Search: crossing lines

...the breaking of civilian will becomes the necessary predicate to any eventual enemy surrender. The tactical logic that plays out in contemporary sieges is consistent across theatres: encircle the population, sever supply lines, manipulate and obstruct humanitarian relief, and systematically dismantle and destroy the infrastructure that is indispensable to sustain life. These are not the incidental consequences of armed conflict. They are the mechanism. While the use of siege warfare is not prohibited per se and is lawful insofar as it is directed exclusively against combatants, siege tactics have repeatedly...

As I write these lines, the United States is fighting for the very soul of its democracy. Under dispute is whether their government can forcibly transfer a lawful resident – in this case a Latino with a tattoo – to a forced labour camp in El Salvador without any due process. For now, the US Supreme Court’s answer seems to be “no”, provided the Latino with a tattoo in question files a Habeas Corpus petition before deportation. The debate is raging on as US commentators decry just how limited this...

...as: the aircraft or munitions used, unique characteristics regarding how the attack was conducted, or – ideally – official Russian claims of responsibility. The Berlin meeting resulted in a shortlist of incidents involving attacks on hospitals, and some promising lines of inquiry regarding attribution to Russia. Preserving Potential Evidence Syrian Archive, meanwhile, was rapidly preserving online documentation of attacks impacting medical facilities in Syria before it could be taken offline and possibly lost. As of March 2021, Syrian Archive had preserved online, open source videos documenting 410 separate, verified attacks...

...that theory United States v. Lopez might have come out differently because it was not “really disputed” in the Lopez case that the gun in question had crossed state lines. In Lopez, however, the defendant made a facial rather than an as-applied challenge to the statute and, more to the point, the government did not try to prove that the gun had crossed state lines. Indeed, the court of appeals in that case noted that “[c]onceivably, a conviction” under the statute “might be sustained if the government alleged and proved...

...(ii) adequate school infrastructure, facilities and environment; (iii) a well-qualified teaching force; (iv) a school that is open to the participation of all”. Along the same lines, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR Committee), the supervisory body for the ICESCR, has underlined that acceptability of education includes curricula and teaching methods that are “relevant, culturally appropriate and of good quality”. Concerning infrastructure, the ICESCR Committee has stressed that States Parties must take measures to ensure the availability of education, including by ensuring availability of “buildings or...

...“adjacent to the coast.” Article 76 of the LOS Convention eliminates the adjacency limit, provides that each State Party has a legal continental shelf extending to at least 200 nautical miles from baselines (unless restricted by a boundary with a nearby state), and sets specific criteria under which some continental shelves may extend beyond 200 miles from baselines. The LOS Convention promotes the reliability of coastal states’ outer limits lines by creating a technical body, the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (CLCS), to which States Parties must...

...14 lines of difference including ‘gender, sexuality, ‘race’/skin-colour, ethnicity, nation/state, class, culture, ability, age, sedentariness/origin, wealth, North–South, religion and stage of social development.’ Lutz’s list is neither exhaustive nor definitive but, importantly, she warns of the dangers of keeping a closed concept that risks neglecting the spaces between these lines of difference. In my chapter, ‘De-essentializing Race: Intersectionality as a Feminist Approach in International Human Rights Law’, I argue that the conceptualisation of intersectionality should include as many multiply-burdened individuals as possible. As I show, if we fail to address...

...be outright criminalized, full stop? I had similar reactions at the start of my studies, and have had many conversations along the same lines. In this post, I will explain why international environmental law (IEL) does not contain that type of outright prohibition and why it engages in balancing, and then I will map out some of the resulting options for a crime of ecocide. Each option raises its own problems, so we are left with imperfect choices. It is possible that someone – perhaps some reader of this post...

...Presiding Judge Tarfusser stated: “For all these reasons, the Chamber, by majority, hereby: Decides that the Prosecutor has failed to satisfy the burden of proof to the requisite standard as foreseen in Article 66 of the Rome Statute.” (Acquittal ruling, p. 4, lines 14-16) This statement is curious, as the burden of proof contained in article 66 concerns the threshold relevant to proving guilt, not whether the accused has a “case to answer.” Article 66 reads: 2. The onus is on the Prosecutor to prove the guilt of the accused....

...and described operations in arming the villages and creating defensive perimeters; also in attacking Georgian police and military units and stations, to drive them out of the area. Those guys struck me as very, very, very dangerous – but also completely disciplined as fighters. Out of the front lines, the militia forces on both sides were untrained or at best ill-trained, and fought while drunk and high. David Rieff, who was on that mission, and I walked around the parking lot in Sukhumi where the militia fighters assembled to go...

...told, in effect, that they are not “gay enough” to be able to prove that they would suffer sufficient psychological harm. To be clear, I do not worry that Hathaway and Pobjoy or the judges on the House of Lords would stray in this direction. But credibility assessment at the front lines of refugee status determination is already a messy business, with adjudicators often tempted to probe the intimate lives of asylum-seekers more than they should.[7] I fear any interpretation of the refugee definition that might increase the risks of...

...angle takes a bit of trial-and-error to get right, but once you get the hang of it, its scanning is remarkably accurate — I average around 95-100% accuracy per paragraph of text. The pen is also smart: if you are scanning multiple lines of text, it automatically eliminates the hyphens that break up words that extend over two lines, avoiding the need to go back and eliminate them manually. I could go on, but you get the picture. The C-Pen 20 is a remarkable device, and I highly recommend it...