Search: crossing lines
05 Mar AG Holder’s National Security Speech – Text
...this work, as well as the special role of the Department of Justice in protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution. Before 9/11, today’s level of interagency cooperation was not commonplace. In many ways, government lacked the infrastructure – as well as the imperative – to share national security information quickly and effectively. Domestic law enforcement and foreign intelligence operated in largely independent spheres. But those who attacked us on September 11th chose both military and civilian targets. They crossed borders and jurisdictional lines. And it immediately became clear...
12 Dec Symposium on Forensic and Counter-Forensic Approaches to International Law: Human-in-the-Loop or Human-in-the-Dark? Algorithmic Targeting and the Evidentiary Collapse of Genocidal Intent in Gaza
...how intent can be pieced together even when scattered across lines of code, data servers, and fragmented chains of approval. In this light, Gaza is not only a humanitarian catastrophe but a testing ground – compelling a fundamental rethinking of evidence, intent, and accountability in the era of digital warfare. Naming the Violence, Rethinking the Law Judge Tladi’s warning now confronts a stark and unprecedented reality: we have entered a dangerous phase in which weapons systems powered by artificial intelligence are actively being deployed in the commission of genocide in...
07 Oct Killing in the Name: Three Legal Paradigms to Evaluate the Legality of US Actions in the Caribbean (Part I)
...signs of acting under its effective or overall control. All these facts support the conclusion that these conducts cannot be legally qualified as being to the prejudice of Venezuela and are thus not governed by jus ad bellum rules on account of not being directed against another State’s political independence or territorial integrity. Or, rather, that the use of force regime is inadequate to assess the legality of the strikes for a lack of identity ratio materiae. Along the same lines, attention should be paid to the communication emanated from...
02 Nov Third Annual Symposium on Pop Culture and International Law: Game of Thrones and Hjalmar Schacht
...increase employment, or enforce reserve cash requirements on other banks. Rather, it functions as a private bank that provides credit to, among other entities, nearby city-states and kingdoms, much along the lines of the Medici Bank of the 15th century and the Fuggers of the 16th. By any standards, its lending is reckless. The profligate spending that all but emptied the treasury under King Robert Baratheon would have been impossible without a dependable stream of Iron Bank loans, none of which seem to have had the strings attached that we...09 Oct Omit Needless Words
...paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts…. Many expressions in common use violate this principle…. In especial the expression “the fact that” should be revised out of every sentence in which it occurs. So how do the top law journals perform under the microscope of William Strunk and E.B. White? In the countless hours of drafting and editing, do the top scholars and top student editors adhere to this elementary principle of composition? The results...
11 Jul The Rise of the Global Legal Order
...global economy, the formerly developing states were forced to refinance their loans. With commercial loans unavailable, they were driven into the arms of the IMF. New loans were offered, but they came with conditions beyond mere repayment. These new “loan conditionalities” demanded macroeconomic restructuring along neoliberal lines. Not coincidentally, the IMF and World Bank were each purged of their Keynesian economists over the course of the 1970s. The new conditionalities insisted that the formerly developing states reverse the policies that had brought them a brief period of actual development. The...
10 Oct Reimagining Palestine in TWAIL Scholarship
...The hesitation of academics to confront tangible aspects of settler-colonialism is consistent with their worldview, he explains. Doctrinal and critical scholars alike unite in the near beatification of the Westphalian tradition, a system that relies on the negation of indigenous and non-state sovereignty. In this context, even calls for Palestinian self-determination appear timid, contingent on colouring within the lines of Israeli administrative zones. As I’ve argued elsewhere, this leads TWAIL scholars to an intellectual and ethical cul-de-sac. We admit the profane origins and practices of international law—from a TWAIL perspective,...31 Mar HILJ Online Symposium: On the Love of Hybrids and Technicalities
...rights protection, 27-30). We part our ways – although perhaps more in terms of reasoning than the conclusion (p 43) – when the article makes an argument for interdependence of investor’s and State’s rights, with the first claim against the respondent State (whoever of the two it might be brought by) precluding the second one, along the lines of the ICSID Convention (pp 43-9). The first objection is that this argument cannot be based on the principle underlying the rule of the ICSID Convention: article 27(1) does not waive or...20 Nov Binding on All States All of the Time
...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...23 Jun New Rules for Cyberwar?
...the U.S. can defend itself by blocking cyber intrusions and taking down servers in another country. And, as in cases of mortar or missile attacks, the U.S. has the right to pursue attackers across national boundaries — even if those are virtual network lines. Under the new Pentagon guidelines, it would be unacceptable to deliberately route a cyberattack through another country if that nation has not given permission — much like U.S. fighter jets need permission to fly through another nation’s airspace. Uri Friedman over at the Atlantic Wire distills...