Search: crossing lines
21 Jun The Inadequacy of the US State Department Report on Arms Exports Assurances: Part I
...making a prediction of risk from the assurances misses multiple critical lines of inquiry. It concentrates on just a few superficial criteria, and overlooks several key points and the overall context. Certainly, the State Department may have taken these factors into consideration in its internal, confidential evaluations and not mentioned them in its report to Congress, but the report lacks clarity and transparency in this regard. The fact that the State Department chose to only ask four brief, vaguely-phrased, and backwards-looking questions before making predictions on the likelihood of misuse...20 Sep Events and Announcements: September 20, 2015
...Review. For detailed guidelines about the award, including a link to our rules and regulations please visit the website here or contact us at: hracademy@wcl.american.edu. Calls for Papers/Abstracts: The Junior International Law Scholars Association (JILSA) is holding its annual meeting on Friday, January 22, 2016, at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law. JILSA is an informal network of junior scholars at mostly American law schools who get together annually for a self-funded workshop. Junior faculty and fellows interested in presenting at the meeting should email proposals to MJ Durkee...
21 Jun The Inadequacy of the US State Department Report on Arms Exports Assurances: Part II
...refute this concern, the Report should have examined all foreseeable and relevant factors that would affect that determination. And given the gravity of the decision, and the failure to pursue various foreseeable lines of inquiry, the Report is indefensible. In fact, we can recall that some reporting claimed that the internal State Department cables between the non-political departments reached a drastically different outcome on the assurances than the Report given to Congress does. We know that a State Department employee who was a contributing author on the first draft of...28 Jun YJIL Symposium: The Seal Products Dispute and the Boundaries of Trade Law
[Simon Lester is the President of WorldTradeLaw.net and a trade policy analyst at the Cato Institute.] This post is part of the Yale Journal of International Law Volume 37, Issue 2 symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. Over the past two decades, there has been an effort by many trade law academics and others to define the boundaries of international trade rules in a way that disciplines trade restrictions, while allowing sufficient policy space for governments to regulate in legitimate ways. Rob...
15 Dec Justice for Children Part 1: Progress Made, Gaps Remaining
...for Children: Progress, Gaps, and Future Directions for Accountability” was co-hosted by Save the Children, the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Leiden University. It convened leading voices from UN agencies, accountability institutions, civil society organisations, and scholars who work daily on the front lines of these questions. The timing was not incidental. Four years have passed since a similar gathering inspired the 2021 report Advancing Justice for Children: Innovations to strengthen accountability for violations and...
28 Jan International Law’s Invisible Frames Symposium: Concluding Remarks
...in which the reconstruction of the past event is made. Thus, while adjudicators and investigators examine evidence regarding past events, their examination involves lenses that are affected by current circumstances (like current emotions or contemporary norms of attention). Furthermore, cognitive processes employed by judges or military investigators are vulnerable to well-known biases (such as confirmation bias, which is highlighted in Krebs’s chapter). Buis rightly underlines the role of emotions in IHL. Indeed, recent social cognitive studies underline the role of motivation and emotions (labelled as ‘affect’) in a broad range...04 Sep Executive Discretion and Congressional Indecision
...counterterrorism policy — that is, a war on terror — is as important as the White House believes it is, then it merits the blessing of the legislature and ought not to exist merely at the discretionary whim of some future president. On the eve of midterm elections that could reverse Republican control of at least one house of Congress, (see here, here and here) one would think that this would be a particularly propitious time for the Bush Administration to work with Congress along the lines Anderson is suggesting....14 Jun Steinberg and Zasloff on Power and International Law
...in the last century. While views of the relationship between power and international law are diverse, and many approaches straddle heuristic lines, they can be grouped into four intellectual movements: classical legal thought; realism (of which there are three variants); law matters (sociological, rationalist-institutionalist, and liberal views); and constructivism. Each major intellectual movement may be seen as a reaction to the ideas that preceded it, and each may be better understood in the context of international developments contemporaneous with their emergence. In recent years, each major movement has evolved to...
07 May Reassuring the Inviolability of Diplomatic Premises: Worrying Trends from Ecuador to Syria
...property. In the days leading up to the raid, Mexico’s foreign relations secretariat decried the build-up of Ecuadorian police forces outside the embassy. Afterwards, Ecuador described Mexico’s conferral of asylum to Glas as an abuse of privileges and immunities, entitling Ecuador to apprehend the asylee. Tehran Hostages (1980) is the leading ICJ case on inviolability. In it, the Court characterizes diplomatic law as a self-contained regime which outlines both the obligations of the receiving state with respect to diplomatic missions, and the means by which they can respond to abuses...18 May Book Discussion “Outsourcing War and Peace”: Contractor Accountability as a Barrier to SOFAs
...on high-level political issues. However, persons close to the negotiations on both sides have confirmed that the most contentious single issue related to the treatment of civilians and civilian contractors. The Pentagon viewed both DOD civilians and contractors as an essential part of the force deployed; accordingly the United States insisted that both be covered by immunity provisions under the SOFA. The Iraqis replied that they were essentially prepared to enter into a SOFA along the lines of those that the United States had concluded in the years following World...