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Search: crossing lines

28 Jun

The New York Times (along with much of the mainstream media) has “rediscovered” cyberwar of late (see here, here, here, and here). Today’s story revives longstanding differences between Russian government proposals to regulate cyberwarfare by treaty versus existing U.S. preferences to place the issue in more informal law enforcement cooperation networks: Russia favors an international treaty along the lines of those negotiated for chemical weapons and has pushed for that approach at a series of meetings this year and in public statements by a high-ranking official. The United States argues...
28.06.09 | |

18 May

...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...
18.05.12 | |

18 Nov

...under Article 27 as forming part of enjoying one’s own culture, particularly for indigenous peoples and it has addressed several indigenous land claims under the norm. Still, as Kymlicka submits, “[c]onflicts involving ethno-national groups such as the Kurds, Kashmiris, and Palestinians pose a much greater threat to regional peace and security than the struggles of pastoralists or forest dwellers, yet […] the UN has no guidelines for addressing the[m]” (p. 390). Given the content of Article 27 ICCPR and the above-mentioned developments regarding (collective) land rights, the interplay of land...
18.11.21 | |

17 Sep

...to Mauritius and then to the UK Privy Council (according to this earlier report). This strikes me as the leading edge of a potentially huge development, in which private actors more formally get their own pieces of turf and the lines between sovereign entities further blur. This is by no means to necessarily to celebrate the development (science fiction suggests this dystopian destination). But it does deepen the challenge to received doctrine, and it will require legal innovation to situate the new, private city-state in the world of international law....
17.09.12 | |

02 Apr

...call on everyone to respect that voluntary choice,” he said, adding that his Government could not refuse Crimeans their right to self-determination. Historical justice had been vindicated, he noted, recalling that for many years, Crimea had been part of the Russian Federation, sharing a common history, culture and people. An arbitrary decision in 1954 had transferred the region to the Ukrainian Republic, upsetting the natural state of affairs and cutting Crimea off from Russia. Gone were the bright lines that Russia had said existed regarding Kosovo: that inasmuch as Serbia...
02.04.14 | |

20 Nov

...ironies of the “realism” of political science is that all this reality does not fit their paradigm so they ignore it. This is not to say that all this belief translates into perfect compliance—plainly not. The work of improving law compliance goes on in every legal community. This is also not to say that there is no point in developing empirical methods along the lines Beth indicates. Plainly, well-conducted survey research, for example, can help us to better understand the world we live in. Empirical data can be useful, in...
20.11.08 | |

28 Dec

...to be distributed free to 1 million U.S. schoolchildren, will be set in a war-torn fictional country and feature superheroes such as Spider-Man working with U.N. agencies such as Unicef and the ‘blue hats,’ the U.N. peacekeepers.” At least we know Spidey can scale those ten stories that John Bolton wanted to lop off UN Headquarters! Full story at the FT here. Commentary at the NYTimes Opinionator here. Apparently, the story lines are still being developed. So what UN tasks would you like to see taken on by the superheroes?...
28.12.07 | |

16 Mar

...liability in that context is more obvious: co-perpetration requires an agreement to commit a crime — a common plan — whereas modes of participation such as instigation, aiding and abetting, and contributing to a group crime do not. In light of that fundamental difference, it would in no way blur the lines between principal and accomplice liability to adopt the same contribution requirement for both. My view, it should be noted, assumes that Article 25(3)(d) is limited to contributions to a group crime that are made by individuals who are...
16.03.12 | |

08 Apr

...5, 6, 7), by conservative students at Yale, and also by prominent officials from across party lines. A few days ago, Ted Olson defended Koh from the right-wing criticism. A letter in support of the Koh nomination that has been recently delivered to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee includes signatories such as former Republican State Department Legal Advisers John Bellinger, William Taft, and Davis Robinson as well as former Democratic Legal Advisers David Andrews, Conrad Harper, Roberts Owen and Herbert Hansell. If I had to throw in my lot with...
08.04.09 | |

16 Sep

...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 –...
16.09.10 | |

11 Sep

...law, many coming from people who would consider themselves "international lawyers". I would suggest that one reason human rights and/or international human rights law "appear unchallenged" is due to the marginalization of such criticisms by international lawyers and their exclusion from the invisible college. The concept of "human rights" (as opposed to international human rights law) is seen as not the province of international law but of other disciplines such as philosophy or IR which are placed outside the invisible college's walls. As for criticisms of international human rights law,...
11.09.13 | |

14 Jan

...be remarkable. It seems that there were meetings in the last days of July brokered by Mubarak that were possibly a way to resolve this. Something must have gone wrong - possibly seriously wrong - in those meetings leading to an interpretation by Saddam as his having to "put up or shut up" by crossing the border into Kuwait. Best, Ben Liz Always thought the text of the April Glaspie exchange was interesting. Available (well before Wikileaks) here: http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/glaspie.html The Nation left out the most interesting bit about China. That...
14.01.11 | |