Search: self-defense
31 Aug Syria Insta-Symposium: John Quigley on Intervention
...are apparently invoking self-defense, on a rationale that chemical weapons in the possession of Syria’s government might “fall into the wrong hands” and be used against the United States or against US-friendly states in the region, naming Jordan, Israel, and Turkey. Apart from this being too distant from the “armed attack” required by UN Charter Article 51, self-defense could apply only to the United States, absent a request from another state for “collective” self-defense, a request that could be valid only if the other state had been attacked. The possibility...
09 Nov Israel’s War in Gaza is Not a Valid Act of Self-defence in International Law
the USA dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These actions went far beyond what is lawfully justified in self-defence in terms of necessity and proportionality. But they did not somehow, for that reason, give Germany and Japan a legal right in international law to use force in self-defence against the USA and the UK. They were incidents of illegality on the part of the two states within the broader context whereby they were acting lawfully in pursuance to a right to self-defence in response to...19 May Open Comment Thread for Harold Koh’s Post on the Osama Bin Laden Operation
...a law enforcement/police mission. Consequently, while your self-defense argument might count within a law enforcement legal regime, the legality of use of force against a person in armed conflict (IHL) is not assessed by it being an act of self-defense but rather by the question of compliance with the rules of war. In other words, self-defense can in the present case justify the violation of Pakistans sovereignty (Art. 51 UN-Charter) but not the target killing of OBL. JordanPaust Response... Has to be an int'l armed conflict for the Seals to...23 Aug The Multilateralist’s Persuasive Defense of the ICC: The U.S. Doesn’t Have to Worry About the ICC, As Long as It Stays Out of the ICC
...of sovereign rights whether some action is an action of "inherent right of self-defense" this action is not limited to an action involving the army. There is no rule of international law that limits the acts of self-defense to military actions, and one can employ other means as well; for instance legal means. Thus if a state has an "inherent right of self-defense" using its army, it has also a right to bring the leaders of the other state before ICC and sue them for the crime of aggression. In...28 Jul Guest Post: David J. R. Frakt on the Al-Bahlul Amicus Brief
factual error. The brief states at pp. 16-17 that Mr. Al Bahlul made “statements in trial in his capacity as his own defense counsel.” It repeats the assertion that he was “Acting as his own counsel” or “Acting as his own defense counsel” multiple times, quoting from the transcript from a pretrial session on 24 September 2008. Allow me to set the record straight. I was Mr. al Bahlul’s defense counsel. He did not represent himself at trial, and the assertion that he was acting as his own defense counsel...04 May Was the C.I.A. Director in Charge of the Bin Laden Operation? Apparently so. Does It Matter?
Marty Lederman John: I posted a question about your first topic -- does IHL apply to actions of self-defense short of armed conflict -- in Kevin's post, but the comments section there appears temporarily to be down. No matter for present purposes, since this is, in the U.S. view, an armed conflict as well as an action in self-defense to protect against future attacks. Three other reactions to your post: First, I think you're too quick to assume that, if this was a joint operation monitored by CIA and originally...24 May The US’s Retreat from IHL (or, the Triumph of Ryan Goodman)
...were very much written with an eye to the near-to-middle future, in which the US will be increasingly unable to maintain the fiction that it is involved in a single armed conflict “with al-Qaida, the Taliban, and associated forces.” Differently put, the US seems to be anticipating a time in which it will no longer be able to argue that the US may use lethal force outside of areas of active hostilities on the ground of either self-defense or IHL, but will be able to invoke only self-defense. I think...14 Jul The NYT on the CIA Targeted Killing Planning Post 9-11
...including self defense against terrorists. As then-Dept of State legal advisor Abraham Sofaer put it, the assassination ban does not apply to otherwise “lawful killings undertaken in self defense against terrorists.” I don’t know if this is open access online; it was published in the Military Law Review in 1989, and Judge Sofaer and others have told me that it was vetted with DOD and the White House as being US policy and interpretations of law. I am not aware of anything that has overturned it as US interpretation of...07 Jan The London Times Reports on Alleged Israeli Nuke Strike Plans Against Iran
...argues that the Charter has been adapted to allow for a much broader reading of the right of self-defense to encompass anticipatory self-defense or the rescue of a state’s nationals abroad, and for an approach to humanitarian intervention that would treat it as excusable if illegal. Though the mainstream legal position on preemptive self-defense has remained the same over the years, state practice is ambiguous: (1) the U.S. used Resolutions as well as a questionable theory of customary law of anticipatory self-defense to justify its military action in Iraq, and...02 Dec Contextualizing the Debate on First Strikes
to both justify and regulate the use of force? One way of looking at Adil’s “first strike” proposal is as a solution to the problem of so-called “self-defense targeting” or “naked”/“robust” self-defense: it preserves the distinction between the jus belli branches by ensuring, in Daniel Bethlehem’s formulation, that “any use of force in self-defense [is] subject to applicable jus in bello principles governing the conduct of military operations.” Adil’s framework would, at least presumably, complicate the current White House’s efforts to distinguish between “the use of force in armed conflict...