Search: extraterritorial sanctions
04 Apr Is 2022 the Year of Genocide? Recent Events at the ICJ Suggest Yes
...prompted to respond to a legal finding of genocide through sanctions, boycotts, or the pursuit of universal jurisdiction cases, especially in light of Article I’s obligations “to prevent and to punish,” which the Court has long held are “not territorially limited by the Convention.” This extraterritorial duty will, as mentioned previously, be relevant to the Ukraine case, in which the Court will determine whether Russia’s use of military force to prevent and punish “genocide” in Ukraine is legal. This inquiry could, in tandem with an advisory opinion on whether China...31 Oct Opinio Juris-EJIL Talk! Joint Book Discussion of Kevin Jon Heller’s “The Nuremberg Military Tribunals and The Origins of International Criminal Law”
...Juris, David Glazier (Loyola, LA), Detlev Vagts (Harvard), Roger Clark (Rutgers-Camden), Devin Pendas (Boston College) and Lawrence Douglas (Amherst). The discussion will start with a cross-posted introduction by Kevin today, and end with his reply to the discussants on Friday. Both the discussants and our readers are of course welcome to join in in the comments. Following discussion of Kevin’s book, Opinio Juris and EJIL:Talk! will host a joint discussion of Marko Milanovic’s book, Extraterritorial Application of Human Rights Treaties: Law, Principles and Policy (Oxford UP). Cross-posted at EJIL: Talk!...10 Jan Trump’s Threat of Destruction of North Korea and Proportionate Defensive Force: An Assessment of Similar Observations in Legal Scholarship and US Practice
...the possible destruction of North Korea’s army as permissible defensive action, coupled with the self-defense justifications advanced for the US’s wide-scale extraterritorial drone program since 2010, may reflect serious attempts to reinterpret and loosen the well-accepted rules on the principle of proportionality to the point of irrelevance. These expansive readings of self-defense, however, have never been endorsed by the rest of the international community or even the majority of them. On the contrary, the requirement of halting and repelling an armed attack still represents the only primary benchmark for the...01 Jun The Continuing Predator Drone Campaign in Pakistan
...the point yet where there’s a sense that there’s anything that could replace that,” the second military official said of the drone attacks. From the legal side, however, I wonder if the Obama administration is cognizant of the kind of pushback that the soft-law community is gearing up to offer. The position of the human rights community continues to harden, in the sense of treating targeted killing as extrajudicial execution under human rights law, and to pushing that conclusion onto the United States through four legal premises: Extraterritorial application of...25 Nov Stewart Mini-Symposium: A Response to Steven Ratner
...the ATS—both involve the “discovery” of a latent legal framework waiting to be employed; Ratner argues that “it is not clear how switching to the ICL model eliminates… the very problem that Kiobel addressed. i.e., the extraterritorial reach of domestic law.” Although I acknowledge not addressing extraterritoriality in depth in my introduction, I do cite evidence from a comparative survey which concluded that 11 of 16 states surveyed have jurisdiction over international crimes perpetrated by their nationals overseas. Ratner also objects that “if we think… diversity of criminal law accomplice...17 Feb The Absence of Practice Supporting the “Unwilling or Unable” Test
...critical when it comes to doctrines like “unwilling or unable,” because its actual adoption by states would open the floodgates to the extraterritorial (ie, sovereignty-infringing) use of force against non-state actors. There may well come a time when the “unwilling or unable” test reflects customary international law, but that time is not now. Two states do not a customary rule make, however powerful those states may be. And we cannot simply ignore the states in the Global South, however inconvenient powerful states in the Global North may find their views....31 May IHL and International Human Rights Law in Non-International Armed Conflict
...long held (if, in my view, unfortunate) position that ICCPR doesn’t apply extraterritorially (which the report acknowledges), this seems a bit of a tough legal case to make. Beyond the trial situation (to which it seems CA3 would surely apply), as long as we’re choosing between legal regimes the United States officially rejects, why not pick APII, or API by analogy, as the more useful standard? Truly asking here. Responses to that question produced an interesting exchange on and off-line between Gabor Rona and Marty Lederman. With the relevant permission...18 Apr Bellinger Speaks Out on ATS Litigation
...fundamental problems with how lower courts have approached these suits. These problems center on five key issues: First, whether the ATS applies extraterritorially – that is, whether a U.S. court can properly apply U.S. federal common law under the ATS to conduct that occurred entirely in the territory of a foreign State. Second, even if such a cause of action could properly be recognized, whether exhaustion of adequate and available local remedies in that foreign country should be a prerequisite to bringing an ATS suit. Third, whether corporations or other...
04 Jan In Ukraine, Russian Passportization Generates Effective Denationalization
...substantive legal grounds. To this end, the prohibition on the imposition of nationality may mandate non-recognition in particular instances of passportization. A valid grant of nationality requires the consent of the naturalized individual. Coercing someone into naturalizing vitiates their consent, rendering the resulting grant of nationality invalid. Therefore, where Russian forces directly coerced Ukrainians into applying for Russian passports, either by threatening them with violence or prohibitive administrative sanctions, the resulting grant of nationality is invalid. In arguing for blanket non-recognition, as opposed to the unlawfulness of individual instances, states...
16 Oct The Trump Administration and International Law: A Reply
...from the inside I “actually advised the Obama administration to change its interpretation and to recognize the extraterritorial application of the ICCPR;” I then argued with greater success both internally and externally for the view that the Convention Against Torture applies extraterritorially, a view that the Obama administration eventually adopted after I left. Given Eviatar’s recognition that I fought internally—with admittedly mixed success—for the United States to actually comply with international human rights law, I am bit puzzled by her suggestion that “prominent lawyers and legal scholars like [my]self could...