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Search: self-defense

20 Jul

...Such assistance would dramatically expand the military-industrial resources available to Russia and thus substantially improve its prospects for defeating Ukraine. Effective self-defense against indirect aggression may therefore require targeting the aggressor coalition’s military-industrial center of gravity by employing armed force against the indirect aggressor. For example, in 1972 the United States interdicted Soviet-North Vietnamese sea lines of communication by mining North Vietnamese harbors against Soviet shipping. Critically, such actions are far more likely to be viewed as lawful elements of a “war of self-defense” if it is recognized that a...
20.07.22 | |

14 Jul

Related to Ken’s earlier post, Amos Guiora has a piece up at Foreign Policy describing the legal analysis he applied when advising the Israeli Defense Forces on targeted killings of terrorists. He argues that international law permits targeted killing when certain conditions are met: The decision to use targeted killing of terrorists is based on an expansive articulation of the concept of pre-emptive self defense, intelligence information, and an analysis regarding policy effectiveness. According to Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, a nation state can respond to an armed attack....
14.07.09 | |

18 Nov

...rarely encountered in war. What if the would-be defender was guilty himself of posing a threat? The likeliest case in war is that the combatant supposedly exercising self-defense at the same time poses a threat to his attacker. Normally, in this case we decide who actually has a right to self-defense by making a judgement about the difference in moral status. That the victim of an assault uses force to fight back does not give her attacker a moral right to defend himself. If we refuse to take moral status...
18.11.13 | |

22 Oct

...sufficiently intense protracted armed violence and organized armed groups, however, the applicable rules for the Rio operation is international human rights law. These standards, reflected in the United Nations Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials and the case-law of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, require lethal force to be a measure of last resort, only to be used in cases involving self-defense or the defense of others against a threat of death or serious injury – a standard known as “absolute necessity”....
22.10.18 | |

07 Jun

“areas of active hostilities”) with the legal definition of non-international armed conflict (NIAC). Gabor conceded that “areas of active hostilities” and NIAC are not synonymous, but pointed out that it nonetheless remained unclear where the US government considered itself at war. Ryan, together with Stephen Pomper, replied that such lack of clarity shouldn’t be a reason to distrust the DNI report since, in any event, national self-defense targeting in response to imminent armed attacks is more restrictive than IHL targeting. Simply put, I think that Gabor is more likely to...
07.06.17 | |

15 Apr

...with Resolution 1973.  There is however one caveat to this conclusion. The Ukrainian government has already signaled that it would invite other states to implement a no-fly-zone over its territory. As Ukraine is currently exercising its right to self-defense under Art. 51 UNCh against Russia’s aggression, states can furnish military assistance to Ukraine as a measure of collective self-defense. The GA could welcome such action in accordance with the Ukrainian government’s invitation. This would fall short of an authorization and have no legal effect. However, it could bestow legitimacy to...
15.04.22 | |

24 Mar

...my view, the proper legal frame is international law of self-defense – and it is what the US has traditionally viewed the exercise of these discrete uses of force by the CIA, covert or clandestine, as being anyway. These two legal rationales eventually lead to different legal conclusions, constraints and authority for the use of force. My view is that forcing CIA targeted killing in places that might range widely in the world into armed conflict rationales is bad for the CIA’s legal reasoning, and requires ever greater legal contortions...
24.03.10 | |

01 Apr

...independence under the “sacred trust of civilisation” and its right to self-determination under the UN Charter”. However, Palestinian self-determination cannot negate Israel’s territorial claims or the principle of territorial integrity; at most they imply the existence of competing claims which must be addressed in a final resolution. Of course, the existence of self-determination rights does not dictate the precise territorial scope in which they can be exercised [nor does it mandate a separate state; see Reference re Secession of Quebec]. A conflicting Palestinian right would not necessarily detract from Israeli...
01.04.24 | |

17 Feb

...in international affairs might prefer such a constitutional design. However, Professor Stewart is certainly not in that camp, nor were the Founders. Third, one modern permutation of self-execution doctrine—the “no judicial enforcement” doctrine—allows state governments to impose sanctions on a criminal defendant in violation of supreme federal (treaty) law, without addressing the merits of defendant’s treaty-based defense. The Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause guarantees every state criminal defendant an opportunity to be heard on the merits of a federal defense to state criminal charges. Therefore, as I contend in Chapter...
17.02.17 | |

30 Aug

...avoid the questions of territorial sovereignty. Self-determination does not answer the question of the geographical unit in which it is exercised. Armenians, for example, do not principally have a preexisting sovereignty claim to Nagorno-Karabakh. Rather, they see Armenian control as an exercise of the self-determination of the Karabakh population. Similarly, Russia justifies its occupation not on prior title but on the self-determination of the Crimean population. International law rejects this argument, and regards Armenian control as an occupation, because the standard lines in which self-determination is exercised is the preexisting...
30.08.17 | |

14 Mar

...sovereign immunity. The symposium contributors have addressed a number of specific propositions in the book. Here are some brief comments on each of their posts: 1. David Moore contends that the Supreme Court’s decision in Medellin v. Texas need not be read as rejecting all multi-factored approaches to self-execution. I agree and did not mean to suggest otherwise in the book. I read Medellin as rejecting only the approach of the dissent, whereby the same treaty provision might be self-executing in some cases but not in others depending on how...
14.03.13 | |

27 Dec

...Finally, I suggest one recent law review article that considers one of the most important areas of technological innovation: self-replicating technology. But my St. John’s colleague Jeremy Sheff looks at a self-replicating technology that is already here and ubiquitous: the seed. Here’s the abstract: Self-replicating technologies pose a challenge to the legal regimes we ordinarily rely on to promote a balance between innovation and competition. This article examines recent efforts by the federal courts to deal with the leading edge of this policy challenge in cases involving the quintessential self-replicating...
27.12.12 | |