In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Search: crossing lines

20 Mar

...of international lawmaking in trade and its stagnation in human rights as a question of substance rather than as a question of process. It turns out, Hathaway tells us, that this gap reflects the fact that the process by which international law is made in the trade area is more likely to be by congressional executive agreement (i.e., NAFTA) while the process by which international law is made in the human rights area is exclusively by treaty (i.e., the Genocide Convention). Along the lines of Martin Lederman and David Golove...
20.03.08 | |

21 Oct

...lines that many other countries have created, and that exist in the United States on the local and state level. I can imagine that a national office to coordinate U.S. reporting obligations would be very useful, but I wonder whether national offices would play an effective role in the United States as compared to other countries, in light of the very active litigation-based system for enforcement of US constitutional rights. Many (though certainly not all) national human rights institutions in other countries focus much of their attention on discrimination claims,...
21.10.09 | |

16 Apr

...fact that IHL may apply to situations in which a multinational operation is involved is nowadays accepted, states and international organisations are generally reluctant to admit that a peace operation has become party to an armed conflict. Such possibility has been often discussed but frequently let sink through the lines and rarely tackled head on. If, on the one hand, the capacity of a multinational operation to become party to the conflict is often taken for granted, the concretisation of such a possibility is on the other hand never explicitly...
16.04.18 | |

06 Sep

...UN ROE, the Force Commander has command responsibility to order the necessary and permissible use of force to fulfill the POC mandate. To the extent that UN military contingents continue to be subject to their national command and exclusive criminal jurisdiction, however, many contingents and their commanders do not fully accept the unified command and operational control of the UN Force Commander.. The resulting dual lines of authority undermine the authority of the UN Force Commander, the responsiveness of national contingents to his or her orders, and ultimately the credibility...
06.09.16 | |

16 Jan

...denied his requests. And he’s extremely upset at “the tyrants [who] won’t allow me to attend #CES2015, #TNABC or anything in the US.” Here’s Roger with his “Borders are Imaginary Lines” t-shirt he wore for his appointment at the US Embassy Barbados to apply for a Visa. He even seems to be selling these shirts as a way people can express their opposition to the tyranny that is keeping him from visiting the US. As I’ve written before, I don’t think American citizens who renounce their citizenship for tax purposes...
16.01.15 | |

07 May

...control of independent sovereign nations. They ask states to delegate lawmaking, law enforcement, or adjudication authority to bureaucracies, such as the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, or the World Trade Organization, that operate along undemocratic lines and remain unaccountable to any nation. These efforts at global governance create tension with American constitutional controls on state power…. Many scholars of international law argue that globalization’s demands justify abnormal powers for the federal government. Treaties on global warming or the environment, for example, should have a reach beyond the Constitution’s...
07.05.12 | |

01 Mar

...lines proposed by the working group, it will only serve to undercut the legitimacy of international law. Indeed, given the current nature of state practice with respect to the use of force and the lack of compliance with the UN Charter framework, I am led to the conclusion that aggression cannot be defined as a crime under international law at this time. But this should not be too troubling. The Security Council continues to have the authority under Article 39 to find that a state has committed an act of...
01.03.10 | |

22 Oct

...the primary motivations for state compliance with international law: reciprocity. UPDATE: There is an informative article in the New York Times Magazine addressing the difficulty of where to draw the line when soldiers are on the ground facing threatening circumstances. It addresses the question of “the line that separates nonlethal force that is justified – and sometimes very painful – from nonlethal force that is criminal.” Not directly relevant to enemy detention, but underscores the need to draw lines between what is criminal mistreatment and what is not. Read it....
22.10.05 | |

30 Nov

...his Department firmly believes themselves to be covered by the Act, a source tells me outgoing Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes was not aware of this until a few short months ago). Smith-Mundt has shaped the content and methods of communications from State and Defense through institutionalized firewalls created along artificial lines, fostering a bureaucratic culture of discrimination that hampers America’s ability to participate in the modern struggle over ideas and managing perceptions. The rest of the post provides a history of Smith-Mundt and how it affects...
30.11.07 | |

10 Jan

...don’t really question the immediate ends of UN programs or the ultimate ends of the UN itself but rather how these policies are implemented. I take Julian’s criticisms to be largely along these lines. The other form of criticism– the critique of ends– has had a fairly loud voice (though not necessarily broad following) in recent US politics. These attacks are usually not aimed at the immediate ends of UN policies (say, separating warring factions in Country X) but rather at a sense that the real aim of the UN...
10.01.05 | |

05 Dec

...Declaration means that Israel and Palestine are prepared to agree along the lines of the Road Map and Oslo, then there is cause for hope. I’ll close with a point about timing, because the 2008 deadline gives me pause. Deadlines are great if you are part way to a deal; apparently the imposition of a deadline was key to the Good Friday agreement. But deadlines can be obstacles, particularly if they are set early on before much has been agreed on and anyone has a sense as to how long...
05.12.07 | |

04 Feb

The ICJ has issued a judgment in the case Maritime Delimitation in the Black Sea (Romania v. Ukraine). At first glance the issue may seem relatively dry: whether Serpents’ Island in the Black Sea is an inhabited island or just a rocky outcropping. But the answer to this question affects maritime delimitation lines, which in turn resolves which country has the right to exploit oil and natural gas deposits found near Serpents’ Island, which may total about 100 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 100 million metric tons of...
04.02.09 | |