Search: self-defense
12 Mar Bradley Book Symposium: Kristina Daugirdas on Delegations to International Institutions
...them unless and until Congress adopts implementing legislation. This is desirable, he writes, because it ensures that international decisions and orders are subject to “the filter of the U.S. democratic process.” (p. 134) Professor Bradley reports that some commentators—himself included—have therefore endorsed a presumption that the orders and decisions of international institutions are not self-executing. When the decisions and orders of international institutions are not self-executing, Congress’s participation becomes essential if the United States is to comply with its international obligations. But can we count on Congress to fulfill this...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)....
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,...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...
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...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...