Search: crossing lines
19 Jul Guest Post: Israeli Committee Declares End to West Bank Occupation
...courts and the rest of the world for decades, namely that Israel’s presence in the West Bank is temporary and that measures designating Palestinian land and natural resources for Israeli use are motivated by security concerns. Here are some conclusions by the committee that I wholeheartedly endorse: 1. The so-called “unauthorized” outposts, built without the proper building permits and zoning plans, were as a matter of fact approved and funded by the State of Israel, which provided military protection, installed water and electricity lines, built access roads and funded public...18 Jul Was the Hamdan Court Reading Rick Pildes?
...the same result if we had a Democrat Congress? The Harvard piece, along with a 2004 essay with Sam Issacharoff, also maps well onto Hamdan in extracting a process-based, institutionally-focused tradition in wartime decisionmaking from the Court. The Court has threaded the poles of rights-based idelaism on the one hand and deference to executive unilateralism on the other, looking instead for the reassurance of bilateral agreement between the political branches. The Youngstown story is of course well known along these lines. Less familiar is Pildes’ retelling of Milligan and Korematsu....
03 Nov Genocide at The Hague: A Transitional Justice Reckoning?
...from strategic state interests and geopolitical alignments. For example, as Jacobs observes, key Western actors supporting Ukraine’s case against Russia, like Germany and the US have been notably less vocal about Gaza at the ICJ. In contrast, while South Africa and Nicaragua have played visible roles in the Gaza litigation, their engagement with Ukraine’s case has been muted, neither appears to have intervened formally. Such inconsistencies reinforce the perception that legal accountability is applied selectively along political lines. The ICJ is not the UN General Assembly: its authority rests on...
24 May Policy Recommendations to Meaningfully Mitigate Civilian Harm in Military Operations: A View from the Netherlands (Part I)
...investigation and response processes, and should be described in the Article-100 Letters (a constitutional requirement to inform Parliament about the deployment of Dutch military personnel, after which a Parliamentary debate occurs). By outlining these parameters prior to agreeing to participate within a coalition context, participating States agree on baselines of how they understand CHMR efforts prior to military engagement and where red lines are drawn. These standards can reflect access to intelligence and information prior to targeting missions and should reflect CHMR throughout the joint targeting cycle. States should also...
19 Apr Symposium on International Conflict and Security Law: A Research Handbook – Human Rights: Between Universalism and Relativism
...questioning of the liberal pursuit/aim of human rights would be central to the development of this new universalism. Engeland’s contribution is noteworthy since it displays the comprehension of the intractability of the issue and thus resists the urge to offer any magical solution to the same. Rather through an open proposal to reframe the debate on universality, it attempts to initiate a new understanding of principles of liberal peace and security, thus provoking new lines of inquiry. It is hoped that the same shall stimulate development of new thought in...
20 Aug Muddying the Waters Still Further: A Response to Steven Kay and Joshua Kern
...of the claim that there was a breach of Article 2(4) is underscored by the fact that units of the Arab Legion were stationed in mandate Palestine (west of the Jordan River) under British command and guarding British supply lines as Britain withdrew in May 1948. The fusion of Jordanian and Palestinian sovereignty I stand by my claim that the Jordanian Act of Union of 1950 fused Jordanian and Palestinian sovereignty between 1950 and 1988. However, Kay and Kern claim that “given that Jordan’s occupation arose from a breach of...
23 May Punishing Atrocities Symposium: Exploring Joint Criminal Enterprise
...always clearly distinguished. One question concerns the lines between guilt and innocence. Does the law improperly convict people for harms for which they are not, in fact culpable? The other question concerns the grading of culpability. Does the law fail to adequately differentiate degrees of guilt by, for example, treating all JCE members as guilty of the same crimes despite significant differences in their roles and respective contributions? I will start with the first. When the I teach the Tadić case—in which the ICTY Appeals Chamber first announced its...
13 Feb When War Bets on Protest: Iran’s Civilians in a Double Bind
...warned that if Iran “violently kills peaceful protesters,” the United States would “come to their rescue,” declaring the U.S. “locked and loaded.” Days later he urged demonstrators to “KEEP PROTESTING – TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS” and promised that “HELP IS ON ITS WAY,” while describing a reinforced posture and, later, a “massive armada” headed toward Iran, ready to act “with speed and violence, if necessary.” Those lines are not just rhetoric. They sketch a theory of change: external force creates openings; civilians convert disruption into political rupture. Public reporting has...
24 Aug Three Legal Constraints on U.S. Unilateral Deep-Sea Mining: The ISA’s Objective International Personality and Obligations of Cooperation and Due Regard (Part II) – International Objective Personality of the ISA
...an objective international personality capable of operating vis-à-vis all States. To this end, the effectiveness of the regime presupposes a degree of universality of the ISA’s jurisdiction, since its functions cannot be meaningfully discharged if participation is fragmented along lines of UNCLOS membership. Also, the ISA’s mandate concerns an area beyond national jurisdiction, where unilateral regulatory practices would undermine the coherence of the regime. These considerations suggest that the ISA occupies a sui generis institutional position within the law of international organizations. Unlike classical organizations whose competences operate primarily within...