Over the last century, the international legal community has expanded by creating many treaties, agreements and inter-governmental organizations. With increased collaboration and relations, countries have incorporated various dispute resolution mechanisms to enforce this new law and procedure. These devices include regional tribunals, such as the European Court of Human Rights; dispute-specific tribunals, such as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia; thematic tribunals, such as the International Criminal Court; treaty specific tribunals, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU); and generalized tribunals, such as the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

International legal community advocates grapple with how the judgments and declarations by these tribunals can be enforced effectively and how to encourage states to comply with the decisions. This paper will focus on two of these bodies, the WTO DSU and the ICJ, examining their different methods of enforcement, the consequences resulting from a violation and the advantages and disadvantages of each tribunal. Read More | Comments

In March 1963, President Kennedy issued his dire prediction that within 10 years time, as many as twenty-one additional countries would have nuclear weapons. Forty-five years later, however, there are only 9 nuclear weapons states.

As a country that has been involved in numerous wars since 1952 – first against their colonial repressors and then against their regional neighbors – Egypt was seen as a primary candidate for proliferation, especially after revelations about Israel’s nuclear program came to light in the early 1960’s. Yet, despite intermittent efforts to build a nuclear weapons capacity, Egypt has repeatedly shown nuclear restraint. Its failure to build the bomb remains a puzzle for proliferation experts and International Relations scholars. The purpose of this paper is two-fold: first, it seeks to place Egypt’s nuclear past within the context of Sagan’s models for why states build nuclear weapons; and second, it addresses the likely course of Egypt’s future nuclear ambitions. Ultimately, it finds that while traditional security arguments and norms hold a small degree of explanatory power, Egypt’s nuclear restraint (or future ambition) is best explained when viewed through the lens of domestic politics. Read More | Comments