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Search: self-defense

09 Oct

...and which I – very selfishly – would enjoy elaborating on (after all, legal blogging is a structurally and emotionally selfish exercise). First, both Francesco and Michael seem to regret the overly pessimistic light cast by the paper on the current state of the profession and my alleged lamenting of the foundering of a profession that spends too much time varnishing and polishing its nails in a beauty salon. As indicated above, this editorial was solely meant to buoy self-reflection by drawing the attention to some growing habits which we...
09.10.12 | |

10 Dec

...have to say: ‘That is true. And I admire your self-confidence.’ But I also think that this self-confidence is part of the problem – because it is an unwarranted self-confidence. It is the cause not only of why so many people in the world suffer, but also why so many people have lost faith in managerial expertise. The problem is this: most people meet experts – such as myself – when they are asked to give solutions to the problems of the world. The expert will then have a 35...
10.12.18 | |

11 Nov

...secession would have clashed with a cornerstone of the UN, the territorial integrity of states. Outside of the context of decolonization, the right of self-determination for communities that are within already existing states is understood as a right to “internal” self-determination: the pursuit of political, cultural, linguistic, and other rights within the existing state (in this case, the U.S.). However, secession is not in and of itself illegal under international law (although it may be linked to an act that is breach in international law, such as a military intervention...
11.11.16 | |

17 Oct

...right to resort to force automatically justifies whatever means are employed. The result is that world leaders and many legal commentators have suggested, perhaps accidentally, that the IDF’s exercise of Israel’s right to self-defence or Hamas’ pursuit of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination renders lawful the targeting of civilians, the perpetration of sexual violence against them, the taking of hostages, the denial of food and water to civilian populations, and their forcible transfer to conditions in which their basic needs cannot possibly be met. When made by world leaders,...
17.10.23 | |

10 Jul

be “self-executing,” meaning that a private right of action is explicitly provided for in the treaty or the treaty has been implemented by a U.S. federal statute…. The Bank Defendants argue that the Geneva Convention is not self-executing and therefore does not provide plaintiffs with a private right of action. Plaintiffs concede that the Convention is non-self-executing, but argue that export prohibitions on chemical weapons enacted by the members of the Australia Group and some governments’ efforts to enforce laws against supplying countries such as Iraq with materials to manufacture...
10.07.06 | |

22 Jan

I have a new paper up on SSRN, appearing shortly in the Wayne Law Review, The Assumptions Behind the Assumptions in the War on Terror: Risk Assessment as an Example of Foundational Disagreement in Counterterrorism Policy. Here is the abstract from SSRN, with apologies from the Department of Shameless Self-Promotion: This 2007 article (based around an invited conference talk at Wayne State in early 2007) addresses risk assessment and cost benefit analysis as mechanisms in counterterrorism policy. It argues that although policy is often best pursued by agreeing to set...
22.01.09 | |

19 Feb

...of the key language includes the following from the preamble: Reaffirming the commitment of all Member States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the other States of the region, as set out in the Helsinki Final Act and annex 2, Reaffirming the call in previous resolutions for substantial autonomy and meaningful self-administration for Kosovo, Moreover, the operative paragraphs include the following: The Security Council… 1. Decides that a political solution to the Kosovo crisis shall be based on the general principles in annex...
19.02.08 | |

24 Jun

...charges which made it difficult for the defendants to prepare their case and the inability of the defense to call witnesses who feared for their security. Proceedings in the Anfal trial closed on May 10, 2007 and a verdict will be issued soon. The prosecutor has called for the death penalty to be imposed on five of the six defendants. “The court undercut the accused’s right to present a vigorous defense by allowing the prosecution to rely on vague charges and refusing requests to accommodate defense witnesses,” said Dicker. “This...
24.06.07 | |

16 Apr

...the time that there was no legal justification for watering down American criminal law’s well-established “entrapment by estoppel” defense in the way that Lederman suggested and that Obama has now endorsed. Here is what I wrote regarding Lederman’s claim that we can infer reasonable reliance from the existence of the OLC’s advice itself (which directly contradicts his insistence that waterboarding is patently illegal): I think Lederman’s argument misunderstands the nature of “entrapment by estoppel.” Section 2.04 of the Model Penal Code provides a typical formulation of the defense: [a] belief...
16.04.09 | |

21 Nov

James Comey and Jack Goldsmith provide here the best (although not completely convincing) defense of the decision to try KSM in New York. I agree that the most defensible explanation is that military commissions remain constitutionally vulnerable, hence it makes sense to use the civilian courts for your most important cases. I don’t quite buy this, but I think this is the most sensible explanation of what seems otherwise a totally baffling decision....
21.11.09 | |

11 Apr

Pierre N. Leval, a well-respected judge who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, has published a full-scale no-holds-barred policy defense of the Alien Tort Statute in Foreign Affairs. The essay, which is adapted from his lecture to the New York City Bar Association, offers the standard argument in favor of the Alien Tort Statute (it gives victims of human rights atrocities the possibility of justice and compensation). And he offers a pre-rebuttal to a possibly negative ATS ruling from the U.S. Supreme...
11.04.13 | |

02 Oct

...Arabs to live together. Partitioning the territory was the only way out. Mihai Martoiu Ticu "In December 1917, when the British Army occupied Palestine, the Arabs could not independently invoke a right of self-determination in general international law even though they had long been numerically preponderant in Palestine, owning most of the land, and even reaching high political office under the Turks. This is because at that time self-determination was, at best, a political principle. It did not exist as an independent legal right, which all peoples could invoke. However,...
02.10.11 | |