Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation
14 Dec Towards a Pluralism of International Law(s)?
suggest, as I do here, that we increasingly have regime specific “international laws” with different conceptions of law, lawmakers, sources, and legitimacy. A third possibility would be that we need to think in terms of plural conceptions of law or plural legal systems. This is the suggestion raised in a couple of the symposium discussions. Ming-Sung Kuo, in “Taming Governance with Legality? Critical Reflections upon Global Administrative Law as Small-c Global Constitutionalism,” raises the question whether Global Administrative Law (GAL) represents the global constitutionalization of public law governance. But where...26 Apr Israel, Gaza, and the End of “Effective Control”
[Elizabeth Samson, Esq. is a Visiting Fellow at the Hudson Institute] This is our sixth post of our Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation. Earlier posts can be found in the Related Links at the end of this post. I am very pleased to contribute to this symposium and to offer an analysis of international occupation law that may bring a new understanding to the discussion of this most challenging issue. In determining the legitimacy of Israel’s actions with respect to Gaza since Israeli disengagement from...
07 Nov From ‘Nuclear Weapons’ to ‘Climate Change’: The ICJ’s Approach to the lex specialis Maxim
to displacing the general rule. As revealed in the International Law Commission (ILC)’s commentary on the fragmentation of international law, “[t]he application of special law does not normally extinguish the relevant general law. That general law will remain valid and applicable and will…continue to give direction for the interpretation and application of the relevant special law…” (p. 178) (emphasis added). Further, in Construction of Wall, the ICJ shed light on its Opinion, stating that some rights “…may be matters of both these branches of international law…namely [IHRL] and, as lex...26 Feb Symposium: The Assumptions of Koh’s Transnational Legal Process as Counter-Strategy
[Craig Martin is a Professor of Law at Washburn University School of Law, and is Co-Director of the International and Comparative Law Center at Washburn Law.] This post will bring to a close the formal part of the virtual symposium on Harold Koh’s recent article The Trump Administration and International Law. As moderator, I would like to begin by thanking all those who contributed (including a couple of announced contributors who we unfortunately lost along the way to illness and crises). I think that each of the essays has raised...
23 Mar TWAIL Pedagogy: Un-Learning Colonial Ways of Teaching International Law
Dr Mohsen al Attar and Dr Rafael Quintero Godínez** Modern legal education has been criticised for trying to make itself harmless. Law professors provide students with a sanitised view of the field that camouflages the cracks and contradictions on offer. This approach leads to the circulation of parochial knowledge that overlooks the nuances of the societies we inhabit and the struggles that take place. While this approach has limitations across legal education, its implications are especially pernicious in international law. Mainstream approaches dominate the teaching of international law. They present...13 Feb Treaties and Soft Law Stories, A Reply to Raustiala
“soft law” oxymoronic, as Kal says, but so is the term “international law.” International law does not “bind” a state in anything like the way domestic law binds domestic actors. The point here is that whatever soft law is, and whatever international law is, worrying about whether they should be called “law” makes little sense unless we know what “law” is. How International Law Works is, in significant part, an effort to help us understand what international law is. Kal argues that there may be more to the distinction between...
23 Aug Symposium on the Sentimental Life of International Law: The Affect of International Law
authority. There he rehearses his discussion, to have more play in his new book, of “bathos,” that law’s technocratic, procedural process can never encompass the horrors of great evil. In this earlier book, Simpson identified a tension within war crimes law: “I argue that war crimes law negotiates between a liberal cosmopolitanism (emphasizing individual responsibility, the rule of law, internationalism, tolerance of one’s adversaries) and an illiberal or romantic nationalism (emphasizing collective guilt, national prerogatives, procedural anti-formalism, and exemplary justice for outlaws).” [24] In his new book, Simpson is less...
20 Jan Soleimani and Targeted Killings of Enemy Combatants – Part II: “Geneva Law” versus “Hague Law”
humanitarian law to its protective parts – “Geneva law” – but not to its rules on targeting – “Hague Law”. Extending the requirement of a certain level of intensity and duration to international armed conflicts The “first shot”-theory is not undisputed. Some doubt the feasibility and sense of applying international humanitarian law to all situations of inter-state hostilities. One view converges the different definitions of non-international and international armed conflicts by requiring a certain level of intensity and/or duration for the latter category as well. For example, former Special Rapporteur...
30 Mar International Cyber Law Strategy for the UN Global Mechanism
on how states define their scope and tasks. Four Functions for Advancing International Law The first international law deliverable of the Global Mechanism would be an international law reporting function. This would involve annual reporting on Member States’ international law practices, including, for example, adopted or revised national positions on the application of international law in cyberspace, expressions of opinio juris, invocations of international law in response to cyber operations, and relevant domestic or regional jurisprudence. Reporting mechanisms in other areas of international law, such as human rights treaty bodies...