Governments regularly rely on citizens’ cooperation in exercising their authority, including the enforcement of rules. This is not only common, but also a necessary practice in a legal system. Technology makes such reliance easier, facilitating increased enforcement of law at little cost. Emergency provides an added legitimizing logic, encouraging citizens’ cooperation and leading them to uncritically follow the government’s lead to reduce the risk to the nation and to themselves. This article considers governments’ crowdsourcing citizens to monitor and surveil other (...) citizens. One central concern this practice raises is that it allows governments to circumvent the limits of their legitimate authority and to augment their power while also obscuring the actor responsible for the surveillance and enforcement action. Consequently, accountability and public oversight over the government are diminished. Where does conventional enlisting of cooperation from law-abiding citizens end, and crowdsourcing totalitarian mass mobilization of citizens against fellow citizens begin? The article’s principal claim is that a bright line should be drawn where governments’ crowdsourcing of information from citizens serves as a means to circumvent democratic checks on their power to collect information, while also disguising the actor responsible for the surveillance. Such practice severely erodes social trust between citizens, jeopardizing their ability to organize and collaborate as engaged citizens and thus serve as a check on government. It further grants excessive power to some citizens over others, endangering the latter’s freedom, especially where the information gathered is used to symbolically or actually exclude certain individuals from the political community. (shrink)

This Article examines the authority of states to settle individual private property claims in post–conflict negotiations towards settlement. We analyze this question by exploring the limits of states’ authority to take or limit private property rights for the public good. We argue that this authority rests on two cumulative justifications: the inclusion of the property owners among the public that stands to benefit from the public good, and their representation by the government that decides on the taking of the property. (...) In post–conflict settlement, the negotiating states may redistribute both private property and the public good between and within their respective communities. Their authority to redistribute continues to rests on the same justifications of inclusion and representation. Hence, their authority extends only to the redistribution of property of owners who are members of the respective communities that negotiate the agreement, and who are represented by a negotiating government. (shrink)

Labor migration is often regulated internationally through bilateral treaties signed between states, determining the conditions under which migrants from one state may travel to the other state and reside there in order to work. These instruments are sometimes designated as memoranda of understanding and regarded as nonbinding agreements. Many remain unpublished and undisclosed. This Article assesses these design choices critically. It considers the interaction between bilateralism, obscurity and nonbindingness. It evaluates and rejects possible justifications for obscurity and nonbindingness. Finally, it (...) argues that these design choices should be resisted. Since bilateral labor agreements do not regulate strictly the bilateral relationship between two states, but rather create rights and obligations for various third-party individuals, they should be required to meet a rule of law requirement of transparency. (shrink)