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Search: self-defense

10 Aug

John C. Dehn Kenneth, These are all wonderful questions. One major question sticks out in my mind. In the Nicaragua case, I believe the ICJ said that collective self defense under the UN Charter required a request for assistance. I am comfortable with finding Pakistan to be engaged in an internal armed conflict and acting in self defense (at least as recognized by Security Council resolutions after 9/11). May we not presume such a request was made relevant to this attack? If so, wouldn't that potentially change the nature of...
10.08.09 | |

25 Mar

Diane Marie Amann See IntLawGrrls tomorrow, Ken. Happy to help, Diane Kenneth Anderson thnxs! John C. Dehn Ken, I noted one time that he used the terms armed conflict and self defense in the alternative. In every other case self defense was related to the existence of armed conflict, with the latter providing the legal authority for the administration's approach. Is it your position that the use of force in national self defense can sometimes be accomplished without the constraints of the laws of war? Do you see this as...
25.03.10 | |

11 Nov

...unilateral secession by California is authorized by the international law right of self-determination. This is a much more difficult point to analyze, but I think that neither California nor Oregon would qualify to exercise this murky international law right, at least with respect to seceding. The Canada Supreme Court’s decision in the Quebec case is probably most on point here. A state whose government represents the whole of the people or peoples resident within its territory, on a basis of equality and without discrimination, and respects the principles of self-determination...
11.11.16 | |

21 Aug

The WSJ has an article on the U.S. Defense Department’s push for a criminal prosecution of Wikileaks for releasing U.S. government documents on the Afghanistan war. Several officials said the Defense and Justice departments were now exploring legal options for prosecuting Mr. Assange and others involved on grounds they encouraged the theft of government property. Bringing a case against WikiLeaks would be controversial and complicated, and would expose the Obama administration to criticism for pursuing not just government leakers, but organizations that disseminate their information. I agree it would be...
21.08.10 | |

02 Mar

Benjamin Davis These are the three hypos that are presented to support the idea of a humanitarian necessity defense and the question is why the strict rule of IHL on these things. Here are a couple of thoughts. 1. approach a neighbor of a suspected Palestinian militant and request the neighbor to urge the suspect to surrender quietly to the security forces. What if the neighbor says no? Do the security forces say "Thank you and have a nice day."? The neighbor is presumably a civilian who does not want...
02.03.10 | |

19 Apr

...because prisoners do not have a legal entitlement to payment for their work, and the Due Process Clause protects only against deprivation of existing interests in life, liberty, or property…. Plaintiffs fail to state a viable claim under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. “For any treaty to be susceptible to judicial enforcement it must both confer individual rights and be self-executing.” A treaty is self-executing when it is automatically enforceable in domestic courts without implementing legislation. The ICCPR fails to satisfy either requirement because it was ratified...
19.04.10 | |

10 Jun

...to be already published (e.g., publishing in Harv. Int'l L.J. on-line). Alec Stone Sweet I do not see the dilemma. Most good papers are mounted on SSRN or Selected Works and widely circulated before submission to peer review, and they will have been read much more than most blog entries. Bloggers might have delusions of grandeur, but a blog is not a journal. I don't see how self-posting anything on-line should preclude the latter's publication if it meets the journal's standards. Kevin Jon Heller "I don’t see how self-posting anything...
10.06.12 | |

14 Mar

...as well as direct threats by the latter to impose their order on the whole territory of Ukraine.” I am pretty surprised that Russia is endorsing this expansive view of self-determination, which I think could be fairly invoked by certain parts of Russia itself (Hello, Chechnya!). But I suppose the dispute here with the West could be understood as factual rather than legal. Most scholars would accept the idea that self-determination is appropriate in certain exceptional circumstances, such as decolonization or when facing the threat of genocide or other mass...
14.03.14 | |

08 May

[Jennifer Trahan is an Associate Clinical Professor at the NYU Center for Global Affairs.] In his Opinio Juris post on May 4, Dr. Mohamed Helal provides a defense of Russia’s veto use related to the situation in Syria, one that he defends as in line with the negotiations of the UN Charter and a vision of veto power of the permanent members of the Security Council as a virtual carte blanche. There is some merit to his argument; indeed, it appears to correspond with how at least certain permanent members...
08.05.18 | |

09 May

According to the Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs, the U.S. government has recently re-affirmed its obligations to defend the Philippines under the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty. This is a particularly sensitive time to re-affirm this commitment, given the ongoing tensions between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea. But what exactly is the U.S. committing to here? Would the U.S. actually feel obligated to defend Filipino claims to disputed islands and territories in the South China Sea? Let’s go to the text of the treaty: Article IV Each...
09.05.12 | |

19 Oct

...Stafford also stated in the email that “The interrogator said I told my clients to kill themselves, and word was passed to the three men who did commit suicide.” Smith says flatly that he has no connection at all to the suicides, and he say the Defense Department, in charge of Guantanamo, may be trying to shift blame to him. It’s not only Smith’s ability to represent Gharani that has been destroyed: In the course of the investigation, the Navy has seized more than a thousand pages of documents from...
19.10.06 | |

07 Jan

...is attributable to defense challenges, it does seem appropriate to consider whether a General Court-Martial would have in fact been more efficient. The second justification that no longer seems meaningful was the purported need for a “quasi-secret” process to protect evidence and participants. Considering the Department of Defense has willingly provided information about the legal and lay participants in the process, there seems little difference on this point between the Military Commission and the Court-Martial. As for the protection of evidence, the concern was essentially hollow from the outset, as...
07.01.06 | |