In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Search: self-defense

14 Apr

...self-defense apart from armed conflict, as a basis for targeting (and agreeing here with Serwer, including targeting Americans), is simultaneously a break with Bush administration policy (even while, in one sense, broadening it), and a re-affirmation of a legal policy going back to the Reagan-Bush years. The self-defense assertion is important, and intellectually engaging, precisely because it is not the ground on which the Bush administration claimed its ability to target people. For the Bush administration, it was always armed conflict, global and plenary; for the Obama administration, it allows...
14.04.10 | |

15 Dec

...other opportunities to undertake effective action in self-defense that may be expected to cause less serious collateral injury, loss or damage.” (p. 9) (2) State A need not obtain the consent of State B to use force on the territory of State B if State A is using force against a non-state armed group that poses an actual or imminent threat of armed attack against State A if State B is “unwilling or unable to confront effectively” the non-state actor in its territory. A state is most clearly “unable,” according...
15.12.16 | |

03 May

described by Jordan Paust. This is significant because it represents the use of Article 51 self-defense against non-state actors. While the ICJ’s opinions in the Palestinian Wall case and Congo v. Uganda both called into question whether Article 51 self-defense can support the use of force against non-state actors, the separate opinions of Judges Simma and Kooijmans recognized that in a post-9/11 world containing failed states, state practice strongly supports the view that an expansive reading of Article 51 to include non-state actors is appropriate. Sunday’s operation was another example...
03.05.11 | |

24 Jan

...a powerful argument on this front (at least to me): If a self-executing treaty can exceed Congress’ Article I powers, than why not a statute implementing that same treaty? What is the structural logic of this result? For this reason, I associate myself with Professor Curtis Bradley’s view that it makes sense to read a federalism limitation on the self-executing effects of a treaty as well. That question was the subject of Missouri’s main holding, and that holding is also troubling and suspect. I understand that the arguments for limiting...
24.01.13 | |

17 Feb

...Kosovo. Chris Borgen Corina: Thank you for your comments. I will analyze the legal rationale in a post later this week. Amin Ghanbari Now it has been just expectable to see any state of a federal system self determine it self in the light of the Post-Cold war era evolutions of international law and specially the general practice of other states concerning the issue of the right of self determination; but there is a question left unseen about people who are non members of a federal state, hopeful to self...
17.02.08 | |

04 Jun

...the aid from the flotilla? If Hamas does not see the humanitarian crisis as great enough to stop its violence, how is Israel supposed to see it as great enough to risk more of it? I'm not a spokesperson for Israel, but at the end of the day if Israel is finding itself increasingly isolated for exercising its rights to self-defense, better to be isolated than obliterated as per the Hamas Charter. Aaron Levitt I would like to see a serious reply to Zak's question, which addresses an issue that...
04.06.10 | |

22 Oct

...gained now would be lost in legal battles and hurdles along the way. The real problem is that the ICTY has put itself in a corner with the infamous Seselj decisions on self-representation, by saying that it cannot impose counsel unless a clear warning is given to the accused, and the accused persists in obstructing the proceedings. The better way would have been to always impose counsel (just like courts would do in Serbia and Bosnia, btw, which would have jurisdiction if the ICTY was not there) but at the...
22.10.09 | |

07 Sep

...previous law or treaty forbids. On a related note, is legislation which forecloses judicial application of preexisting and otherwise self executing treaties constitutional? A treaty is either self-executing and directly applicable or not. One may argue that the intent of the executive and of the Senate (as well the language of the treaty) have a bearing on whether the treaty is self executing but shouldnt' that be restricted to the intent at the time the treaty was negotiated and ratified. Once a treaty is deemed self-executing and directly applicable can...
07.09.06 | |

18 Jun

...overriding African state interests through the legal regime of the UN and the Security Council overlooks the obvious reality that state self-interest and state priorities have long animated the Council [...] The view from below then is not that international law as shaped by the Council has transcended state self-interest, but that only the interests and priorities of some states are relevant." "critics of South Africa and the AU do not acknowledge the dangers of infecting the ICC with the Council’s legitimacy deficits. The reliance on the Security Council as...
18.06.15 | |

15 Dec

...case was met during my few days at the Austrian Human Rights Film Festival with either stony silence or (more commonly) open hostility. It hasn’t been a pleasant response — so why do I do it? There are many answers. The first is the one that defense attorneys always use, which is no less true for that fact: every defendant, even one accused of committing horrific international crimes, needs a good defense. Indeed, the more horrific the accusations, the greater that need. Everyone involved in the criminal justice system knows...
15.12.08 | |

10 Jan

...military (violent) measures these social movements have resorted to as a result of the long-standing denial of the international legal right to collective self-determination possessed by Palestinians. For not only are such characterizations self-defeating, they serve to hide and distort more than reveal and inform. Patrick S. O'Donnell The last sentence should have read: "For whatever truth they contain and feebly express, such characterizations are, in the end, self-defeating, as they serve to hide and distort more than reveal and inform. David Bernstein leaders and members (e.g., Professor Bernstein’s telling...
10.01.09 | |

03 Feb

...as sovereign nations, call upon the Canadian and United States governments to respect our decision to reject tar sands projects that impact our sacred sites and homelands; to call upon the Canadian and United States governments to immediately halt and deny approval for pending tar sands projects because they threaten the soil, water, air, sacred sites, and our ways of life; and, confirm that any such approval would violate our ancestral laws, rights and responsibilities. Article VII then goes on to establish a mutual defense commitment of sorts, wherein the...
03.02.13 | |