Search: crossing lines
20 Aug Symposium on Informers Up Close: Weaponizing the Populace
...mistreated by their superiors, they are simply enduring what they signed up for. So, too, with soldiers in the American all-volunteer military, or the former prisoners who have secured a way out of prison by agreeing to deploy to the front lines in Russia’s war against Ukraine without proper training or equipment. The fact that someone has chosen a life, however, does not vitiate the state’s responsibilities to treat that person as an individual with dignity. What that means, of course, will vary according to the particular context. But the...
07 Jul Customary International Law Symposium: Making Sense of Law as Practice (Or: Why Custom Doesn’t Crystallize)
...“rulebook,” I would suggest that it does require shared parameters along the lines I sketched above. Further, I agree with Monica that conduct or positions that exceed existing CIL are “legally cognizable” (1521) and have the potential to affect the content of CIL (1494). However, although such positions are very much part of the process that shapes CIL, they are not CIL, as Monica appears to suggest (1511). In my view, it is important to maintain a distinction, and to be able to assert that such conduct or argumentation is...
08 Mar A Short-Term Option for Addressing Misinformation during Public Health Emergencies: Online Nudging and the Human Right to Freedom of Thought
...and applying nudges to online news feeds that they think will help so-called ‘non-elites’ make ‘smart’ decisions (see this work of Michael Sandel at 81-112). Aside from the condescension that arises with practices and communications that run along the lines of ‘we know better than you’, which inhibits public trust (see, for example, here and here), nudging raises additional human rights considerations. There are a number of human rights dimensions to the current pandemic that have been highlighted (see, for example, here), including with respect to misinformation (see here and...16 Oct Obama Will “Engage” on Sudan (And Ignore the ICC)
...Scott Gration, said that the policy, to be announced Monday by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, would make use of a mix of “incentives and pressure” to put an end to the human rights abuses that have left millions of people dead and displaced while burningDarfur into the American conscience. General Gration said the administration would set strict time lines for President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan to fulfill the conditions of a 2005 peace agreementthat his government signed with rebels in southern Sudan; under the agreement, a proposal for...27 Aug Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About TWAIL (But Were Afraid to Ask)
...significant, both for the TWAIL movement and international law reformers in general. In the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas agreement (ALBA) we find a platform from which TWAIL might transcend its reactive nature and develop a proactive character. Building on a practical prototype that produced a participatory model of democracy and a progressive model of social relations, we argue that ALBA’s philosophy and substantive workings present the structure needed for the reinvention of international law along similarly equitable lines; from a formal regulatory regime to a substantive emancipatory paradigm, from...
09 Oct Trump vs. International Law: The Trump Administration and International Criminal Justice
...and able to navigate a nuanced relationship with the Court. Although the United States was centrally involved with the negotiations around the Rome Statute, the final treaty ultimately crossed too many of its red lines. At that time, the concern of the administration of President Bill Clinton was a rather amorphous one grounded in American exceptionalism: that a seemingly unaccountable prosecutor would bring meritless or politically-motivated prosecutions against U.S. personnel deployed in response to sovereign and global threats. Nonetheless, President Bill Clinton ultimately decided to sign the treaty on the...05 Apr Did the Soviet Union Commit Genocide in Ukraine (And Can Law Help Answer This Question)??
Russia’s lower house of Parliament has passed a resolution denying that the Soviet Union committed “genocide” in Ukraine during the 1930s. The resolution states: “There is no historical proof that the famine was organized along ethnic lines. Its victims were million of citizens of the Soviet Union, representing different peoples and nationalities living largely in agricultural areas of the country.” Interestingly, the resolution does not appear to deny (as it could not credibly do anyway) that the Soviet Union leadership was responsible for a great famine in the 1930s Ukraine...16 Sep Corporations for International Law!
Don’t be surprised if you see a headline along these lines in the not-so-distant future. The NY Times today has an interesting lead story on how corporations are now pushing for federal regulation in various areas instead of fighting it, on issues ranging from fuel efficiency to predatory lending practices to cigarette lighter safety. The story highlights three elements of this about-face. First, business would rather have a single set of federal regulations than a patchwork of them from the states. Second, the big players are seeing the downside of...