Search: self-defense
29 Jul Push a Square Peg into a Round Hole, or Build Another Hole?
...round hole. As an interesting coincidence, I experienced this first hand on the day this online symposium began. Yesterday I testified (out of order) as the first defense witness in the Hamdan military commission trial. The defense requested that I offer my opinion on when the armed conflict with al Qaeda began. Interestingly, the defense is not (to my knowledge) challenging the government assertion that the terror attacks of September 11th initiated a state of armed conflict between the United States and al Qaeda (which I realize and pointed out...26 Apr So Was Congress Thinking of Authorizing Force in Syria?
...other small set of problems around Syrian intervention: international law. The UN Charter says that one state can use force against another in two circumstances: (1) if the UN Security Council authorizes it, or (2) in national or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs, until the Security Council has time to act. In Libya, we had a UN Security Council Resolution authorizing military intervention. There is no such resolution here, and at the moment, slim prospect of obtaining one given Russia’s opposition to intervention. Is this plausibly self-defense, for...
11 Oct Rethinking International Law After Gaza Symposium: Unlawful Occupation as Ongoing Aggression – Rethinking Legal Responses in the Context of Palestine
...Self-Determination: The occupation must deny or obstruct the right to self-determination of the people under occupation. Hostile and Unprovoked Nature: The scale and severity of the ongoing presence in the occupied territory are both hostile and unprovoked, marked by, for instance, claims of a permanent foreign occupation, widespread loss of life, extensive destruction of property, or the displacement of vast numbers of refugees. These conditions are clearly fulfilled in the case of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, since its inception and perhaps now more than ever. The ICJ’s advisory opinion recognised...31 Mar Bad Criminal Law in the Alexander Blackman Case (With Addendum)
...deployments, similar emotions had been controlled by him. The appellant’s decision to kill was probably impulsive and the adjustment disorder had led to an abnormality of mental functioning that substantially impaired his ability to exercise self-control. In our judgement the adjustment disorder from which he was suffering at the time also impaired his ability to exercise self-control. Third, and finally, CMAC concluded (para. 114) that because Blackman could not form a rational judgment at the time of the killing as a result of his adjustment disorder, he was entitled to...
18 Aug States of Justice Symposium: Politicised Referrals are Still Referrals Nonetheless
[K.K. Sithebe is a PhD Candidate at the University of Pretoria and a Research Advisor, South African Human Rights Commission.] Professor Oumar Ba’s States of Justice provides much needed scholarship on the subject of international criminal justice and self-referrals. Prof. Ba provides a meticulous account of how individual African states, particularly Uganda, have since exploited the self-referral mechanism as envisaged in the Rome Statute. Further, this fine scholar provides a detailed account of events, detailing the attitude of individual states and other parties, including the International Criminal Court Prosecutor, prior...25 Mar Medellin v. Texas: “Modest and Fairly Careful”
decision implies an automatic assignment to the judiciary of the authority to ensure that the commitment is honored. • Although the opinion is limited in the sense that it does not offer a general rule for inferring self-executing from treaties, its dicta states strong views (it might be too strong to say it disposes of) concerning several controversies that the academic community has taken seriously. (a) The Court understands self-execution to refer to all forms of domestic enforcement, not just to the existence of a private right of action. Its...
14 Feb Symposium on Rewriting Histories of the Use of Force: On “Unproblematic Eurocentrism” and the Rewriting of International Law
...Let me start with the most obvious. Dr. Verdebout herself admits that “this material remains, all in all, rather ‘western’”, but addresses this possible line of critique by noting that such Eurocentrism “is not really problematic in the context of this research, as the aim is to examine a narrative that has itself been built on ‘eurocentric’ premises”. I would like to offer some pushback on this conclusion. The idea that “international law”, as a system, particularly in the 19th century, was a Eurocentric creation that irradiated from a metropolitan,...
30 Jul The Justiciability of the Precautionary Principle in the Tagaeri and Taromenane et al. v. Ecuador before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
...account their way of life and the potential impact on it. The IACtHR underscored the inextricable link between the Tagaeri and Taromenane’s territory and their survival as ecosystemic peoples. Their right to collective property, self-determination, and autonomy is contingent on preserving their land and strictly enforcing the principle of non-contact. Yet, Ecuador’s handling of oil exploitation in Yasuní Park revealed a glaring failure to uphold these protections. One aspect that is decisive to the finding of a violation of the right to collective property and self-determination is the nomadic nature...08 Mar David John Frank Responds to James Hathaway & Jason Pobjoy
is not to disregard the obvious differences between LGBT asylum claims and self-repression. Asylum rights are enabling. Self-repression is disabling. Asylum rights are public matters. Self-repression is a private matter. And so on. All of this is important to spell out because it describes the world as we know it and the world as we believe it should be. In articulating the assumptions that allow us to justify LGBT asylum claims in terms of the traumatic consequences of self-repression, we specify the conditions under which such a justification makes sense...