Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation
25 Jan The Draft Executive Order on Detention and Interrogation
not clear 3. Things blow up 4. When it blows up in their face, the lawyer said the law was not clear 5. We need to pass a law to make it "finally" clear. 6. Repeat 1-5 The ambitious lawyers to write memos that reinterpret the current legal regime - no matter what it is - are always available to please a torture oriented President . Their memos help block civil claims as they help the qualified immunity argument of the actors that the law was not clear. Now, uniformed...16 Oct Book Discussion Informal International Lawmaking: Conceptual Approaches
try to grapple with “the substantial extension of inter- and transnational cooperation beyond the traditional forms of international law”. What we hope this book adds to this broader debate is threefold: an in-depth analysis of the reasons why IN-LAW has emerged and is on the rise (sociologically, strategically, and normatively) an analysis of practical legal questions flowing from IN-LAW (is it law, does it have legal effects, do networks have legal personality, how does informal law interact with formal law, and what does IN-LAW mean for the discipline of international...20 Dec LJIL Symposium: A Comment on Ambrus by William Schabas
inside their own borders. For purely selfish reasons, they insisted that crimes against humanity be linked to aggressive war, failing which they would not be deemed offences at international law. In that way, Nazi atrocities against Jews within Germany could be punished as crimes under international law, while segregation and lynching in the southern United States (and similar acts attributable to Britain, France and the Soviet Union) escaped the net of international criminal liability. When these same powers concurred in the adoption of the Genocide Convention by the United Nations...16 Oct Comment on What’s at Stake in the Sovereignty Debate?
All Mi T The way things are going with the economy, debate aside, I would not be surprised if the next step over here will be martial law http://rawdawgb.blogspot.com/2008/10/next-stop-martial-law.html...03 Sep Ben Wittes’ Unconvincing “Hostage-Taking” Analogy (Updated)
Journal: In zones of armed conflict, targeted killing can be a lawful tactic. But outside the context of armed conflict, targeted killing is legal only as a last resort and in the face of a truly imminent threat to life–and then only because the immediacy of the threat makes judicial process infeasible. Outside these narrow circumstances, targeted killing amounts to the imposition of a death sentence without charge, trial or conviction. Ben Wittes disagrees with the op-ed in a post today at the new Lawfare. His argument, however, is unconvincing:...12 Feb The Model Air and Missile Warfare Manual
...what international law is, on the “back end.” For one thing, in general such operational documents, especially intended to instruct non-lawyers down the chain of command, stress easy to convey, bright line rules that can be followed by a 19 year old soldier or young officer. But for that same reason, they deliberately do not state the full legal scope that is available under the law. A manual in these circumstances might easily be cited to a court as evidence that the state actually understands the law to be narrower...10 Nov The Cyber “Shipwrecked” and the Second Geneva Convention
[Jeffrey Biller, Lt Col, USAF, is the Associate Director for the Law of Air, Space and Cyber Operations at the Stockton Center for the Study of International Law, US Naval War College.] This May, the law of naval warfare took a significant step forward with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) release of an updated commentary on the Second Geneva Convention (GCII). The updated commentary is the first since the original commentary was released in 1960, and recognizes significant changes both in the conduct of naval conflicts and...
07 Dec COVID-19 and Africa Symposium: “Jurislimitation” In Litigation In the Context of COVID-19, the New Normal?
...executive during times of crisis and emergency? Or should judges play a greater role in protecting human rights in context of the social and economic devastation wrought by COVID-19? These questions are of importance both in countries experiencing significant COVID-19 transmission rates and those who have not yet experienced the brunt of the pandemic. As former Liberian President has suggested, “Coronavirus anywhere is a threat to people everywhere”. International law and the right to effective remedies International law places obligations on States to respect, protect and fulfill human rights. The...13 Jun Boumediene and the Use of History; Boumediene & Munaf
...they reviewed the basis of the prisoners’ detention on the merits.” The Boumediene majority correctly notes that whether the key cases’ holdings “were jurisdictional or based upon the courts’ ruling that the petitioners were detained unlawfully as prisoners of war is unclear” (slip op. 17). Rather than attempt to answer a momentous question of U.S. constitutional law based on an ambiguous and incomplete historical record, the Court today quite properly turns to other sources of constitutional meaning, namely text, structure, the Court’s precedent and functional, consequential and prudential considerations. Well...