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Search: crossing lines

10 Oct

...on are all military offenses that have no analogous "crime" in either domestic or international law. There is no actual charge of spying. The offense in Quirin was "passing through lines of defense without uniform". This has nothing to do with spying, or the civilian crime of espionage. It also has a special rule, because if the enemy solider passes back through your lines and rejoins his army then the offense is cancelled out and he can never be charged with it. There is no comparable "home free" rule that...
10.10.14 | |

06 Nov

...mechanisms (possibly including new rules for the CDM and for land-use change), and capacity-building. Given the current state of the negotiations (which remain bogged down), an outcome along these lines remains a very ambitious objective for Copenhagen, even if it is reflected “only” in COP decisions rather than in a new legal agreement. How much does the legal status of the Copenhagen outcome matter? For years, academics have been debating the merits of “soft” vs. “hard” law. Now, this issue has moved front and center in the climate negotiations. Coming...
06.11.09 | |

30 Oct

...Mathias Thaler in his recent book, No Other Planet (2022), calls these flaws “fault-lines”. For Thaler, these fault-lines are an essential part of the utopian method. They force the reader to reflect, and probe the utopian project they are being presented with. Such faults and cracks are a common feature of critical utopias as they prompt interrogation of what is meant by utopia, highlight the contingency of the present in the fictional narrative, and open up future potentialities. Utopianism, then, is not just about some utopian destination or place, it...
30.10.23 | and |

23 Dec

...and critique of international law and lawyers cannot remain blind to the inherent limitations of each scheme taken in isolation from the general critical corpus. For example, such concepts as Third World, Global South, gender, race, etc., are all arrows of a greater critical quiver that seeks to uncover the trajectories of subjugation, domination, oppression, and exclusion that the prevailing narratives of international law and international lawyers have promoted, defended, facilitated, and consolidated from the discipline’s founding until our days. Without losing sight of the nuances of each exegesis, we...
23.12.22 | |

14 Dec

[David Matyas is a PhD Candidate and Gates Cambridge Scholar at the University of Cambridge, Lauterpacht Centre for International Law whose research focuses on the laws of humanitarian assistance. Before turning to law, he worked as an aid worker focusing on disaster risk, with placements in Niger and Senegal.] Each year, as the holidays roll around in winter and summer, I’m reminded of a few lines by US Supreme Court Associate Justice Louis D. Brandeis to a young lawyer at his firm. He writes, “The bow must be strung and...
14.12.22 | |

04 Jun

...prohibited use of force in cyberspace under the jus ad bellum or where the lines are for an attack under the jus in bello. The Tallinn Manual is the paradigmatic example of this (often quite good) work. More recently, States and scholars have moved on to cyber operations below these lines, with attention shifting in Tallinn and elsewhere to which cyber operations may generate counter-measures and defining when cyber operations violate the duty of non-intervention. Such efforts have (so far) had relatively little to say on the question of a...
04.06.15 | |

21 May

[Dr Rick Lines is Executive Director of Harm Reduction International, and a Visiting Fellow at the Human Rights Centre, University of Essex. Damon Barrett is the Director of the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug Policy at the Human Rights Centre, University of Essex and a doctoral candidate in the Department of Law, Stockholm University. Patrick Gallahue is the Communications Director at the ACLU-Connecticut, and former Coordinator of the Death Penalty Project at Harm Reduction International . He is a doctoral candidate in the Human Rights Centre , University...
21.05.15 | |

29 Apr

For a while there, it looked as if there might be a real fight over Harold Koh’s nomination as State Department Legal Adviser. The Republicans have been casting about for a nomination that they could defeat on some issue of principle (that is, over something not involving a nominee’s tax returns), along the lines of Lani Guinier’s failed nomination to the Clinton Justice Department. It might also be useful for them to pick up a rallying call. Anti-internationalism has looked pretty promising. As fringe elements started taking shots at Koh,...
29.04.09 | |

31 Jan

Well, sort of. Yoo and co-author Robert Delahunty have a provocative piece in the latest edition of the National Interest (“Lines in the Sand,” not available on-line, but you can get it on Lexis) in which they argue against the primacy of the nation-state, or at least the primacy of existing nation-states. The cash-out here, of course, is splitting up Iraq. I don’t know enough about the context there to buy in or out, but it’s clear that in some situations (Somaliland probably now the best example) redrawing borders makes...
31.01.07 | |

05 Aug

...law. On the Seminole point, why does no one address this point. Is it terribly uncomfortable to come to grips with the Seminoles not being a non-state actor but being a sovereign in their territory? Very heavy isn't it? The history is so deep on these things and we blithely go over it without looking at the underlying truth. It changes the entire way of looking at those events. We have to be very suspicious of party lines and revisionist party lines if we are doing this kind of history....
05.08.11 | |

28 Feb

...of moral development. Depending on the access and ability to manipulate the levers of power, a state can allow itself to be bound by such obligations for a mix of reasons that may be associated with one some or all of the moral stages as articulated through the interactions of humans in that state. Just some thoughts. Best, Ben Harlan G. Cohen Roger, I think I've been thinking along similar lines to you about Andrew Guzman's theory. I too have been concerned that his rational choice theory may not tell...
28.02.08 | |

01 May

...is easy to see why his 1970 reasoning resonates throughout the Bush Administration's 2002 and 2003 memorandums. Just as Bybee finds that torture isn't torture, Rehnquist argued that the invasion of Cambodia wasn't really an invasion: "By crossing the Cambodian border to attack sanctuaries used by the enemy, the United States has in no sense gone to war with Cambodia." The Bybee memo offers officials accused of torture the "necessity" defense; in 1970, Rehnquist argued that pursuing Vietcong troops into previously neutral territory was "necessary to assure [American troops'] safety...
01.05.08 | |