Search: self-defense
10 Dec Symposium: A Duty to Prevent Genocide–Due Diligence Obligations among the P5 (Part Two)
and custom, which provides that a state may only use force pursuant to a Security Council resolution under Chapter VII or in self-defense. For this reason, a conflict also exists between the P5’s duty to engage in humanitarian intervention (if a member of the P5 breaches the duty not to veto) and the duty not to use force absent self-defense or Security Council authorization under the UN Charter and custom. Resolving the Conflict through Jus Cogens In Chapter 4, I note that the conflicts recognized in Chapter 3 must be...
20 Jul U.S. and Allied Involvement in the Russo-Ukrainian War: The Belligerent Status of NATO States and Its Implications
...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...
08 Oct Rethinking International Law After Gaza Symposium: Massacring Civilians – Genocide as International Legal Conundrum
...other international legal doctrines: state self-defense and prohibition of terrorism. Neocolonial states consistently allege to be acting in self-defense or in the interest of global security when they massacre civilians in the global South. (The U.S. “war on terror” exemplifies this tactic.) These neocolonial states also allege that mass civilian deaths are “mistakes” or “collateral damage.” The state’s claim of self-defense is so sacred in the contemporary international legal system that the burden of proof falls on victims of massacres to prove civilian targeting. Neocolonial states consistently murder disproportionately more...
15 Apr Can the United Nations General Assembly Authorize a No-fly-Zone over Ukraine?
...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...18 Nov LJIL Symposium: A Response to Professor Gabby Blum and Professor Chris Kutz
...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...27 Dec Besides the Year-End Reviews, How About Looking Forward to the Year, or the Century, to Come?
...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...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...
12 May Gulf States and Iran: The Implications of Hosting Military Bases Under Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello (Part II)
...both directions. For Iran, properly characterizing the Gulf states’ conduct matters for calibrating its responses: derivative complicity in aggression may justify robust non-forcible countermeasures and claims for reparation, but not force; use of bases as a launch point for attacks would authorize self-defence action directed at the bases; direct participation in attacks can, in principle, ground full self-defence action. For the Gulf states, the central message is cautionary. Hosting foreign bases in itself does not make them belligerents, but allowing those installations and national command structures to become embedded in...
12 May Gulf States and Iran: The Implications of Hosting Military Bases Under Jus ad Bellum and Jus in Bello (Part I)
...program, have been strongly rejected by international legal opinion, which holds that the campaign does not satisfy the requirements of lawful (anticipatory) self-defence under Article 51 (see e.g. here, here, and here). Iran has retaliated by striking Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Iranian officials have stated publicly that any territory or airspace ‘utilized to support aggressors’ is a legitimate target, and an Iranian letter to the United Nations Secretary General explicitly invokes the right of self-defence under Article 51 of the Charter. The Gulf states, for their...
25 Mar Uniting for Justice: Group Referrals to the International Criminal Court
...referral, can be grouped in three categories: 1) State Party self-referral; 2) single State Party referral and 3) group/collective State Party referral. The last two of them can be termed as “third State Party referrals”. Self-referral takes place when a State Party itself refers alleged crimes committed on its territory or by its nationals to the Prosecutor. Self-referrals has emerged as the major way to seize the Court. Interestingly, drafters of the Rome Statute shared an assumption that self-referrals would be an exception (for an opposite view, see Robinson, 2011)....