This essay will be answering the following questions: 1. How has the United Statess position on the legality of the use of force changed over the last 40 years? (50%) 2. What explains these changes? (50%). You must read the compulsory bibliography and some other academic sources you have found for yourself. The exact number of extra sources you find will depend on how happy you are with your argument and how much work you want to put in. (You may obviously need to revise the recent history of the country you are studying in its broad outlines.) Sources and Readings that MUST BE USED: USA Burns H. Weston, The Reagan Administration versus International Law. Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 19 (1987): 295-302 https://heinonline-org.ezproxy.library.qmul.ac.uk/HOL/Page?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/cwrint19&id=302&men_tab=srchresults Branch, Adam. “American morality over international law: origins in UN military interventions, 19911995.” Constellations 12:1 (2005): 103-127. Sands, Philippe. Lawless world? The Bush administration and Iraq: issues of international legality and criminality. Hastings international and comparative law review 29:3 (2006): 295-314. John Bellinger. The United States and International Law. Remarks at The Hague, June 6th, 2007: Anne-Marie Slaughter. The strike on Syria must herald a new Trump doctrine. The Financial Times April 11th 2017. Anne Orford. Trump v. the Law. LRB Blog 18th April 2018: HALF OF THE ESSAY FOR EACH QUESTION: You can divide your answer into two parts, each answering one question, or you can organise your answer so that you answer both questions simultaneously. The structure is entirely up to you. You don’t need to devote exactly 750 words to each answer, but your response shouldn’t be unbalanced in favour of one of the questions. – You may want to use the first paragraph to summarise the argument of the whole piece, or just the first section. Do not include a waffly intro with pointless context that everyone knows: . The United States attitude towards international law is increasingly in the news, and is very important to understand because etc, etc’. Get straight to the point. Note the weighting for both questions. You cannot simply write a descriptive piece. Possible things to consider include: New kinds of arguments becoming accepted as international law, changing state attitudes towards international law, changing domestic politics, broader ideological shifts, ‘self-entrapment’ because of previous positions taken on other issues, changing state interests, changes to the global economy and this state’s position in it, new geo-political alliances, activism around particular issues etc. If you use international relations theory (realism, constructivism etc.) that’s fine, but you will not be marked down if you don’t. You should be precise with language without worrying about legal technicalities. By ‘position on legality’ we mean general statements such as: ‘intervention is legal without Security Council resolution in case of mass atrocities’, ‘international law has become a tool of the Third World ‘tyranny of the majority’ at the UN and can legitimately be ignored’, ‘intervention without Security Council is legitimate if not legal only in case of mass atrocities’, ‘intervention in socialist states is legal since the boundaries between socialist states are artificial’, and ‘intervention is legal if the Security Council veto has been used irrationally’.
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