PSCI 3183 International Law Policy Brief
Relevance of this assignment
This assignment will help you identify an area of international law where you think there should be change. It will help formulate your writing, analytical, and persuasive skills as you try to persuade someone to take action on the issue. You may even actually act upon the issue identified in the brief.
Overview
For this assignment, you will write a brief that advocates for a particular action in international law, and you will identify and try to persuade a specific actor to help with that action. You may choose any action you would like – the possibilities are endless. For example:
Ask a country to ratify a treaty that it has not ratified. It could be a human rights treaty, a nuclear non-proliferation treaty, etc.
Example: The United States should ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
Propose to sue a country for violating international law, specifying the court where the suit should happen.
Example: France should sue North Korea in the International Court of Justice for nuclear testing.
Ask a country to withdraw from a treaty
Example: Mexico should withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Propose to reform an international institution or law
Example: The United Nations Security Council should expand to include additional permanent members.
I recommend choosing a country/ issue that you are passionate about. If you would like help formulating a topic for the brief, please reach out to me.
Then, you will identify a relevant actor whom you would like to send this brief to, to try and persuade to help with the action. Though I strongly encourage you to actually send the brief to this actor, that is not required for the assignment. What matters it that you identified a relevant actor to try and persuade.
Example: I will send this brief to Senator John Hickenlooper of Colorado and ask him to bring the treaty to the United States Senate for ratification.
Directions:
The brief should be around 750 – 1000 words (3-4 double spaced pages of text). Type your answers in 12 point font, with double spaced formatting, 1” margins, and page numbers. Do not include a title page, but type your name and topic of the brief in the top left-hand corner of the assignment. Upload your paper as a file upload or text entry to the assignment on Canvas by 11:59pm on Thursday, May 30. Briefs turned in late will be docked a letter grade for each day late, beginning immediately after the due date and time.
Include a list of sources consulted on a separate page at the end of the document (this list does not count toward the word count). You do not need to include major treaties in this list of sources.
You may use subheadings to break up the text as you see fit.
Using and citing outside sources:
Use reputable news sources, academic journal articles, and secondary sources as information to help formulate and write this assignment. You may also use the textbook, being sure to cite it as you would cite an academic book. If you consult Wikipedia, use it to identify and consult the sources it cites (at the bottom of the Wikipedia entry). If you have a question about the credibility of a source, feel free to email **************************** or ask me in office hours.
You may consult sources of AI, but do so with extreme caution. You should not trust anything AI says, and you should verify its information through other means. If you directly quote AI or if you find information on AI that is not common knowledge, you must cite it.
In general, what information do you need to cite? You cite any information that a.) you quote word-for-word from the original source or b.) unique information that you find in an outside source that is not common knowledge.
You do not need to cite information that is considered common knowledge. A good rule of thumb is if the information appears in at least 5 general sources, it is probably common knowledge. See here Links to an external site.for more on common knowledge.
If you are directly quoting a source, use quotation marks around the relevant text and cite the source. Be cautious of this when referring to international treaties. In these situations, you probably don’t want to take up too much space quoting the entirety of a treaty passage. Feel free to use elipses (….) and hone in on the relevant words from the treaty.
Cite sources in parenthetical format. Example: Smith (2008) argues that international treaties are binding. Or: International treaties are binding (Smith 2008). You can use any style for the list of references (bibliography) that you would like, just be consistent.
