Synopses & Reviews
Sixty years ago, the United States and Great Britain spearheaded efforts tocreate a new world order based on international rules. Today these two nations are leading the charge to disregard the very global safeguards they once fought to establish. In this eye-opening book, international lawyer Philippe Sands explains why this radical policy shift has occurred and how it will affect twenty-first-century world politics.
Using the events of September 11 and the subsequent "war on terror" as justification, the Bush administration has turned its back on many international agreements governing basic human rights, war, torture, the environment, and free trade, with Tony Blair often colluding. Focusing on watershed events such as the repudiation of the Kyoto Protocol and the abuses at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, Sands argues that the United States and Britain are undermining international law at the precise moment when it has become most essential.
Crisp, impassioned, and hard hitting, Lawless World is at once an exposé and an indictment of a catastrophic realignment of the laws that govern international affairs.
Review
“In this expert and judicious study, Philippe Sands portrays a frightening image of ‘America unbound,’ self-exempted from the delicate fabric of international law on which human survival rests.” —Noam Chomsky
“A penetrating and detailed account of the extent to which those who claim to be spreading global values have ridden roughshod over them.” —The Observer (London)
“Lawless World goes to the very heart of the nature of the international order and its future.” —The Guardian (London)
Synopsis
An international lawyer offers this explosive examination of how current U.S. and British government policies are undermining the international global order.
Synopsis
"In this expert and judicious study, Philippe Sands portrays a frightening image of 'America unbound,' self-exempted from the delicate fabric of international law on which human survival rests."
-Noam Chomsky
"A penetrating and detailed account of the extent to which those who claim to be spreading global values have ridden roughshod over them."
-The Observer (London)
"Lawless World goes to the very heart of the nature of the international order and its future."
-The Guardian (London)
Synopsis
Sixty years ago, the United States and Great Britain spearheaded efforts to create a new world order based on international rules. Today these same two nations are leading the charge to abandon many of the global safeguards they once fought to establish. Crisp, impassioned, and hard-hitting, Lawless World is an exposé and an indictment of a catastrophic realignment of the laws that govern international affairs, the book that broke the stories on the "Downing Street memo" and the "White House meeting memo." It is also a vivid and human account of the reckless way America has reneged on its very founding documents-and a call for us to recognize the role we should be playing to reassert the rule of law, and with it a stable, secure world.
About the Author
Philippe Sands is an international lawyer, professor at University College London, and a practicing barrister. Sands has been involved in many of the recent high profile cases in the World Court and elsewhere, including representing the interests of the British detainees at Guantánamo and the efforts to extradite Augusto Pinochet to Spain. He has written for the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, taught at NYU and Boston College, and appears regularly on CNN and the BBC.
Table of Contents
Contents Preface xi
Acknowledgements xxi
List of Abbreviations xxvii
1 International Law: A Short and Recent History
1
2 Pinochet in London
23
3 A New International Court
46
4 Global Warming: Throwing Precaution to the Wind
46
5 Good Trade, Bad Trade, Cheap Shrimp
95
6 A Safer World, for Investors
117
7 Guantánamo: The Legal Black Hole
143
8 Kicking Ass in Iraq
174
9 Terrorists and Torturers
205
10 Tough Guys and Lawyers
223
11 Window Dressing
240
APP: IXES
I. Atlantic Charter (1941)
257
II. Charter of the United Nations (1945)
259
III. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
263
IV. Geneva Convention III Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (1949) and Geneva Protocol I (1977)
266
V. Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984)
273
VI. Rome Statue of the International Criminal Court (1998)
277
VII. The North American Free Trade Agreement (1994)
286
VIII. The Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization (1994), General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (1994)
289
IX. UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992) and the Kyoto Protocol (1997)
291
Notes 297
Index 315