Search: crossing lines
06 Feb Response to Roger Alford
...between these two pieces of the story is reasonably clear. The “Goldilocks” part of the story explains why England had a good head start on the race to world power. The clever strategy, the five point plan, shows how the British and then the Americans managed to turn this initial head start into a long term lead. But there is another question. It is one thing to say that having an open society – here, a society eager and able to develop along liberal capitalist lines – is the first...12 Jul Charnovitz on NGOs
...legal scene. Continuity is the message. To the extent that there has been recent change, it is not in the way of a revolution but rather of a “reformation” – “a return to an earlier doctrine so as to clear away errors, such as the excessive state-centricity of positivist orthodoxy.” The piece makes the best case that can be made along those lines. It is rich in its documentation of the early and mid-twentieth century literature on NGOs (including in the first volume of the AJIL itself), for which purposes...30 Nov The Corrosive Risks of Lawless Leadership
...civilized. That was my duty as their leader . . . War gives the appearance of condoning almost everything, but men must live with their actions for a long time afterward. A leader has to help them understand that there are lines they must not cross. He is their link to normalcy, to order, to humanity. If the leader loses his own sense of propriety or shrinks from his duty, anything will be allowed . . . War is, at its very core, the absence of order; and the absence...15 Dec The Noble Lie and International Politics
...the answer is something along the lines of the limitations that law has to compel or induce states on issues of critical national importance. But, why would this issue, which is certainly not controversial to or disputed by most historians, constitute a sufficiently important issue that Turkey would be willing to jeopardize its EU accession talks? I’m reminded of the noble lie in Plato’s Republic, in which it is acknowledged that all states have their origins in brutality and blood, and therefore all states create national myths about their foundings...17 Apr Jennifer Trahan’s Cambodia Problem
...the possibility of the appointment of a group of experts to evaluate the existing evidence and propose further measures, as a means of bringing about national reconciliation, strengthening democracy and addressing the issue of individual accountability.” The group of experts recommended the UN create an ad hoc tribunal along the lines of the ICTY and ICTR, but Cambodia favoured a more internationalized tribunal based in its own judicial system. Cambodia thus asked the UN to help it draft legislation for such a tribunal. In response, “the Secretary-General entered into negotiations...16 Nov The Sovereigntist Premise of Hathaway and Shapiro’s Outcasting
...The “shared understandings” of statehood are morphing so as to shrink the spaces of sovereign insulation. To paraphrase Wendt, sovereignty is what states make of it, and states’ identity as such has come to comprehend a downsized version. There are lots of ways in which international law is degrading sovereignty. I think it’s possible now to imagine the internal enforcement of international law along the lines of the Modern State Conception — not all advocates of international law “tend to let the conversation drop at this point.” (276). The construction...11 Mar Kiobel and Extrajurisdictionality
...the presumption to restrict ATS claims, then, it would have to introduce a new wrinkle or two. It could say that it applies to jurisdictional statutes (or at least to this one), or it could adopt the presumption as a prudential rule suitable for common-law claims. Once it found a basis for using the presumption, it could say that the presumption is overcome for the high seas but not for foreign territory, along the lines of the Kavanaugh dissent in Doe VIII. In itself, such an outcome wouldn’t be all...