Search: self-defense
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...
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...
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...30 Aug Symposium on Occupation Law: The Necessary Non-Normativity and Temporal Indeterminacy of Occupation Law
...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...
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...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...20 May Dave Glazier on the Wall Street Journal on Gitmo Defense Attorneys
Over at National Security Advisors, our colleague Dave Glazier has a superb post on whether the Gitmo defense attorneys are responsible for the ills of the military commissions, as the Wall Street Journal‘s far-right editorial page seems to believe. Here’s the intro: The Wall Street Journal published a scathing editorial today blasting the military and civilian defense attorneys it portrays as unreasonably obstructing the capital military commission prosecutions of high value terrorists, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM). It is not surprising that a paper noted for its...19 Sep John Yoo’s Defense of the NSA Program
I stand behind my description of Yoo, but Julian’s thoughtful post deserves a less facile response. So let’s consider Yoo’s claim about Clinton’s violation of the War Powers Act. Here is Julian’s explanation of why Yoo’s attack on Clinton is not inconsistent with his defense of Bush: His complaint about Clinton’s violation of the War Powers Act is that Clinton didn’t bother to claim that the War Powers Act is unconstitutional (in fact, according to Yoo, Clinton actually accepted the legality of the War Powers Act). Instead, Clinton simply violated...19 Jan Will Bond v. United States Matter?
...argues here). Having said all that, a favorable decision for the petitioners in Bond could still have a practical impact by reviving that almost extinct constitutional creature: the self-executing treaty. The President and Senate, at least in the past few decades, have very rarely approved self-executing treaties outside of a few subject matter areas (like taxes, extradition, and investment). Big important treaties, such as human rights treaties, have generally been approved on the condition they are non-self-executing. (Go ahead, name the most important self-executing treaty of the past thirty years....11 Apr Executive Federalism (a.k.a. Semi-Shameless Self Promotion)
...the treaty power’s scope and devised its own mechanisms for accommodating federalism in U.S. treaties. To date, however, scholars have largely ignored the Executive’s efforts to self-judge when and how federalism limits U.S. treaty-making–efforts that I label “Executive Federalism.” But Executive Federalism has significant domestic and international ramifications. First, it requires rethinking federalism’s nature by demonstrating that federalism need not function solely as a judicial or legislative safeguard for states’ rights. Second, while it serves as a vehicle for Executive self-restraint, Executive Federalism still has structural implications, weakening the authority...