth century origins to the modern day. This two-volume reference work presents a collection of historiographical essays by prominent scholars. The essays explore three centuries of America’s global interactions and the ways U.S. foreign policies have been analyzed and interpreted over time. Scholars offer fresh perspectives on the history of U.S. foreign relations; analyze the causes, influences, and consequences of major foreign policy decisions; and address contemporary debates surrounding the practice of American power. The Companion covers a wide variety of methodologies, integrating political, military, economic, social and cultural history to explore the ideas and events that shaped U.S. diplomacy and foreign relations and continue to influence national identity. The essays discuss topics such as the links between U.S. foreign relations and the study of ideology, race, gender, and religion; Native American history, expansion, and imperialism; industrialization and modernization; domestic and international politics; and the United States’ role in decolonization, globalization, and the Cold War. A comprehensive approach to understanding the history, influences, and drivers of U.S. foreign relation, this indispensable resource: Examines significant foreign policy events and their subsequent interpretations Places key figures and policies in their historical, national, and international contexts Provides background on recent and current debates in U.S. foreign policy Explores the historiography and primary sources for each topic Covers the development of diverse themes and methodologies in histories of U.S. foreign policy Offering scholars, teachers, and students unmatched chronological breadth and analytical depth, A Companion to U.S. Foreign Relations: Colonial Era to the Present is an important contribution to scholarship on the history of America’s interactions with the world.

Sean D. Murphy's wide-ranging and in-depth 2002 survey of U.S. practice in international law in the period 1999–2001 draws upon the statements and actions of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the U.S. government to examine its involvement across a range of areas. These areas include diplomatic and consular relations, jurisdiction and immunities, state responsibility and liability, international organizations, international economic law, human rights, and international criminal law. At the time of its first publication this summary of the most salient issues was a central resource on U.S. practice in international law. The volume contains extracts from hard-to-find documents, generous citations to relevant sources, tables of cases and treaties, and a detailed index. Revealing international law in the making, this essential tool for researchers and practitioners was the first in a series of books capturing the international law practice of a global player.

This book considers eleven key thinkers on American foreign policy during the inter-war period. All put forward systematic proposals for the direction, aims and instruments of American foreign policy; all were listened to, in varying degrees, by the policy makers of the day; all were influential in policy terms, as well as setting the terms of contemporary debate. The focus of the volume is the progressive agenda as it was formulated by Herbert Croly and The New Republic in the run-up to the First World War. An interest in the inter-war period has been sparked by America’s part in international politics since 9/11. The neo-conservative ideology behind recent US foreign policy, its democratic idealism backed with force, is likened to a new-Wilsonianism. However, the progressives were more wary of the use of force than contemporary neo-conservatives. The unique focus of this volume and its contextual, Skinnerian approach provides a more nuanced understanding of US foreign policy debates of the long Progressive era than we presently have and provides an important intellectual background to current debates.

The US-led coalition which launched an invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003 led to a decade-long military presence in the country. In the run-up to that invasion, many comparisons were made with the 1991 Gulf War. Ahmed Ijaz Malik takes these two instances of military intervention by Republican US governments to highlight how the official discourse of leaders and decision-makers has an impact on foreign policy and its results. By taking these two examples, he examines how discourse affects real events, and the extent to which the legacy of the Cold War has influenced the decisions which are made at the upper echelons of the US government. US Foreign Policy and the Gulf Wars critically analyses the post-Cold War liberal cosmopolitan and realist discourses related to these two instances of US military intervention. Using an approach which Malik labels 'critical realism', this book examines the ways in which discourses often act as ideological covers for material interests, whilst still not holding a deterministic view whereby these interests alone shape policies. From this perspective, this book assesses the themes of 'Just War', humanitarianism and cosmopolitanism. It furthermore uses the approach of 'critical realism' to engage with a variety of arguments on the emerging role of the US - as they were displayed in academic discourses and other intellectual contributions around each of the 1991 and 2003 wars. Malik relates these discussions to an analysis of the official discourses, documents and policies displayed prior to the 1991 and 2003 wars, as well as to an examination of the resulting actual conduct. Since the implications of the US military presence in the Middle East are so central to the study of International Relations and Security Studies, this book will be invaluable for specialists in these disciplines, as well as for those interested in policy formation and the wider Middle East.