Search: crossing lines
03 Nov Richard Perle, Dove?
...invasion of Iraq was illegal: In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: “I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing.” President George Bush has consistently argued that the war was legal either because of existing UN security council resolutions on Iraq – also the British government’s publicly stated view – or as an act of self-defence permitted by international law. But Mr Perle, a key member of the defence...12 Jan Autonomous Legal Reasoning: Legal and Ethical Issues in the Technologies of Conflict
...IHL regulate autonomous weapon systems? Are prohibitions better or worse than prescriptive authorities? Should IHL regulate via rules, standards, or principles? Finally, (6) why should IHL regulate autonomous weapons? How can IHL best prioritize among its foundations in military necessity, humanitarian values, and the practical reality that the development of such systems now appears inevitable. In asking these questions, my essay offers a critical lens for gauging the current scope (and state) of international legal discourse on this topic. In doing so, it sets the stage for new lines of...
06 Feb The ‘Negotiating Text’ of the new WHO Treaty on Pandemic Preparedness and Response: An Initial Analysis and Underexamined Points of Concern
...Influenza and in domestic public health guidelines (p.70) on the response to infectious disease outbreaks. The draft provisions of the Negotiating Treaty examined in the following reflect the main components of the biomedical approach and its envisaged domestic and international institutions. The Envisaged Global Bio-surveillance System The Negotiating Text foresees the building of a global bio-surveillance system with international (WHO) and domestic components. In short, the draft treaty envisages that each state builds up laboratory capacities that then work together as a global network through which they can identify emerging...21 Feb Would Assassinating Iranian Civilians Be Legal? (Updated)
...iranian atomic scientists, supporting the simmering insurgencies within Iran, putting the mullahs’ expat business interests out of business, etc. Basically, stepping on the Iranians’ toes hard enough to make them reconsider their not-so-covert war against us in Iraq. And we should have been doing this since the summer 2003. But as far as I can tell, we’ve done nothing along these lines. Reynold’s post prompted a reply in the Rocky Mountain News by Paul Campos, a law professor at the University of Colorado, entitled — appropriately enough — “The Right’s...09 Nov I Wasn’t Paying Attention When the Wall Came Down
...away again. It was very hard for me to believe that this was actually real and tangible, and not something so fragile that a little puff could bring the house of cards down. (I’m not sure if Philip Alston remembers, but we had a conversation on almost exactly those lines, at a human rights conference organized by Philip and Henry Steiner, with me as administrative assistant, on Crete earlier that summer, sitting out on the beach of a Cretan monastery and positively slathered with sunblock.) So I wish I had...26 Jun YJIL Symposium: Human Rights and Climate Change Adaptation at the international Level
...apartheid, which is most often associated with an institutionalized legal regime of separating the races for the purpose of systematic oppression. For example, how do discussions of the climate change legal regime and the disparate impacts along geographic and gender lines relate to traditional uses and understandings of the term apartheid? The bulk of the authors’ text focuses on approaching the problem of climate change adaptation from a human rights perspective, highlighting national initiatives and touching on possible international ones. The issue of climate change refugees provides an excellent case...13 Jun What Comes Next?
...of criminal justice in the Military Commissions Act. Under the majority’s opinion, Congress can create procedures governing review; Congress can funnel the cases to a new court to conduct that review; Congress can define burdens of proof; and Congress can define the categories of people who are detainable. Indeed, I’ll argue in a later post that the majority essentially invites Congress to do so—albeit in a more thoughtful way than the 15 lines of statutory text which constitute the sum total of congressional participation on this question to date. Will...