Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation
18 Dec Meaningful Human Control over Autonomous Weapon Systems: An (International) Criminal Law Account
of the IHL principles of distinction and proportionality potentially amounting to war crimes. Criminal responsibility for unlawful attacks against protected persons (e.g. civilians) or objects is one kind of responsibility that could arise in this scenario. In light of possible responsibility gaps and the cardinal notion of ‘control’ in criminal law, meaningful human control must be shaped so that individual criminal responsibility for unlawful attacks amounting to war crimes can be attributed. Amoroso and Tamburrini rightly speak of meaningful human control as ‘responsibility attractor’. As I have previously argued ‘the...29 Sep “Political” Commitments and the Constitution
a new U.S. security relationship with Iraq. The United States has long used political – or, non-legally binding – commitments as alternatives to its treaties, but the Executive’s authority to do so is un-theorized. And, although international law and international relations literature have studied political commitments extensively, conventional wisdom simply assumes that because they are not international law, they are irrelevant to domestic law as well. This paper challenges such views. We contend that the Constitution regulates the President’s ability to form political commitments and provide a comprehensive constitutional analysis...
06 Jan The Independent Oversight Mechanism: Procedural Questions into the External Investigation of the Prosecutor
[Ezequiel Jimenez is an independent researcher with a PhD in International Law (Middlesex University, United Kingdom) focusing on the history and practice of the Assembly of States Parties to the Rome Statute. All comments and feedback welcome at ezejim@gmail.com , @ezejim7 and @ezejim.bsky.social .] It is proper and necessary for every organization with a duty of care for its staff, including the International Criminal Court, to have a zero-tolerance policy for harassment or any other prohibited behaviour. A robust policy to that effect needs to be accompanied by an equally...17 Mar International Law and The Second Amendment
...those deadly weapons.” Contrary to this assertion, most foreign gun laws in democratic nations are not nearly as restrictive as those found in Washington D.C., where private individuals are burdened by an outright ban of all functional firearms in their homes. Much of the brief focuses on country-by-country comparisons. But it also has some fascinating historical analysis of international law (citations and footnotes omitted): Some of the earliest works on the subject of International Law were by fourteenth century Milanese scholar Giovanni da Legnano, whose work, De Bello, De Represealiis...06 Oct More on Releasing the Awlaki OLC Opinion
had as to whether to release the OLC opinion, redacted, or the preparation of a separate document that addresses the general legal theories as such. (I also agree with Jack Goldsmith, btw, that the real issues are domestic law authorities. I share Jack’s doubt that there’s much more to say about the international law behind this. One either buys the basic approach as a plausible line in international law or one doesn’t. One’s position in this turns on deep priors about the nature and sources of international law.) I realize...18 Jan What Governance Role Is the German Constitutional Court Playing?
English-language OJ readers are fortunate to have University of Connecticut’s Peter Lindseth spending the semester in Berlin as the Daimler Fellow at the American Academy, where among other things he is posting to the Eutopia law blog on various governance issues in Europe. (As I indicated in my earlier post, I plan to concentrate on international economic law, governance issues, and international and comparative law issues – including ones like this one, EU governance, in which as a non-specialist, I plan to act as facilitator, raising questions.) In a recent...02 Dec A Response to Milanovic
prescription. He explores in depth the two main approaches to extraterritorial application—broadly, territorial and personal– and finds them both wanting. As he shows, a territorial approach pushes courts inexorably toward ever smaller definitions of relevant territory in order to ensure, at least in cases that present uncomfortable or shocking fact patterns, that justice is done. (Rather than a nation or region or city, perhaps the relevant territory over which a state exerts control is a facility or building. And so on.) An approach based on persons, by contrast, has no...12 Sep US Envoy Killing Bolsters Case for Hate Speech Ban
at here, even when it implicates the constriction of rights. The logic has changed, though. It’s not so much that it serves the national interest (as in the foreign relation law logic above). It’s more that international law is demonstrating resiliency in protecting rights, in something approaching a constitutional system. If we don’t like something about international law, we can work to change it (just as we work to change domestic legal systems). As we become more enmeshed in international law, the less capacity there is simply to opt out....
08 Jun International Law for a Fragile World: Health and Human Risk – Pandemics, Inequality, and the Limits of Solidarity
[Dr Sergey Sayapin is Professor of Law at KIMEP University (Almaty, Kazakhstan) and Distinguished Visiting Global Scholar at the NUS Centre for International Law (2025)] If global risk has become the defining condition of contemporary international law, its most immediate and consequential expression lies in human vulnerability. Climate change destabilises ecological systems, technological innovation diffuses agency and outpaces control – yet it is through human exposure to disease, deprivation, and inequality that these risks ultimately materialise. The COVID-19 pandemic made this unmistakably clear – it was not merely a public...