Search: crossing lines
20 Feb Bush’s Indefensible Comments on Peacekeeping in Darfur
...law requiring every Rwandan to carry an ethnic identity card. The lines between Tutsi and Hutu, which traditionally had been porous and informal, suddenly became permanent and legalized. The ethnic identity card requirement persisted after Rwandan independence in 1960. Tragically, the continued presence of this requirement accelerated the genocide, insofar as persons unable to produce a Hutu card simply were slaughtered. In every other respect, however, President Bush’s response makes absolutely no sense. There is no question that the colonial powers often created ethnic divisions where previously there were none....28 Nov Foreign Relations Federalism: The Promise of Targeted Retaliation, in Alabama
I’ve been arguing for some time (here, here, and here, all pre-SSRN) that the globalized economy enables the world to directly discipline US states in the context of foreign relations and human rights, and that this in turn erases the need for a dormant federal foreign affairs power. The thumbnail version: in the old world, state-level foreign relations activity involved intolerable externalities to the extent international actors held the nation responsible for state-level misdeeds, along the lines of Hamilton’s “the peace of the Whole ought not be left to the...
22 Jun An Opportunity to End Years of Impunity: Enforced Disappearance as a Continuous Gender-Based Crime
...adjudicated cases where the enforced disappearance concerned commenced prior to the ratification of the American Convention on Human Rights and the recognition of the competence of the Court by the State concerned (see, amongst others, the case Radilla Pacheco v. Mexico). Notably, the respondent State contended that the victim should be presumed dead, as he would have been more than 95 years old. The Inter-American Court rejected this argument, affirmed its competence and declared the State internationally responsible for several violations. Along the same lines, Principle 1 of the recently...08 Jul Emerging Voices: A View from Early Modern Cultural Studies on Fragmentation and the Law of Nations
...powerfully articulates such insights as well. Disciplinary Fragmentation My first interest here, however, is not normative fragmentation but a different though related kind of fragmentation, namely disciplinary fragmentation, specifically the present disconnect between international law and humanistic disciplines like literature and history. Fortunately, disciplinary fragmentation has left rough, jagged edges, and while I’m visiting here I want to take the opportunity to celebrate the craggy coastlines where we can still find evidence of international law’s connections with the humanities. The present distance between international law and literary and cultural studies...01 Oct On-the-Ground Intelligence Operations Backing Drone Strikes
...radio signals it collects, and gathering the voluminous intelligence necessary to prompt a single strike. Finally, perhaps for lawyers the most interesting observation in the New York Times piece, however, is the recognition – very wide recognition in the US across most political lines – that in fact drones are more discriminating and precise: [W]hile experts argue over the extent of the deaths of innocents when missiles fall on suspected terrorist compounds, there is broad agreement that the drones cause far fewer unintended deaths and produce far fewer refugees than...02 Oct Kiobel Roundtable: Who’s Afraid of Transitory Torts? Thoughts on Kiobel II
...as “case-specific deference to the political branches.” Deference does not mean obsequiousness, but it does mean due regard. As in the sovereign immunity field, there remains a need to balance the vindication of individual rights with the preservation of peaceful and constructive foreign relations. Courts are part of this process. In this sense, debates about the ATS are proxy wars for ongoing debates about the role of tort litigation as a regulatory tool and the role of courts in providing private remedies. On these issues, the battle lines are drawn....29 Oct Revised Article on SSRN: Transnational Tribunals and the Transmission of Norms
...legal and policy questions and consequently certain results are reached time and again and also certain expectations as to substantive ends arise. So it is not only enforcement, but it is the act, the method, the process itself, that is important for the transmission of norms. I conclude that instead of normative transmission being simply a form of legal imperialism by Western democracies, as some have argued, there are actually many different constituencies building alliances across state and class lines in attempts to forward their claims both domestically and internationally....04 Nov A Response to Mark Drumbl
...to compromise has opened, moreover, there is no obvious stopping point. There may be situations where the best case scenario falls short of even Mark’s relatively deferential standards. For example, deference to a dictator’s imposition of blanket amnesty paired with some minimal truth-telling process might be necessary to prevent imminent atrocities, even though the arrangement might fail some of Mark’s preferred criteria, such as those pertaining to good faith and democratic legitimacy. Should the specific guidelines still constrain in that circumstance, or should the Court revert to a general choice-of-evils...