Search: crossing lines
23 Dec Symposium on Classism and the International Legal Profession: Three Tactics against Classism in the Epistemic Community of International Law
...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...
30 Oct Third Annual Symposium on Pop Culture and International Law: Three Tales of Omelas – Utopia, Harm and International Law
...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...06 Nov Bodansky: Update from Barcelona Climate Change Negotiations
...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...
02 May Soldier Self-Defense Symposium: The View from the Ground – Emerging State Practice on Individual and Unit Self-Defense
...that questions about self-defense are even being raised at this point is because practice has far outpaced the law. Thus, to complement the other contributors’ outlines of state positions, I am going to focus on the state of practice surrounding self-defense. For this I will rely on a series of studies I conducted examining how individual and unit self-defense have been used by different NATO countries in Afghanistan, Iraq, and in other undeclared conflict zones. In addition to background legal research, I interviewed some 78 military lawyers, commanders, and other...
15 Feb Spirituality and Duress: Local Culture Beliefs at the International Criminal Court
...rendition of figure 3. It illustrates the extent to which meaning produced in testimony can be altered through ignoring its wider interactional context: Once the Judge obtains the answer that later reappears as part of ‘the pattern’ (lines 12-14), he returns the floor to the defence counsel. The latter in turn invites the witness to recontextualize his previous answers, by asking two targeted questions about the time frame of his belief (lines 17-18 and 20-21). In the answer (only partially reproduced here), the witness responds with a biographical account that...11 Apr VJIL Symposium: Robert Howse Comments on “Interpretation and Institutional Choice at the WTO”
...the legitimacy of the judiciary, since “bright lines” can often appear to favor systematically one value or one constituency over another in an area of normative contestation (the authors discuss the now clearly rejected (Shrimp/Turtle) “bright line” that the unadopted Tuna/Dolphin panels invented on PPMs, which systematically excluded a whole range of activist environmental strategies from consistency with WTO law): here we should consider Cass Sunstein’s thinking about “one case at a time.” Where the AB has strayed from this strategy and tried to draw brighter lines, it has usually...
02 Mar (Ir-)Responsible by Design? Corporate Guardrails and the Governance of Military AI
...to independently direct autonomous weapons in any case where law, regulation, or Department policy requires human control” leaves room for flexible and open interpretations of these “red lines”. . While Anthropic were clearer and firmer in their stance, OpenAI seem to be taking a more strategic stance; publicly posturing themselves as upholding safety, legal and ethical “red lines” while ensuring there is opportunity to exploit the military “gray zones” the DoD claim they cannot avoid. The fact that OpenAI suggests it was able to secure the guardrails that Anthropic was...
03 Apr Symposium on Military AI and the Law of Armed Conflict: Navigating the Governance of Dual-Use Artificial Intelligence Technologies in Times of Geopolitical Rivalries
...extensive lines of code involved, rendering it challenging for enforcement agencies to assess. Unlike conventional technologies where physical characteristics can be examined, AI systems often consist of intricate algorithms with millions of lines of code, making it daunting to verify their functionalities, especially when those functionalities could have both benign and harmful applications. In addition to the monitoring and verification challenges, AI is increasingly provided as a service rather than a standalone product, complicating export controls and oversight of its use across multiple countries. With the rise of cloud computing...