Search: self-defense

...had the right to decide its political status against the wishes of the overwhelming Arab majority. In her dissent, Judge Sebutinde, responding to an argument that the Arab population living in Mandatory Palestine may have had a right of self-determination, asserts (para. 79): the founding documents of the Mandate (including General Assembly resolution 181 (1947)) are silent on the issue of the self-determination of Palestinian Arabs living within the Mandatory territory, implying that the question of their self-determination was perceived as one of “internal self-determination” that would require negotiation and...

...treaty could have been self-executing, a possibility Mr. Clement seemed willing to entertain (transcript p. 7). Justice Scalia seemed to think that self-executing treaty would be better because it would require implementation by the states of the United States (transcript p. 33), though he was mistaken because a self-executing treaty binds the judges of every state under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. Justice Breyer seemed to think that a self-executing treaty would be worse because it would cut out the House of Representatives (transcript p. 48). And Solicitor General Verrilli made...

the print edition at SSRN. I have been meaning to add, though, that several positions are emerging in new scholarship coming out on this topic. I’m not the only person defending “self defense” as the correct paradigm, for example. Jordan Paust has an important new paper on this, and although we come to very different conclusions as to what and how self-defense does things for you, we share a foundation in international law of self-defense. Mary Ellen O’Connell also has a well known position, ably set out in this book...

[Lieutenant Commander Yusuke Saito is a legal advisor in the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) and a military professor at Stockton Center for International Law, United States Naval War College. The views expressed in this article are of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the stance of the U.S. Naval War College and Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force.] Introduction The U.S.–North Korea High Level Meeting scheduled for November 8, 2018 was suddenly postponed. Although the reason for the suspension was unclear, reportedly, North Korea has not been willing to...

JordanPaust Response... Yes, Harold has emphasized that such general principles condition decisions whether in the context of war (the war paradigm and the expanded theatre of the international armed conflict into Pakistan) and/or the context of self-defense (the self-defense paradigm that has set up disagreement among some textwriers -- see my article at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1520717 Future scholarship should address the role of robotic conduct under the self-defense paradigm and the limits of the reach of permissibility under UN art. 51. What I find most unconvincing is Harold's ploy that we are...

...conflict characterization over the naked self-defense characterization, is on firm ground. It would in my view be on firm ground either way. However, I remain fully committed to the view that self-defense as an independent category remains available as a legal rationale, and that it will be necessary and appropriate in future circumstances. With respect to pure human rights law, outside of armed conflict law, I would emphasize a couple of things. One is that I am not especially convinced that the international human rights law of extrajudicial execution is...

...the intentional launch of an unarmed ballistic missile into Japan’s territorial waters. The article itself is divided into three sections. Section 2 asks whether either North Korean provocation would qualify as an “armed attack,” the necessary precondition of individual or collective self-defense. Section 3 analyzes what would be required for the U.S. to justify a BNS as the collective self-defense of Japan. And Section 4 discusses whether the U.S. could justify a BNS as its own individual self-defense. The article is based on a presentation I gave last February at...

the 1990s. This doctrine is essentially the same as the private right of action doctrine, but it also prohibits a private litigant from invoking a non-self-executing treaty as a defense. The fourth and final modern version of the doctrine is the no judicial enforcement doctrine. Its origins can be traced to the Medellin decision rendered by the Supreme Court in 2008. This doctrine posits that non-self-executing treaties are the Law of the Land for purposes of the Supremacy Clause but that judges are powerless to enforce them irrespective of whether...

I read with great interest Professor Bainbridge’s post a few weeks ago about self-publishing legal scholarship. The discussion Bainbridge linked to in that post by Joe Konrath and Barry Eisler about self-publishing (and expanded upon here) is even more interesting. (Eugene Volokh’s posts from 2009 are also quite useful.) Self-publishing of fiction appears to be the wave of the future. On the other hand, self-publishing non-fiction works, including academic scholarship, is just now on the horizon. SSRN is the first great wave of self-publishing legal scholarship, but it complements rather...

...science-fiction shows before it, BSG concerns itself with the porous membrane between humanity and barbarism. Unlike most of its predecessors, however, it has the benefit of an open-ended, real-life war as its backdrop, making its lessons about barbarism unavoidably resonant. This year, BSG is going many steps further. Season 2 ended with the Cylon invasion of the new, dusty, human homeworld, New Caprica, and the self-serving capitulation of President Gaius Baltar. The invasion forced the Galactica into space—meaning humanity is without its defenses and possibly without hope. Season 3 finds...

H Lime Kevin, Good post, but I have to disagree with your ultimate conclusion. The burden under the U.S. system is that the prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defense didn't exist. In a case like this where the prosecution's own witnesses (before the defense case even began) supplied the defense, I have to assume that the prosecution didn't do enough to rebut that defense, in the form of some proof that a reasonable person would have known the actions violated the Geneva Conventions or other...

because the point about killing innocents is easily shown to be a red herring from jus ad bellum point of view since the drone program is obviously understood, and understood plausibly, as a form of self defense against an ongoing threat by al Qaeda given AQ's relentless series of attacks against American homeland ( the printer cartridge bombs, 2 underwear bombers et ). In other words there is a strong moral case that the drone program against alQaeda is justified because it is a genuine case of self defense. So,...