Search: self-defense

invoke the security exception in good faith, with a margin of discretion. A Member State may do so because of a fear of sanction, out of a sense of norm legitimacy, or because it is in its self-interest to do so. The Article concludes with brief reflections on why nations comply with the good faith obligation of a self-judging exception. Compliance with a self-judging rule offers useful insights into larger questions of why nations obey international law. Rational choice and normative theories best explain compliance with a self-judging international norm....

...the rule of law, and basic humanity be damned. Yet, this is not only a betrayal of Palestine; it is a betrayal of the promise of the international order itself, signaling a return to 19th-century gunboat diplomacy, now peppered with 21st-century gangster politics. Palestinian life, self-determination, and even their very survival are swapped in exchange of political favours, construction projects, and domestic expediency. While this plan represents a natural culmination of decades of Western policy towards Palestinians, it also presages something much worse. Trump and Netanyahu have presented the world...

defense attorneys should hold Stewart “partly responsible” for her predicament. Her only “crime” was refusing to follow the Special Administrative Measures — the U.S. government’s Orwellian term for reserving to itself the right to monitor Stewart’s conversations with her client. Given that the the SAMs are specifically designed to undermine attorneys’ ability to zealously defend their clients (unless you think that defense attorneys are normally in the business of aiding and abetting terrorists), Stewart’s act of civil disobedience should be praised, not criticized — especially given that her act has...

...be limited to the range of situations in which self-defense has been recognized. I would be curious to see whether Afghan law or Canadian law includes this kind of self-defense, I doubt American law does that. As to self-defense in international law, my sense is that a civilian in this setting does not have that kind of self-defense unless they are in the levee en masse vision or there is something in customary international humanitarian law to which my attention has not been drawn. The extraterritorial application of a US...

"genocide" Obama refers to might be related to a claim of collective self-defense. Moreover, Iraq can engage in self-defense against a non-state actor in this circ., and consent to collective self-defense, even if the armed attacks occur partly within Iraqi territory. See, e.g., http://ssrn.com/abstract=2459649 Another issue involves classification of the armed conflict within Iraq and parts of Syria. Jordan Obama's more recent statement that this will be a "long-term project" does not fit well with a self-defense justification. Therefore, collective self-defense with the consent of the Iraqi Govt. is a...

...key question is “which people?” This has been at the heart of debates over what it means for a “people” to have a right of self-determination. My guess is that Medvedev believes that “people” refers to “South Ossetians” and that Saakashvili would say that it refers to “all the people of Georgia.” Unfortunately, international law has had a pretty hard time defining what a “people” is for the purposes of self-determination. As the Canadian Supreme Court put it (with admirable understatement) in the Secession of Quebec opinion, the meaning of...

Jordan Response... And an interesting question from Senator Wyden: will the Executive target U.S. citizens and aliens inside the United States under the self-defense and/or the law of war paradigms? There was no attention paid to the possibility of secret judicial review (checks and balances) of the list of targetable U.S. citizens, something mentioned here on Opinio Juris. Yes, quick action may be necessary as a matter of self-defense against ongoing armed attacks by non-state actors, but should there be some judicial review of the propriety of placement on the...

...my FSU J. Transnat'l L. & Pol'y article on Self-Defense Targeting.... (also available on-line at SSRN). Let's "talk" more about self-defense captures and detention. Anonymous Mr Chang presented his arguments at the annual international law conference of the US Naval War College held this past summer. You can listen to the presentation, and the reception that his arguments generated, by clicking on the picture associated with the particular panel of which he was a part by going here: https://www.usnwc.edu/Events/International-Law-Conference-2011.aspx Jordan Response... Kevin: I have read your draft article. Yours is...

...against demographic pressures from the mainland. In contrast to the “external” exercise of self-determination (in the form of secession) now being entertained in Crimea, territorial autonomy involves “internal self-determination”, or the grant of functions of statehood without the right to actually form or join a separate state. Beyond protections related to land and language, for instance, Åland has its own parliament, government, postal system, flag, and national anthem. Internal self-determination was endorsed in the UN General Assembly’s 2007 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which accords such peoples “the...

...defence? Because affirmative defences admit that the defendant violated the criminal statute in question. As Gardner and Anderson put it in their treatise: An affirmative defense is any defense that assume the complaint or charges to be correct but raises other facts that, if true, would establish a valid excuse or justification or a right to engage in the conduct in question. An affirmative defense does not concern itself with the elements of the offense at all; it concedes them. In effect, an affirmative defense says, “Yes, I did it,...

own reasons to follow the treaty obligation while Oklahoma can decide not to or vice versa. State by state opting into complying with the obligation of the United States would seem the result - almost like the kind of vote by states on treaties the Bricker Amendment was seeking. These thoughts make me worry that I am facing a more radical vision here. At least before this, you had the Supremacy Clause idea covering treaties whether self-executing or non-self-executing. Roberts appears to be putting the non-self-executing treaties in a particularly...

JordanPaust Response... If the law of war paradigm does not apply, one is not locked into a law enforcement paradigm because there might also be a right of self-defense under UN art. 51 == the self-defense paradigm. Since the U.S. cannot be in an armed conflict with al Qaeda as such, this is an important point. My article on self-defense targetings made these points. Further, there have been influences of jus ad and jus in vis a vis each other and since similar general principles pertain (reasonable necessity, distinction, proportionality),...