Search: Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation
16 Dec Guest Post: General Court of the European Union annuls the EU-Morocco Free Trade Agreement on Human Rights Grounds but Forgets Self-Determination
and the Air Transport Association of America and Others v Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, (Case C-366/10, 2011, paras 101-111) the European Union is bound by international law, including customary international law. However, to consider customary international law as a benchmark against which the lawfulness of EU acts can be reviewed, the rule should be binding on the European Union, with its content sufficiently precise. Nonetheless, in this case, the Court fails to apply international law since it does not seem to understand the distinction between the...
09 Aug Muddying the Waters: A Reply to Kay and Kern on the Statehood of Palestine and the ICC – Part II
role of recognition in the law and practice of session” in Marcelo G. Kohen (ed.), Secession: International Law Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 136. Israel is not Palestine’s parent state. However, an argument could be made that Palestine’s title to the territories occupied since 4 June 1967 compensates for the lack of effective governmental power over all its territories (such as Area C) given that the lack of such control is the result of unlawful conduct by Israel. For five decades, the Government of Israel has persistently refused to...
05 Mar If Unilateral Force Becomes Normalized, Who Will be Disciplined Next and by Whom? The Structural Vulnerability of Third World Sovereignty
It functions to preserve asymmetry allowing powerful States to manage legality while weaker States remain subject to it. The long-claimed universality of international law has often been uneven its operation. For many post-colonial States, the law is encountered less as a shield than as a mechanism of regulation. As TWAIL scholars have argued, international law emerged historically alongside imperial governance, structuring hierarchies of authority while maintaining the rhetoric of equality. According to the analysis of Anthony Anghie, while international law maintaining formal equality, it demonstrated historical differentiation between ‘civilized’ and...11 Nov Would Secession by California and Oregon Be Legal?
...in its own internal arrangements, is entitled to the protection under international law of its territorial integrity. In other words, international law guarantees to every state its “territorial integrity” and it can’t be overridden by “self determination” unless serious freedoms or discrimination against residents in the seceding region are being infringed. Moreover, this right has generally only been exercised by states under colonization or foreign occupation. The right might also exist if the state is facing the threat of egregious human rights violations (e.g. Kosovo), but the right in even...22 Jan [Kevin Bangs Head on Table Repeatedly]
...Vietnam: They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence in 1945 after a combined French and Japanese occupation, and before the Communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not “ready” for independence, and we again fell victim to...06 Apr Spoils of War and The Golden Tablet of Ishta Temple
...returned some, but not all, of the objects in 1957…. The estate claims that under the applicable laws of the Soviet Union … cultural property taken by Russian troops during the occupation of Berlin after World War II was lawfully transferred from one sovereign to another and that this taking of the gold tablet by Russian troops extinguished the rights of the museum pursuant to international law. Thus, a party subsequently acquiring the tablet could obtain good title and transfer good title to others. The museum maintains, however, that the...
13 Nov Symposium on Erin Pobjie’s Prohibited Force: Scoping out the Prohibition on the Use of Force in Anomalous Situations
has limits under contemporary international law. As Adil Haque puts it “Under the law of self-defense, even a legitimate aim must be set aside if it is outweighed by the harmful effects of the force necessary to achieve it.” As is well known to readers of this blog-site there are attempts to infuse the law of self-defence with old ideas from the law of neutrality. The suggestion is that, where a state is unwilling or unable to deal with threats emanating from its territory, the law of self-defence would allow...16 Mar Cheng Book Roundtable: When Should a Court Not Decide (A Response to Professor Brown)
Mihai Martoiu Ticu == But should the Court have accepted a request that so clearly sought to use a court of law, whose legitimacy depends on it being perceived to offer neutral advice, for the political purposes of some states to engage in what we now call "law-fare"?== Is that not what happens in all lawsuits? If I believe that Johny has stolen my wallet and I ask a judge to give me my wallet back, I use a court of law, whose legitimacy depends on it being perceived to...07 Dec Secretary Rice, Torture, and the Meaning of Berlin
...adviser wrote in 2002 about why it is important to follow the path of international law, law that the U.S. itself had created over decades of practice: *It has high costs in terms of negative international reaction, with immediate adverse consequences for the conduct of our foreign policy.*It will undermine public support among critical allies, making military cooperation more difficult to sustain.*Europeans and others will likely have legal problems with extradition and other forms of cooperation in law enforcement, including brining terrorists to justice.*It may provoke some individual foreign prosecutors...