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DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS FOR ASSIGNMENTS

Basics of IL  |  First Research Report  |  Second Research Report  |  Third Research Report  |  Fourth Research Report  |

The various assignments for the 2002 offering of the course will be distributed electronically by e-mail, throughout the term.

As each assignment is distributed, it will be recorded, here.

First Individual Assignment (due January 24th)

1. The following assignment assumes that you will read carefully chapters 5, 6, and 8 of the text for the course. We shall be discussing all of this material in class and in the labs before the assignment is due. The exercise also assumes that you have created a working web for your work in the course. The people in the Wednesday lab, last week, have already done this. The rest of the class will get their webs up and running during the morning and afternoon labs on Monday.

This is an exercise in thinking and writing about the origins and meaning of international law. Your answers should be clearly stated and well-reasoned.

2. Write a short essay of not more than five single spaced pages and save it in your web as a page called basics.html ["Page" means a standard eight and a half by eleven page].

At the top of the document write "Understanding the Basics of International Law: Myfirstname Mylastname"

Illustrate your essay with a limited (not less than six) number of appropriately sized images, following what you learn in the labs about how to illustrate web pages. Divide the essay clearly into sections, corresponding to the questions, below. Document your essay with citations, especially to the text but also to other library or web sources you use, following the citation style of the Review of European Community and International Environmental Law (RECIEL), which we will visit in the labs.

3. In the essay, answer in your own words the following questions. Your answers should be based on (i) your reading of and thinking about the material in chapters 5, 6, and 8 of the text, (ii) your class notes, and (iii) a limited amount of independent library and web research, specifically to supplement the material in the text book on the history of international law.

(a) Why are the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the Congress of Vienna (1815), and the Treaty of Versailles (1919) major turning points in the history of international law?

(b) Now, focusing much more narrowly on the period since 1970, explain why has treaty making become the dominant form of law-making in the international community? What roles in this process are played by the United Nations and related organizations?

(c) Identify the major reasons why states (meaning sovereign states) comply with the many international environmental agreements that have been negotiated since 1970. Why is pressure exerted by non-state actors important in understanding compliance?

4. After you publish your essay to your web, print a copy of the web page and hand it in as a hard copy document at the start of the class period on Friday, January 24th. [NOTE: Friday, January 24th is a Monday for purposes of class meetings, this term]. The printed copy should clearly show that the page was printed from an active web site, not from your zip disk or from a location on your own client computer.

5. Any essay published to the server after 2:10 p.m. on January 24th will not receive a grade.

The First Research and Writing Assignment (due February 6th as report1.html   NOTE: This is a revised due date).

Report 1: A Treaty Analysis: History, Theory, and Language

Table of Contents

History: Development, Negotiation, Adoption, and Implementation of the Treaty
The Operative Theory of the Treaty
Detailed Analysis of Treaty Text
Endnotes

A. Introduction and Requirements

These specific guidelines for the first research team assignment will be discussed and implemented in the labs during the weeks of January 27th and February 3rd.  

1. The work described, here, is to be published to your web by the end of the day on February 6th (or earlier, if you wish). Each member of the class is to publish the work to his or her own web. You do NOT need to hand in a hard copy of this work. IF you are working in a research team, publish the work following a collaborative effort to pull the various sections together and share them among the members of the research team.

2. Create and publish to your assigned server space, in a file called report1.html, a close and careful analysis of the text of the treaty you have chosen as the basis for your research and writing work, this term, in International Law.  The list of regimes available for analysis appears at http://psclasses.ucdavis.edu/pol122/regimes.html Each section of this work is discussed in detail, below.

3. Use internal hyper-links to connect the Table of Contents to the four sections of the work.

The chief objective of this report is to demonstrate that you know how to assemble, analyze, and evaluate in your own words a variety of information sources, both library resources and Web resources, that bear on an understanding of your treaty text. You need to show that you can explain to the reader of your web where your treaty came from (its history), what operative theory it incorporates, and what exactly the treaty says.

4. Under each of the headings in the Table of Contents, write at least four or five clear, concise paragraphs. When in doubt as to length, err on the side of more rather than less. Use the Endnotes section to identify the library resources, sections of the text book, and web sites you have relied on for data and ideas. Standards for citation are exactly the same as those you used in the assignment called "Understanding the Basics of International Law."

5. In addition, illustrate your analysis with relevant images you find on existing Web sites.

6. IF you are working in a team, you need to agree on a division of labor for this work. The name of the team member contributing each part of the analysis should then be identified in the Table of Contents. In order to complete and publish the work by the deadline you will need time, IF you are working as a member of a team, to assemble each contributor's piece into a single HTML document. Make sure you allow time for this assembly.  When the deadline is near and some member of your team has failed to deliver, the rule is to go ahead and publish what you have. The appropriate penalties, which are severe, will then be assessed against the team member who let the others down.

Organize your work under the following exact headings and address in each section, as you think best, the questions posed. The regimes selected by research teams for analysis cover a wide spectrum of substantive issues. You will need, therefore, to take the brief, generic questions listed, below, and adapt them to the circumstances of your particular case.

B. The Assignment in Detail

1. The History of A Treaty.

The purpose of this section is to explain the history of the treaty you have selected for analysis.

Ideally, you will discuss, here, how and when the idea for the treaty first arose, why people at the time thought that making a treaty was a sensible way to solve a problem, how, when, and by whom the text of the treaty was first drafted, how the drafts were changed by negotiation, perhaps over an extended period of time, and how and when the treaty was adopted. You should also address in general terms, assuming there is some experience to go on, how the treaty has been implemented since it entered into force.

You should try, if at all possible, to find a list of the treaty's signatory states and make a hyperlink to it. The most likely source of this data is the web site of the treaty secretariat.

IF you are dealing with a treaty still under consideration or negotiation, adjust your analysis accordingly. An essential first step in these circumstances is to determine whether there is a draft text of treaty language and terms that has become or may become the chief focus of international discussions and negotiation. For these topics, where international law in the form of a treaty is still developing, the history will generally speaking be much more recent than for the other topics, and may not extend much further back in time than ten or twenty years.

2. The Operative Theory of A Treaty

In this section, state clearly and in your own words how the treaty is supposed to work; how it is supposed to accomplish its goals and solve the problem to which it is addressed. Overall, the purpose of the treaty is presumably to solve, or help solve, an environmental problem that is present either throughout the world or in some large region of the world.

Distinguish clearly between the "outcome" the treaty is supposed to help accomplish and the "outputs" that have occurred since the treaty was signed.

Be sure to make it clear, too, whether the treaty operates directly or indirectly. We rehearsed this distinction in the classroom.

This section should also discuss whether law, in the form of an international treaty, is, in the judgment of informed observers and analysts, the only or best way to deal with the problem the treaty seeks to solve.

3. Detailed Analysis of the Treaty Text

In this section, you need to state clearly and in your own words, exactly what the treaty says about the following subjects:

(i) how, where, and when there is to be a Conference of the Parties (COP), or other regular meeting of the parties to the treaty,
(ii) whether there is to be a Secretariat, and how it will be organized and funded,
(iii) what proivision, if any, is made for Subsidiary Bodies, or other mechanisms for providing scientific and technical advice on a regular basis to the parties to the treaty,
(iv) provisions for amending the treaty,
(v) financial mechanisms, and
(vi) the provisions on entry into force.

4. Endnotes

More endnotes are better than fewer endnotes. Lawyers love to create notes. Indulge yourselves.

Cite web and Internet sources using the standard legal citation style in RECIEL, the same style you used for "Understanding the Basics of International Law."

The Second Research and Writing Assignment (due February 14th as report2.html)  

Report 2: Non-State Actors in International Law: A Case Study

Table of Contents

A Summary Overview of the Role of Non-State Actors
International Program of a Non-State Actor: A Case Study
International Participation: Extent and Impacts
Endnotes

A. Introduction and Requirements

These specific guidelines for the first research team assignment will be discussed and implemented in the labs during the week of February 10th.  Because of the short time frame for this work, the assignment is much simpler than others.

1. The work described, here, is to be published to your web by the end of the day on February 14th (or earlier, if you wish). Each member of the class is to publish the work to his or her own web. You do NOT need to hand in a hard copy of this work. IF you are working in a research team, publish the work following a collaborative effort to pull the various sections together and share them among the members of the research team.

2. Create and publish to your assigned server space, in a file called report2.html, a short case study of an international NGO you have selected as the most important non-state actor in the treaty regime you are studying, this term.  Each section of this work is discussed in detail, below.

3. Use internal hyper-links to connect the Table of Contents to the four sections of the work.

The chief objective of this report is to demonstrate that you know how to assemble, analyze, and evaluate in your own words a variety of information sources, chiefly in this case web resources, that bear on an understanding of a selected non-state actor.  You need to show that you can explain to the reader of your web why you chose this organization, what it does, and what impact you think it has in the international community.

4. Under each of the headings in the Table of Contents, write at least three or four clear, concise paragraphs. When in doubt as to length, err on the side of more rather than less. Use the Endnotes section to identify the sections of the text book and web sites you have relied on for data and ideas. Standards for citation are exactly the same as those you used in the assignment called "Understanding the Basics of International Law."

5. In addition, illustrate your analysis with relevant images you find on existing Web sites.

6. IF you are working in a team, you need to agree on a division of labor for this work. The name of the team member contributing each part of the analysis should then be identified in the Table of Contents. In order to complete and publish the work by the deadline you will need time, IF you are working as a member of a team, assemble each contributor's piece into a single HTML document. Make sure you allow time for this assembly.  When the deadline is near and some member of your team has failed to deliver, the rule is to go ahead and publish what you have. The appropriate penalties, which are severe, will then be assessed against the team member who let the others down.

Organize your work under the following exact headings and address in each section, as you think best, the questions posed. The regimes selected by research teams for analysis cover a wide spectrum of substantive issues. You will need, therefore, to take the brief, generic questions listed, below, and adapt them to the circumstances of your particular case.

B. The Assignment in Detail

1. A Summary Overview of the Role of Non-State Actors

Summarize in your own words the explanation of the role of non-state actors in international environmental law making and implementation that is offered in the text book.

2. International Program of a Non-State Actor: A Case Study

Select an international non-governmental organization (NGO) that is a key participant in the treaty regime you have selected for analysis in the course.  Explain CAREFULLY your reasons for making the selection.  Paint a short portrait of this NGO's international political and legal agenda -- what are the priority issues it works on and why does it believe they are important?

3. International Participation: Extent and Impacts

Summarize the evidence you can find of the NGO's direct participation in the affairs of the treaty regime you are studying -- attendance at COPs, membership of subsidiary bodies, contacts with the secretariat, and participation in conferences, forums, and other meetings.  What basis is there to conclude that this NGO has an impact on regime affairs?

4. Endnotes

More endnotes are better than fewer endnotes. Lawyers love to create notes. Indulge yourselves.

Cite web and Internet sources using the standard legal citation style in RECIEL, the same style you used for "Understanding the Basics of International Law."

The Third Research and Writing Assignment (due February 28th as report3.html)  

Report 3. Compliance and Enforcement in International Law: The Work of Sovereign States

Table of Contents

Choosing a Sovereign State: Reasons for Selection, Reputation for Compliance
State Capacity for Meeting International Obligations
State Contributions to Compliance: Domestic and International
Endnotes

A. Introduction and Requirements

These guidelines for the third research and writing assignment will be the basis for discussions and work in the classroom and the labs during the weeks of February 17th and February 24th, 2003. 

1. The work described, here, is to be published to your web by the end of the day on February 28th (or earlier, if you wish). Each member of the class is to publish the work to his or her own web. You do NOT need to hand in a hard copy of this work. IF you are working in a research team, publish the work following a collaborative effort to pull the various sections together and share them among the members of the research team.

2. Create and publish to your assigned server space, in a file called report3.html, an analysis of the work done in a single, selected sovereign state to comply with and implement the treaty regime you are studying, this term.  Each section of this work is discussed in detail, below.

3. Use internal hyper-links to connect the Table of Contents to the four sections of the work.

The chief objective of this report is to demonstrate that you know how to assemble, analyze, and evaluate in your own words a variety of information sources, including both library and web resources, that help to explain how and why a particular sovereign State is working to meet its obligations under international treaty law.   You need to show that you can explain to the reader of your web why you chose this sovereign State, what capacity it has for living up to the terms of the treaty, and what contributions the sovereign state is making to the success of the treaty.

This analysis, again, requires among other things that you survey and report on the laws and policies in place in a selected sovereign State in relation to the problem your treaty regime seeks to address and solve.

In the textbook, on pages 444-446, in a quotation from INSTITUTIONS FOR THE EARTH, by Haas, Keohane, and Levy (1993), we learn that

(T)he most important sources of variation... across our cases (of international environmental law making) do not derive from formal (legal) rules, but from variations in the degree of political pressure brought to bear on the issue by (domestic) governments responding to domestic political agitation.  Indeed, without public and governmental pressure, effective action is unlikely to take place. ***** Ultimately, (therefore), it is national decisions that affect environmental quality, even though international measures may have been necessary to overcome national reluctance to act and to reach harmonized national measures.

Thus, the text observes, most international environmental agreements must be implemented through national laws and initiatives.  And in this respect international environmental law is significantly different from most other areas of international law.  See the text, p. 446.

4. Under each of the headings for your analysis in the Table of Contents, above, write several paragraphs, at least four or five clear, concise paragraphs.   When in doubt as to length, err on the side of more rather than less.  Use the Endnotes section at the end to identify your web and Internet sources, as well as the library materials and sections of the text book you have used.  Standards for citation are, again, the same as those you used in the assignment called "The Basics of International Law."

5. In addition, illustrate your analysis with images and charts where possible and document it with hyper-links to data on the Internet.   

6. IF you are working in a team, you need to agree on a division of labor for this work. The name of the team member contributing each part of the analysis should then be identified in the Table of Contents. In order to complete and publish the work by the deadline you will need time, IF you are working as a member of a team, assemble each contributor's piece into a single HTML document. Make sure you allow time for this assembly.  When the deadline is near and some member of your team has failed to deliver, the rule is to go ahead and publish what you have. The appropriate penalties, which are severe, will then be assessed against the team member who let the others down.

Organize your work under the following exact headings and address in each section, as you think best, the questions posed. The regimes you have selected for analysis cover a wide spectrum of substantive issues and treaties in various stages of development. You will need, therefore, to take the brief, generic questions listed, below, and adapt them to the circumstances of your particular case.

B. The Assignment in Detail

FIRST SELECT A COUNTRY, following the guidance offered in the lab.  The range of choice is limited, (a) because almost all of you need to work with a country where English is the official language, or one of the official languages, and (b) because the United States CANNOT be the country you use for this assignment.  For the purposes of this exercise, it IS permissible to use the European Union as the unit of analysis, if you wish.

1. Choosing a Sovereign State: Reasons for Selection, Reputation for Compliance

Your first task is to summarize in your own words the discussion of compliance, implementation, and enforcement that appears in chapter 8 of the text book. 

What does compliance with international law mean?  How is it related to the effectiveness of international law?  Why do states comply?  And what mechanisms can be used to improve implementation and compliance?

In the light of your discussion of the preceding issues, WHY does it make sense to focus your analysis on the country you have chosen to write about in this exercise?  Was the choice affected in part by your selected country's reputation as a state that takes a strong interest in the problems addressed by your treaty regime?  What explains this interest?

2. State Capacity for Meeting International Obligations

Make a list or narrative sketch of the agencies of government in your selected sovereign State that are actively involved in treaty compliance.  In most cases, you can limit this analysis to the national (federal) level of government, without worrying about state, provincial, regional, or local entities. 

Agencies act on the basis of legal mandates.  So, you also need to explain (i) how in your selected country municipal law incorporates the terms of the treaty and (ii) what other laws your State has on its statute books that try to solve on a domestic basis the problems that the treaty tries to deal with on an international basis? 

What specific programs and activities does the State undertake through its agencies to implement the requirements of international and domestic law?  Describe these programs in some detail, so that it is clear, for example, whether they involve activities like data collection and monitoring or involve more aggressive activities like permitting, standard setting, and legal enforcement against non-complying parties. 

Try to make some overall, summary estimate, at least in qualitative terms and with numbers if they are available, of the resources the State commits to implementation, each year. 

3. State Contributions to Compliance: Domestic and International

Assess and evaluate the contribution that is made by the sovereign State you have selected to the success and effectiveness of the international treaty you are studying.  

Would you say, for example, that the contribution is average, when measured against that of other States?   Above average?  Below average?  What evidence supports these assessments?  Does your selected country make regular reports to the COP about its work under the treaty, and what do these reports say?

Even if it is hard to make these comparative assessments, do you think a case can be made that without the contributions made by your selected State the treaty would not be effective at all?  When you look at the data assembled by the Earth Negotiations Bulletin, for example, and published on the IISD's Linkages web site, does the sovereign State you have chosen for analysis seem to play a regular and prominent role in the kinds of international meetings, conferences, and fora you analyzed in the second research report?  Does your selected country house the treaty secretariat or play host to international governmental organizations important for treaty success?

Finally, if it's true, as noted above, that sovereign State compliance with international law is shaped importantly by "domestic political agitation," there must be some evidence that a variety of interest groups within your country take an interest in the affairs and activities of the treaty regime.  Summarize and present this evidence.

4. Endnotes

More endnotes are better than fewer endnotes.  Lawyers love to create notes.  Indulge yourselves.  And draw on the online international law journals.

Cite web and Internet sources using standard legal citation style, such as that used in the Review of European Community and International Environmental Law.  This is the same style you used to format the notes for your first individual assignment and for all other reports.

The Fourth Research and Writing Assignment (due on March 19th at 3:30 p.m. or before this deadline, at your discretion, as report4.html)  

Report 4. International Law in Critical and Comparative Perspective: Pulling Together the Threads

Table of Contents

Question 1
Question 2
Question 3
Endnotes (organized into sub-sections, by question)

A. Introduction and Requirements

These guidelines for the fourth research and writing assignment will be the basis for discussions and work in the classroom and the labs during the weeks of March 3rd and March 10th, 2003. 

1. The work described, here, is to be published to your web absolutely no later than 3:30 p.m. on March 19th, 2003, or earlier if you wish, as a file in your course web called report4.html.

Each member of the class is to publish the work to his or her own web. You do NOT need to hand in a hard copy of this work. IF you are working in a research team, publish the work following a collaborative effort to pull your answers to the various questions together.  Each member of the class must, however, answer the questions individually, on his or her own web site.

2. Create and publish to your assigned server space, in a file called report4.html, your best answers to three of the following questions.

3. Use internal hyper-links to connect the Table of Contents to the four sections of the work.

The chief objective of this report is to demonstrate that you know how to pull together and state, summarily, some of the most important lessons you have learned about international law, this term.

4. For each question you choose to answer, write at least six or eight clear, concise paragraphs.  When in doubt as to length, err on the side of more rather than less.  Use the Endnotes section at the end to identify, question by question, your text book, web, and Internet sources.  Standards for citation are, again, the same as those you used in the assignment called "The Basics of International Law."

5. In addition, illustrate your answers with images and charts where possible and document them with hyper-links to relevant data on the Internet.   

6. IF you are working in a team, you may collaborate on a discussion of the answers to these questions.  Each student must, however, write the answers independently.

B. The Assignment in Detail

Answer three of the following questions:

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS

FINAL EXAMINATION, WINTER TERM 2003

DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

INTERNATIONAL LAW

5. What in your view is the best way to design international treaties so that they can most effectively solve existing resource and environmental problems and promote a more sustainable future?  With respect to the specific treaty regime you have worked on, this term, explain what reforms you and other students of the regime think are needed and why you think they would make the treaty regime more effective.

6. "International law will never be capable of achieving spectacular results like the wholesale reversal of current trends of environmental degradation and species extinction."  Discuss and illustrate the truth of this assertion.

4. Endnotes

More endnotes are better than fewer endnotes.  Lawyers love to create notes.  Indulge yourselves.  And draw on the online international law journals.

Cite web and Internet sources using standard legal citation style, such as that used in the Review of European Community and International Environmental Law.  This is the same style you used to format the notes for your first individual assignment and for all other reports.