Christina Benson, assistant professor of business law in the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business, has presented and published a paper addressing the extent to which the United Nations and international economic organizations are permitted to support substantial economic restructuring and reform in order to promote international trade and "rule of law" in post-conflict countries.
In particular, her latest paper explores whether legal and economic reforms implemented by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and the Iraqi Interim Government during 2003-2005 in Iraq may have violated the principle of “conservation” under international humanitarian law, and concludes that such reforms may reflect evolving norms for “jus post bellum” under international law.
Benson was invited to present her article entitled “Jus Post Bellum in Iraq: The Development of Emerging Norms for Economic Reform in Post Conflict Countries” at the Mid-Atlantic Academy Of Legal Studies In Business Annual Conference, hosted by the Carey Business School at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., where she spoke on March 31, 2012.
The article was selected for publication in Volume 11, Issue 4 of the Richmond Journal of Global Law and Business (RJGLB), a highly regarded refereed journal on international law and business published by the ABA Accredited School of Law at the University of Richmond. The RJGLB is ranked No. 4 overall in the “International Trade” category and No. 80 overall under the “international law” category in the Washington and Lee School of Law Journal Rankings System, which ranks legal journals based on the number of times they have been cited over the preceding eight years as a measure of their impact on legal scholarship.
RJGLB editorial board members Fatema Munis and Josh Kaatz indicated the journal selected Benson’s article for publication “because it complements our mission of addressing emerging topics relating to international and business law, and we are confident that [the] article will have broad appeal to both practitioners and legal scholars.”