Search: self-defense
13 Sep The Legality of a U.S. Space Force
[Adam Irish is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at California State University, Chico.] President Donald Trump’s pronouncements that the United States needs to develop a “Space Force” were initially met with derision by national security establishment. In a letter to lawmakers, Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, wrote that he did not “wish to add a separate service that would likely present a narrower and even parochial approach to space operations.” However, three Space Policy Directives, one speech by the Vice President, and one report by the Department of Defense...14 Apr Koh Wars (Cont’d): A Useful Defense of Koh’s CEDAW Testimony
In the comments section of an earlier post, GW lawprof Edward Swaine raises a really good point in defense of Koh’s CEDAW testimony. Since I highlighted Whelan’s very tough post, it is worth highlighting Swaine’s very good point in defense (I am paraphrasing, but this is the gist): In the context of a committee hearing where other folks, including Senator Boxer, have addressed the issue of the CEDAW committee, and where Koh also addressed the CEDAW committee in his answers to questions, it is unfair for Whelan to conclude that...
24 Jul Judge Mindua’s Separate Opinion in Al Hassan: International Humanitarian Law and the Right to Political, Legal and Cultural Self-Determination
...Mindua emphasises, was an exercise of the right of self-determination, which he describes as a pillar of international law [15]. In this way, Judge Mindua begins his analysis by focusing on a jus ad bellum in which the fight for self-determination is a legitimate and justified struggle. Judge Mindua then engages in a theoretical discussion about why non-state actors, such as Ansar Dine/AQIM, are subjects of international humanitarian law. Again, this theoretical question is not at issue in the case. The Prosecution only had to show that Ansar Dine/AQIM demonstrated...10 Sep Rawlsian Justifications for Humanitarian Intervention
...is meant as an argument of opting into “fair” distributions, by means of ones own self-interest (The veil of ignorance aims to extend this self interest to an a-historical situation). Although in later work, Rawls does seem to make concessions to more Kantian and communitarian claims, self-interest remains a primary engine of the original position-construct. There also lies the key issue with which I’m struggling: universal appeal of anything, and thus also ius cogens, seems very far away from the Rawlsian distribution theory. It is rather assumed that there are...28 Sep A Treaty-Happy Senate?
...argument that the declarations actually constitute inadmissible reservations or are otherwise unacceptable). Second, from a U.S. law stand-point there’s the question of the Senate’s ability to make a declaration of self-execution, which I don’t think it has ever done before, at least not in the resolution of advice and consent itself (past SFRC reports have, of course, expressed opinions on whether the SFRC understood the treaty to be self-executing in one or more senses of that term, or otherwise dependent on ex-ante or ex-post legislation in some way). At a...
08 Apr The False Premise Sustaining Israel’s West Bank Claim – Part II
...was delivered by a 13-1 majority: According to the Advisory Opinion of International Court of Justice in the separation of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius, self-determination had emerged as a norm of customary international law between the years 1965 and 1968. These years coincided with the PLO’s self-determination claim to Palestine. And in the colonial context self-determination claims were also claims about sovereignty. It could, of course, be argued that the Palestinian people did not need to base their self-determination claim on customary international law, since the UN had already...09 Dec “Constitutionalizing” Global Administrative Law or Experimenting With a Hybrid Transnational Legal Order? (a Response by Karl-Heinz Ladeur)
...“eigenvalue” of the differentiated language of law as such. Jerry L. Mashaw has convincingly argued that the doubts of the “lawness” of global administrative law stem from the same origin as the conventional ignorance of the generative power of administration that manifests itself in the emergence of the “internal administrative law” in the 19th century. With reference to administrative agencies that have to operate with an internal perspective of creating a layer of self-binding and self-reflexive rules on the one hand and with an outside view to other private and...