Simon Chesterman
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 3604442 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Simon Chesterman |
| PRENOMES | Simon |
| SOBRENOME | Chesterman |
| ASSINATURA | CHESTERMAN S |
| AFILIAÇÕES | National University of Singapore |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3599-4573 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 48 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 99 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 45 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 3 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1997 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 7 |
Building trust in the generative AI era
The rapid evolution of generative artificial intelligence (genAI) technologies such as ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Gemini, and Stable Diffusion offers transformative opportunities while also raising profound ethical, societal, and governance challenges. As these tools become increasingly integrated into digital and social infrastructures, it is vital to understand their potential impact on consumer behavior, trust, information consumption, and societal we…
Silicon Sovereigns
Untied Nations? Saving the UN Security Council
The United Nations Security Council is often criticized for being unrepresentative, paralysed by the veto and impotent in the face of major conflicts. Yet, beneath these familiar complaints lies a more profound dilemma: whether international society still believes in the desirability, let alone the possibility, of a global legal order anchored in the Security Council. This review essay situates contemporary reform debates against that larger ques…
Lawful but Awful
“Fake news” is an old problem. In recent years, however, increasing usage of social media as a source of information, the spread of unverified medical advice during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the rise of generative artificial intelligence have seen a rush of legislative proposals seeking to minimize or mitigate the impact of false or malicious information spread online that is not covered by existing laws. Drawing on a novel dataset of statutes a…
Good models borrow, great models steal
Two critical policy questions will determine the impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI) on the knowledge economy and the creative sector. The first concerns how we think about the training of such models—in particular, whether the creators or owners of the data that are “scraped” (lawfully or unlawfully, with or without permission) should be compensated for that use. The second question revolves around the ownership of the output gener…
Through a Glass, Darkly
As computer programs become more complex, the ability of non-specialists to understand how a given output has been reached diminishes. Opaqueness may also be built into programs to protect proprietary interests. Both types of systems are capable of being explained, either through recourse to experts or an order to produce information. Another class of system may be naturally opaque, however, using deep learning methods that are impossible to expl…
Do Better Lawyers Win More Often? Measures of Advocate Quality and Their Impact in Singapore's Supreme Court
Parties to a dispute that goes to court typically seek to retain the best lawyer they can afford. But do the ‘best’ lawyers get better results? This article surveys the literature across various jurisdictions before introducing a recent study of determinants of litigation outcomes in Singapore. The focus is on whether there is a correlation between various measures of lawyer quality (size of law firm, professional status, years of experience, etc…
Can International Law Survive a Rising China
The founding myth of international law is the sovereign equality of its member states. How, then, can and should it accommodate the rise of one potential hegemon and the decline of another? This review essay discusses an important new book by Cai Congyan, of Xiamen University, that tries to reconcile an international rule of law with rising powers in general and the rise of China in particular. The larger theoretical project is less successful th…
Artificial Intelligence and the Limits of Legal Personality
As artificial intelligence (AI) systems become more sophisticated and play a larger role in society, arguments that they should have some form of legal personality gain credence. The arguments are typically framed in instrumental terms, with comparisons to juridical persons such as corporations. Implicit in those arguments, or explicit in their illustrations and examples, is the idea that as AI systems approach the point of indistinguishability f…
The Oxford Handbook of United Nations Treaties
The United Nations is a vital part of the international order. Yet this book argues that the greatest contribution of the UN is not what it has achieved (improvements in health and economic development) or avoided (global war or the use of weapons of mass destruction). It is, instead, the process through which the UN has transformed the structure of international law to expand the range and depth of subjects covered by treaties. The book offers t…
The Oxford Handbook of International Law in Asia and the Pacific
The growing economic and political significance of Asia has exposed a tension in the modern international order. Despite expanding power and influence, Asian states have played a minimal role in creating the norms and institutions of international law; today they are the least likely to be parties to international agreements or to be represented in international organizations. That is changing. There is widespread scholarly and practitioner inter…
Oxford Handbook of United Nations Treaties
Oxford Handbook of International Law in Asia and the Pacific
How “Public” Is Public International Law? Toward a Typology of NGOs and Civil Society Actors
Executive Heads
The executive head of an international organization (e.g. president, secretary-general, managing director, or some other title) exists in a curious limbo. He or she is entrusted to lead an organization that may employ tens of thousands of people and administer a budget in the billions of dollars. At the same time, however, his or her ability to operate independently of member states may be severely constrained by the powers entrusted to the offic…
Asia’s Ambivalence about International Law and Institutions
Asian states are the least likely of any regional grouping to be party to most international obligations or to have representation reflecting their number and size in international or ganizations. That is despite the fact that Asian states have arguably benefited most from the security and economic dividends provided by international law and institutions. This article explores the reasons for Asia’s under-participation and under-representation. T…
Responsibility to Protect, Responsibility to Whom
In the natural sciences, it is customary for theories to be tested and retested, falsifiability being one of the touchstones of academic rigor. In the social sciences, by contrast, it is common for ideas to simplify and ossify, with acceptance and repetition degrading them into clichés. So it is with a term like “sovereignty,” which is so loaded with significance that a precise and agreed-upon definition in politics or law has long been dismissed…
The Secretary-General We Deserve
As the United Nations prepares to select its ninth Secretary-General, who will succeed Ban Ki-moon after his term concludes on 31 December 2016, it is an appropriate time to reflect on the nature of the office, the eight men who have held it, and the manner in which the ninth occupant of the thirty-eighth floor of UN Headquarters in New York will be chosen. Encouraged by social media and a series of campaigns for greater transparency and diversit…
The Cambridge Companion to Human Rights Law
Human rights are considered one of the big ideas of the early twenty-first century. This book presents in an authoritative and readable form the variety of platforms on which human rights law is practiced today, reflecting also on the dynamic inter-relationships that exist between these various levels. The collection has a critical edge. The chapters engage with how human rights law has developed in its various subfields, what (if anything) has b…
Leading from Behind”
Humanitarian intervention has always been more popular in theory than in practice. In the face of unspeakable acts, the desire to do something, anything , is understandable. States have tended to be reluctant to act on such desires, however, leading to the present situation in which there are scores of books and countless articles articulating the contours of a right—or even an obligation—of humanitarian intervention, while the number of cases th…
Secretary or General?
International Territorial Administration and the Limits of Law
The year 2009 was one of many anniversaries for the state-building project. It marked ten years since the United Nations began its bold experiments of state-building in East Timor and Kosovo, now the independent state of Timor-Leste and the embryonic Republic of Kosovo respectively. It was twenty years since Namibia held elections in the course of becoming independent, heralding a new post-Cold War activism. It was also ninety years since the Lea…
Privacy and Surveillance in the Age of Terror
The Obama administration changed many things in its approach to dealing with the threat of terrorism, but has not confronted larger questions of the limits of government power to spy on its citizens. In Britain, a new government has scrapped proposals for an identity card system, yet remains at the forefront of video surveillance and has one of the largest DNA databases in the world. Existing rules have proven inadequate to the task of regulating…
'We Can't Spy … If We Can't Buy!'
Though it lags behind the privatization of military services, the privatization of intelligence has expanded dramatically with the growth in intelligence activities following the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States. Controversy over government reliance on outsourcing in this area frequently coalesces around issues of cost, brain-drain, and periodic allegations of self-dealing and other forms of corruption. More recently, however, the c…
Fool Me Twice
Ownership in Theory and in Practice
The language of 'ownership' is commonly used in statebuilding operations, but it is not clear that the term has either consistency or substance. It certainly does not have its literal meaning, in the sense of rights of possession either of property or a formal stake in an organization, such as shares in a corporation. Instead ownership tends to be used figuratively - much as 'buy-in' in this context usually does not suggest an actual financial tr…
Making States Work
The United Nations University is an organ of the United Nations established by the General Assembly in 1972 to be an international community of scholars engaged in research, advanced training, and the dissemination of knowledge related to the pressing global problems of human survival, development, and welfare.Its activities focus mainly on the areas of peace and governance, environment and sustainable development, and science and technology in r…
You, The People
Transitional administrations represent the most complex operations attempted by the United Nations. The missions in Kosovo (1999—) and East Timor (1999–2002) are commonly seen as unique in the history of the United Nations. But they may also be seen as the latest in a series of operations that have involved the United Nations in ‘state‐building’ activities, in which it has attempted to develop the institutions of government by assuming some or al…
Asia’s Ambivalence about International Law and Institutions
Asian states are the least likely of any regional grouping to be party to most international obligations or to have representation reflecting their number and size in international or ganizations. That is despite the fact that Asian states have arguably benefited most from the security and economic dividends provided by international law and institutions. This article explores the reasons for Asia’s under-participation and under-representation. T…
Leading from Behind”
Humanitarian intervention has always been more popular in theory than in practice. In the face of unspeakable acts, the desire to do something, anything , is understandable. States have tended to be reluctant to act on such desires, however, leading to the present situation in which there are scores of books and countless articles articulating the contours of a right—or even an obligation—of humanitarian intervention, while the number of cases th…
Good models borrow, great models steal
Two critical policy questions will determine the impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI) on the knowledge economy and the creative sector. The first concerns how we think about the training of such models—in particular, whether the creators or owners of the data that are “scraped” (lawfully or unlawfully, with or without permission) should be compensated for that use. The second question revolves around the ownership of the output gener…
An International Rule of Law
The rule of law is almost universally supported at the national and international level. The extraordinary support for the rule of law in theory, however, is possible only because of widely divergent views of what it means in practice. Disparate national traditions posed few problems while operating in parallel, but efforts to promote the rule of law through international organizations have necessitated a reassessment of this pluralism. This arti…
East Timor in Transition
This article addresses the work of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) and the particular question of when and how political power should be transferred to local hands. This is a crucial test of the United Nations' expanding role in such 'state-building' projects, and yet little serious policy research has been conducted in the area. In the case of East Timor, reliance upon the limited experiences of UNMIK, where…
Globalization Rules
Global Governance
Are Sanctions Meant to Work? The Politics of Creating and Implementing Sanctions Through the United Nations
Do sanctions work? The jury remains out on this question, but two preliminary issues bear further examination also. What are sanctions intended to achieve? And do states actually want sanctions to work? These essentially political questions depend on two discrete dynamics that are the subject of this article, which focuses on sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council. The first is the political context of the Council and how the intentions of …
Legality Versus Legitimacy
This article sketches out the nature of legal responses to humanitarian intervention in general and the Kosovo intervention in particular, with particular attention given to arguments that were not made. Though some possible arguments appear to have been omitted through oversight, the nature of the discussion suggests a view of international law as one policy justification among others. These debates are then situated in a broader historical cont…
Artificial Intelligence and the Limits of Legal Personality
As artificial intelligence (AI) systems become more sophisticated and play a larger role in society, arguments that they should have some form of legal personality gain credence. The arguments are typically framed in instrumental terms, with comparisons to juridical persons such as corporations. Implicit in those arguments, or explicit in their illustrations and examples, is the idea that as AI systems approach the point of indistinguishability f…
Occupation as Liberation
The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 has been the subject of much discussion for its impact on the use of force outside of UN Security Council authorization. Less commented upon is the fact that the so-called “Operation Iraqi Freedom” resurrected a body of international law that had been dormant through the second half of the twentieth century: the law of military occupation. Developed at a time when war itself was not illegal, this doctrine became …
Through a Glass, Darkly
As computer programs become more complex, the ability of non-specialists to understand how a given output has been reached diminishes. Opaqueness may also be built into programs to protect proprietary interests. Both types of systems are capable of being explained, either through recourse to experts or an order to produce information. Another class of system may be naturally opaque, however, using deep learning methods that are impossible to expl…
Great Expectations
Beyond Fusion Fallacy
Beyond Fusion Fallacy
Beyond Fusion Fallacy
Ordering the New World
Postmodern Culture - Volume 8, Number 3, May 1998
Skeletal Legal Principles’
(1998). ‘Skeletal Legal Principles’. The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law: Vol. 30, No. 40, pp. 61-88
Human Rights as Subjectivity
This article seeks to open up the question of the foundation of rights by reference not to their philosophical origins but their political function. I argue that attempts to ground rights in objective fact (such as human nature) or in pure reason (as self-evident) are futile, but more importantly are unhelpful in the broader project of protecting those rights that are recognised as universal. A more useful approach is to conceptualise rights as a…
Last Rights
[It] is not lawful for a doctor to administer a drug to his patient to bring about his death, even though that course is prompted by a humanitarian desire to end his suffering, however great that suffering may be ... So to act is to cross the Rubicon which runs between on the one hand the care of the living patient and on the other hand euthanasia—actively causing his death to avoid suffering
East Timor in Transition
This article addresses the work of the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) and the particular question of when and how political power should be transferred to local hands. This is a crucial test of the United Nations' expanding role in such 'state-building' projects, and yet little serious policy research has been conducted in the area. In the case of East Timor, reliance upon the limited experiences of UNMIK, where…
Legality Versus Legitimacy
This article sketches out the nature of legal responses to humanitarian intervention in general and the Kosovo intervention in particular, with particular attention given to arguments that were not made. Though some possible arguments appear to have been omitted through oversight, the nature of the discussion suggests a view of international law as one policy justification among others. These debates are then situated in a broader historical cont…
Walking Softly in Afghanistan
(2002). Walking Softly in Afghanistan: the Future of UN State-Building. Survival: Vol. 44, No. 3, pp. 37-45
Walking Softly in Afghanistan
Blue Helmet Blues
Are Sanctions Meant to Work? The Politics of Creating and Implementing Sanctions Through the United Nations
Do sanctions work? The jury remains out on this question, but two preliminary issues bear further examination also. What are sanctions intended to achieve? And do states actually want sanctions to work? These essentially political questions depend on two discrete dynamics that are the subject of this article, which focuses on sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council. The first is the political context of the Council and how the intentions of …
You, The People
Transitional administrations represent the most complex operations attempted by the United Nations. The missions in Kosovo (1999—) and East Timor (1999–2002) are commonly seen as unique in the history of the United Nations. But they may also be seen as the latest in a series of operations that have involved the United Nations in ‘state‐building’ activities, in which it has attempted to develop the institutions of government by assuming some or al…
Occupation as Liberation
The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 has been the subject of much discussion for its impact on the use of force outside of UN Security Council authorization. Less commented upon is the fact that the so-called “Operation Iraqi Freedom” resurrected a body of international law that had been dormant through the second half of the twentieth century: the law of military occupation. Developed at a time when war itself was not illegal, this doctrine became …
Bush, the United Nations and Nation-building
US President George W. Bush has repeatedly stated that the United Stateswill not cut and run from Iraq. More accurately, his administration seemsto be trying to calculate how much it can cut, prior to the November 2004American election, without appearing to run. This is a mistake. Quite apartfrom the unstable situation in which a premature transfer of power wouldleave Iraq, an accelerated handover could prove the one thing that topplingSaddam Hus…
Great Expectations
Does the UN have intelligence
Is collective security possible when evaluating and responding to threats depend on access to intelligence that, by its nature, cannot be shared openly? Debates over whether the United States should share intelligence with and through the United Nations have arisen in every administration and have been won each time by those who showed that it was in the US interest to do so. The question is no longer whether intelligence should be shared, but ra…
Making States Work
The United Nations University is an organ of the United Nations established by the General Assembly in 1972 to be an international community of scholars engaged in research, advanced training, and the dissemination of knowledge related to the pressing global problems of human survival, development, and welfare.Its activities focus mainly on the areas of peace and governance, environment and sustainable development, and science and technology in r…
After Mass Crime
International interventions in the aftermath of mass violence tend to focus on justice and reconciliation processes, elections, and institution-building. The frame of reference is at the state level, although the experience of crime by a population is also at the level of the community and individuals. Insufficient attention has been paid to the radical transformations in community and individual belief systems and codes of conduct after the expe…
Ownership in Theory and in Practice
The language of 'ownership' is commonly used in statebuilding operations, but it is not clear that the term has either consistency or substance. It certainly does not have its literal meaning, in the sense of rights of possession either of property or a formal stake in an organization, such as shares in a corporation. Instead ownership tends to be used figuratively - much as 'buy-in' in this context usually does not suggest an actual financial tr…
'We Can't Spy … If We Can't Buy!'
Though it lags behind the privatization of military services, the privatization of intelligence has expanded dramatically with the growth in intelligence activities following the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States. Controversy over government reliance on outsourcing in this area frequently coalesces around issues of cost, brain-drain, and periodic allegations of self-dealing and other forms of corruption. More recently, however, the c…
Fool Me Twice
I Spy
Globalization Rules
Global Governance
An International Rule of Law
The rule of law is almost universally supported at the national and international level. The extraordinary support for the rule of law in theory, however, is possible only because of widely divergent views of what it means in practice. Disparate national traditions posed few problems while operating in parallel, but efforts to promote the rule of law through international organizations have necessitated a reassessment of this pluralism. This arti…
Political science (43 obras) · Law (34 obras) · Law (26 obras) · Sociology (23 obras) · Politics (20 obras) · Global Peace and Security Dynamics (19 obras) · Computer Science (14 obras) · International Law and Human Rights (13 obras) · Law and economics (13 obras) · International law (12 obras)