Search: crossing lines
30 Nov Smith-Mundt and the Battle for Hearts and Minds
...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...09 Dec Codifying Custom
...ideological lines, thereby delegitimizing customary rules and increasing fragmentation. Thus, far from being an unqualified boon to benevolent legal ordering, codification can replicate, magnify, or alter power dynamics present in forming bare customary law. Indeed, the fragmentation of customary law that can result from codification actually prevents a unified understanding of customary law from emerging — the exact opposite of codification’s ostensible purpose. This Article uses the Capture Thesis to explain important developments in customary international law, including the outlawing of the slave trade in the nineteenth century, the rise...21 Jul Guest Post: Jurisdictional Aspects of the Article 12(2) Rome Statute Vessel Provision: Some Thoughts on the Provision’s Dogma and Implementation in light of the Comoros Referral
...which while not embedded in the wording of the provision itself, still constitute part of its essence. The Rome Statute provision was drafted along the lines of article 91 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The latter, echoing a strong jurisprudence and treaty tradition stipulates and favours the notion that there must be a genuine link between the flag state and the vessel. This genuine link requirement is critical. While in some instances judicial bodies may have appeared reluctant to assert it, the reason was...04 Feb ICJ Sets Black Sea Maritime Boundary Between Romania and Ukraine; Resolves Significant Oil and Natural Gas Claims
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...05 Dec Annapolis and the Road Map
...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...13 Sep Forced Relationships: Prosecutorial Discretion as a Pathway to Survivor-Centric Justice
...expressly considering the survivors’ stance. In establishing the elements of the crime of other inhumane acts, the Appeals Chamber noted that being labelled a “forced wife” by perpetrators subjected survivors to mental trauma (para 193), but did not contemplate any long-term consequences of their judicial determination to the same effect. Along similar lines, the ICC found the “imposition, regardless of the will of the victim, of duties that are associated with marriage, as well as of a social status of the perpetrator’s ‘wife’” determinative (Ongwen CoC para 93), rather than...03 Aug Space Cadets… (International Legal Rhetoric Edition)
A while back, I wrote an article on how states use the rhetoric of international law (specifically self-determination) as part of their broader foreign policy initiatives. Li Hong, the Secretary-General of China’s Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, has an op-ed in today’s China Daily that embeds law-talk (in this case the international law of outer space and multilateralism more generally) in an essay that (I think) is really trying to send a signal about the trend lines of China and the U.S. as space-faring nations. He starts by invoking international...10 Sep Samuel Moyn on the History of Human Rights and the Human Rights Movement
...the dissidents of Eastern Europe. These strategic idealists in the US were up against, well, Kissinger (who later got religion, to judge by a couple of lines in one of his memoir volumes, in which he acknowledged that he had underestimated the power of legitimacy in foreign relations, meaning that itsy-bitsy line in the Helsinki accord). I got involved directly in field missions for Americas Watch in 1983, but it was clear that the reason they had resonance was because of Jeri Laber’s pathbreaking work for Helsinki Watch in Europe....28 Jan Guest Post: Colangelo–Kiobel and Conflicts of Law
...posit a variety of false conflicts along these lines: One type of false conflict might latch onto the international law character of the norm at issue, particularly if it is a jus cogens norm—say, the prohibition on torture—to argue that by force of international law that norm applies everywhere, and therefore necessarily presents a false conflict of laws. A weakness with this type of false conflict argument is that while jus cogens clearly contain prohibitions on certain violations of international law, they do not clearly contain private rights of action...16 Apr Obama Releases Memos; Promises Impunity; Misunderstands Estoppel by Entrapment
...assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution. The men and women of our intelligence community serve courageously on the front lines of a dangerous world. Their accomplishments are unsung and their names unknown, but because of their sacrifices, every single American is safer. We must protect their identities as vigilantly as they protect our security, and we must provide them with the confidence that they can do their jobs. It...