Foreign affairs legalism, the dominant approach in academic scholarship on foreign relations law, holds that courts should abandon their traditional deference to the executive in foreign relations, and that courts and Congress should take a more activist role in foreign relations than they have in the past. Foreign affairs legalists believe that greater judicial involvement in foreign relations would curb executive abuses and promote adherence to international law. This Article argues that foreign affairs legalism rests on implausible a ssumptions about the incentives and capacities of courts. In U.S. history, the executive has given more support to international law than the judiciary or Congress has, which suggests that foreign affairs legalism would retard, rather than spur, the advance of international law.

In this Article, I examine the law and policy of military detention through the lens of After Action Reports produced by U.S. military Judge Advocates and interviews with non-lawyer service members directly involved with captures and detention in Iraq. Drawing heavily on these primary sources, I seek to enrich the context of the U.S. detention policy debate in general, and more specifically to highlight and dispute several assumptions running through that debate as it is currently conducted. The lessons taught by the American experience in Iraq suggest, for example, that detention policy progresses through a cycle in relation to sustained overseas combat deployments: It begins with a relatively discretionary approach premised on traditional law of war authorities and administered directly by the United Sates, but over time both legal and strategic considerations combine to shift the focus to host state criminal prosecution and host state administration of erstwhile detention facilities. As a consequence, one should not assume that detention regimes and facilities that may exist at one point in time in an overseas combat setting will continue to be available over the long term. The evolution of U.S. military practice and policy over the past seven years in Iraq also calls into question the common assumption that evidence-gathering and other activities associated with criminal prosecution are entirely alien to and incompatible with military training, doctrine, practice and culture, as well as the related assumption that the realms of criminal law enforcement and military detention without criminal charge cannot coexist. These lessons have direct implications for the future course of U.S. detention policy and practice in Afghanistan, and more generally help to reduce the artificiality of the larger detention policy debate.

Despite legal discourse on the facilitation of food trade, the role of international law in regulating food safety has not been satisfactorily addressed. This is particularly troubling when the organizations that are currently responsible for policing food safety - such as the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organization, and the Codex Alimentarius Commission - leave considerable regulatory gaps in this area. Recent outbreaks of foodborne illnesses display the need for reform. This Article will analyze the nature of the global food safety crisis against the background of economic globalization and the growing threat of foodborne diseases. In addition, it will examine the regulatory problems facing national authorities, including the United States, the European Union, and China, and international organizations, including the three mentioned above. Considering the shortfalls of the current system, this Article endeavors to identify key elements that will improve the international governance strategy for food safety.

The Tsukiji market, just north of Tokyo Bay, is the largest fish market in the world. Each day, over 40,000 licensed buyers and sellers crowd the fifty-acre market to trade over 400 species of fish, shellfish, roe, and every other type of seafood. From the tiniest shrimp to the largest bluefin tuna, nearly every ocean species can be found at Tsukiji. But it is this last item, the bluefin, one of the largest and most prized fish at the market, that has created not just an international controversy, but a threat to the relations of some of the world's most powerful nations. For the tuna - particularly the large, migratory Atlantic bluefin -  is, despite its large size, a microcosm of sorts for the general environmental and species degradation exacerbated by global trade, commerce, and industry. And the management (or lack thereof) of bluefin stocks represents much of what is wrong with current environmental treaty systems and international protection mechanisms.

The Atlantic bluefin presents a classic commons dilemma: one valuable resource, few real property rights. Moreover, the bluefin's highly migratory nature takes it through multiple jurisdictions and the high seas, allowing any fisherman with modern fishing equipment and a spotter plane to take what he can from the now diminishing stocks. Such easy access has proved devastating: Stocks in the eastern and western Atlantic have crashed to below twenty percent of pre-industrial biomass, yet nations still permit their fishermen to fish well above scientists' recommended catch limits. Worse yet, illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing has, by some assessments, doubled the annual catch that regulators have deemed acceptable. Though the international bodies that are supposed to regulate Atlantic bluefin fishing have lowered quotas in recent years, this has done little to stem the stock's decline. As of 2009, scientists wonder whether even a complete ban will allow the Atlantic bluefin to recover. Yet fishing persists.

Investment arbitration is an expensive endeavor. In complex cases reaching full merits proceedings, combined party costs frequently reach into the millions of dollars, and sometimes even into the tens of millions. Yet, unlike most domestic jurisdictions, the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) and the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) rules for the apportionment of arbitral expenses and attorneys' fees between parties leave significant r oom for argumentation and arbitral discretion. The possible effects of this uncertainty are large - ranging from reluctance to initiate arbitration on the part of claimants with relatively weak cases to effects on governmental regulation stemming from the prospect of being hit with damages, plus arbitral fees and legal costs in the event of an adverse cost award. Given the current popularity of investment arbitration, ensuring predictability of costs and fees is a worthy goal.