Search: crossing lines
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...
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...02 Jun Law of the Sea Treaty Ratified! (By the Interior Department)
...the new lines is none other than the Law of the Sea Treaty, which, as the paper points out, the U.S. has thus far refused to ratify. Actually, this is not as crazy as the Times believes. The U.S. has signed the treaty after all, and it has also recognized many of its provisions as customary international law. U.S. courts apply customary international law all the time in resolving territorial disputes between states, so it seems fine if an executive agency (which otherwise has that authority) wants to use the...16 Sep Legal Accountability of International Organizations and Their Agents
...such as telephone lines, etc.? This is, after all, an investigation by a state DA, and not even a federal prosecutor. Although somewhat weirdly, given the politics at that moment, a local level investigation by a state DA of unimpeachable integrity and also a stalwart of the Democratic establishment – rather than a DOJ investigation by the then-Bush administration, turned out to be far more politically palatable. In any case, the weakened Annan did not do what might otherwise have been an inflexible and categorical response of the UN –...
20 Jan Q&A: The Times and Temporalities of Human Rights
...by showing up the concurrent timelines at play (still enduring one trauma as the next begins), demonstrating the snares that law sets for itself (through, for example, not anticipating its own failure or ‘stuckness’), and the predictable outcomes of the timelines law and policy establish. NM: I was struck, in reading the collection, by the pervasive presence of temporality in human rights law, in its promises and aspirations and also in its fault lines and limitations – from the idea of progressive evolutive interpretation in the ‘living instrument’ doctrine of...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...