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Search: self-defense

06 Jun

it offers blunt advice to the Obama administration and the US Congress with a particular normative goal in mind – to preserve the legal rationales for the use of self-defense in targeted killing, whether or not an IHL armed conflict is underway, consistent with the positions taken by the United States in the 1980s, and culminating with a statement of the US position on self-defense against terrorism and targeting terrorists in third-state safe havens by then-State Department legal advisor Abraham Sofaer in 1989. The point of the paper is to...
06.06.09 | |

12 Mar

...attacks may respond with appropriate use of force to defend against further attacks. This is an aspect of the inherent right of self-defense recognized in the United Nations Charter....” The U.S. has consistently recognized the propriety of self-defense against NSA armed attacks since 1814, 1816, 1817, 1818 and the Caroline incident in 1837. See, e.g., Self-Defense Targetings of Non-State Actors..., 19 J. Transnat’l L. & Pol’y 237, 241-49 (2010) (available at SSRN). The 1986 ICJ opinion did not rule on self-defense against a NSA as such. Greece addressed an “attack...
12.03.15 | |

28 Sep

etc.). This type of self-determination has been described as “internal,” and many in the international community argue that outside of the decolonization paradigm, peoples only have internal self-determination rights. Unlike the exercise of external self-determination, the implementation of meaningful internal self-determination rights does not entail disrupting the territorial integrity of the larger mother state. This is why most scholars argue that peoples outside of the decolonization paradigm can only exercise self-determination rights within the territory of their mother state, in an internal manner. Nonetheless, external self-determination has occurred outside of...
28.09.17 | |

23 Sep

...In other words, this falls under the inherent right of self-defense that is carved out by Article 51 of the U.N. Charter as an exception to the general prohibition on the use of force contained in article 2 of the U.N. Charter. The U.S. is intervening militarily to vindicate Iraq’s self-defense interest as a case of individual or collective self-defense. A few observations here: First, this was a predictable development. I don’t see another avenue for the U.S. to legally defend the intervention, unless it wanted to rely on the...
23.09.14 | |

13 Aug

...in the form of anything remotely like a use of force, far less an armed attack—and it will be recalled that self-defense is only permitted in response to an armed attack. But it will also be recalled that there have been several strong claims made in the last couple of decades for similar expansions of the doctrine of self-defense. These recent claims have included efforts to relax and weaken the doctrine in a number of ways: in the form of preventative self-defense to deal with the threat of weapons of...
13.08.20 | |

06 May

an important distinction, as you recognize but don't fully analyze. To successfully support such attacks as an independent act of self-defense, the USG must necessarily believe that IHL applies (perhaps only by analogy) to acts of self-defense against non-state actors even if hostilities with them do not meet the oft-asserted customary international law (CIL) duration, intensity and organization thresholds to establish a NIAC. I think this is what Marty earlier stated as his understanding of the USG view, and Michael Lewis argues to be state practice as well. Kevin's (and...
06.05.11 | |

11 Jul

...law and legal consequences but is not a legal term in and of itself. Considered that way, unit self-defence can be thought of as: a) a form of delegated authority from the national command chain of a State to exercise a State’s right of national self-defence in limited circumstances and in a constrained fashion; b) a reminder of the criminal law authority to act in self-defence to protect oneself and protect others, (recalling that the criminal law concept of self-defence allows a person to not only defend his or herself,...
11.07.14 | |

21 Nov

not as correct application of the uti possidetis and self-determination principles in post-Cold War settings. He is also right, as he argues in his recent book, that cases such as Kosovo “bespeak[] the ad hoc nature of the international order’s solutions” to self-determination conflicts around the world. But, in the structure of his overarching argument, the doctrinal interpretation of self-determination is only one argument against a more normatively generous understanding of self-determination in the post-colonial context. Roth’s insistence on the combination of the principle of effectivity and non-intervention, as the...
21.11.13 | |

11 Nov

know) unprecedented move within a treaty text (made all the more interesting since it came from an Administration that in other contexts was openly hostile to self-executing treaties, not to mention that the other countries involved do not permit self-execution within their respective domestic systems). Fast forward to this fall, when the U.S. Senate considered giving advice and consent to these treaties. Unlike the federal government, however, the Senate was less sanguine about the prospect of a self-executing treaty trumping the AECA. As a result, the Senate conditioned U.S. ratification...
11.11.10 | |

18 Jun

self-defense and collective self-defense under U.N. Article 51 and there are no limitations with respect to the type of actor that can trigger an armed attack under Art. 51, esp. after S.C. and NATO recognitions that the 9/11 attacks triggered the inherent right of self-defense and over 53 writers have recognized that non-state actor armed attacks can trigger UN 51 -- see, e.g., http://ssrn.com/abstract=1520717 Under the U.S. Constitution, the President has the constitutionally-based power to authorize use of armed force in self and collective self-defensse. See, e.g., U.S. Const., art....
18.06.14 | |

10 Jul

...defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack. In his post, Keck notes that Japan’s decision to reinterpret its constitution does NOT allow Japan to fully exercise its rights to collective self-defense under international law, but it does allow Japan to provide military support to allies where Japan itself is threatened. But he then argues that even under this more narrow “collective self-defense” right, Japan could (and probably would) intervene to assist Taiwan in a military defense against a Chinese invasion. I think this could be right as a matter of Japanese...
10.07.14 | |

29 Jan

...quoted. He addressed the means or method chosen by the UK-Canadians in the actual context of their attack on the Caroline when they could have waited in those days until the vessel re-entered Canadian waters. Webster spoke of "necessity of THAT self-defense ... leaving no choice of MEANS" and since the ACT, justified by the necessity of self-defense, must be limited by that necessity, and kept clearly within it"! Benjamin Davis People may have not seen John B. Quigley's The Six-Day War and Israeli Self-Defense: Questioning the Legal Basis for...
29.01.13 | |