Search: self-defense

...strikes with the United Nations (UN) Charter and the general prohibition on the use of force under international law. This post will focus on this last matter. Before delving into some of the key legal issues, it should be noted that the US strikes contrast with the position previously adopted by the US, whereby it directed its military force towards the fight against the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) under its umbrella of ‘the war on terror’ on the basis of self-defence, as opposed to directing...

...those displaced.  Speakers emphasised the four main findings of the AO and their implications. First, the ICJ observes that Israel violates the ius cogens and erga omnes obligation to respect the right to self-determination for the Palestinian people as well as the obligation arising from the prohibition of the use of force to acquire territory. The ICJ underscores the obligation of all states to cooperate in ending Israel’s illegal occupation and ensuring the full realisation of Palestinian self-determination, including the territorial integrity of the OPT. The Court gives the task...

...opportunities. Beyond the direct impact of being blacklisted on Canary Mission, there is every possibility that critical teaching on Palestine scuppers the development of ties between an academic’s institution and the prospective Israeli partners. Of course being labelled a troublemaker has implications for job security as well. Avoiding self-censorship and practical next steps Beyond the personal costs noted above, most damaging of all is the self-censorship or self-policing the threat of recording provokes. Academics and students who would otherwise feel empowered to proffer critical opinions may feel less inclined to...

...of historical meaning is an all-or-nothing proposition, as Professor Spiro seems to imply. Although I’m not necessarily advocating the approach, I could imagine someone saying that historical meaning can be a starting point or a presumption, subject to overriding functional or practice-based modifications. Thus one could see a role for the book’s project in modern debates, without denying the relevance of other considerations. Professor Ku raises some interesting and somewhat related thoughts on self-executing treaties. I tend to agree with his policy preference for non-self-executing treaties, mostly for the reasons...

...the rule by deciding, at the time of treaty negotiation or ratification, that a particular treaty provision is “non-self-executing” (NSE). In sum, the de facto Bricker Amendment converted the treaty supremacy rule from a mandatory to an optional rule by creating an exception for NSE treaties. The lawyers who invented the NSE exception to the treaty supremacy rule in the early 1950s claimed that they were merely following nineteenth century precedent. That claim was patently false. Before World War II, self-execution doctrine and treaty supremacy doctrine were independent, non-overlapping doctrines....

...for these insurmountable workloads was to switch to a part-time contract. So, although I have worked above and beyond contractual hours for years now, I would be rewarded with a 20% or 40% pay cut, just to cope in academia? Then how would I cope financing a household on my own? On the flip side, when successes come, the feeling of external affirmation is such a salve for low self-esteem. Fragile self-worth seeking these moments is a recipe for disaster, because complex personal circumstances simply do not allow me to...

...does not have to be about writing fixed end-state ideal societies or resolutions to harm.  Koskenniemi’s binary structure for international legal discourse that is stuck between wishful thinking and apologies, as well as Allott’s blueprint Eutopia, negate any potential for self-reflection as method. Reading these critical utopias, and studying their “fault-lines”, requires us to ask different questions about international law’s relationship with utopia. For example, we can ask whose utopia is it, and we can ask what harms and inequalities are being maintained by being caught in a self-imposed feedback...

...order to argue in a fairly straightforward manner that the almost complete physical and cultural destruction of Native Americans was an act of self-defence and self-preservation. We are particularly astounded because this has been a standard trope to justify imperial violence, domination, and expansionism for centuries. From the 1857 Indian Rebellion to ‘Jewish financial terrorism’ the white racist imaginary is structured around supposed existential threats to which it is responding ‘defensively’. Nowadays, arguments about ‘white genocide’, ‘anti-white racism’ and the ‘white pride and self-preservation’ are at the centre of the...

...even though the treaty was self-executing, and thus part of the supreme Law of the land, its provisions failed to overcome a standing presumption against private rights of action: To determine whether a treaty creates a cause of action, we look to its text. S ee United States v. Alvarez-Machain , 504 U.S. 655, 663 (1992) (“In construing a treaty, as in construing a statute, we first look to its terms to determine its meaning.”). The Treaty of Amity, like other treaties of its kind, is self-executing. See Medellín v....

...foundation of distance – and yet at the same time a constant invocation of virtuous life-saving possibilities. As  David Kennedy, Janet Halley, and others have suggested, this contradiction produces a systematic failure to assess the distributional consequences of humanitarian work: the virtue of the work is meant to override the violence it produces. Yet the self-conscious integration of consequences, Simpson suggests, can also lead to cynical self-presentation. His own experience with this, he says, was a paper he gave in 2002 focusing on the “misuse” of international law in the...

...State may invoke self-defence only when it has been the victim of an “armed attack”. If that condition is satisfied, any defensive use of force is subject to the requirements of necessity and proportionality (ICJ Nicaragua, para. 194). A State that acts in self-defence without respecting these conditions and requirements violates the prohibition of the use of force under article 2(4) of the UN Charter and customary international law. In most serious cases, such use of force may qualify as an act of aggression. Turkey identified the following circumstances as...

...area of treaty law is messy for a variety of reasons that I won’t go into here. Suffice to say that there is substantial disagreement in the courts, and even more disagreement in the legal academy, as to how and whether to give a treaty self-executing effect. What the Supreme Court might (but probably won’t) do is clarify this very murky and fuzzy area of the law. Or, as is more likely, they may confuse matters even further. *For a defense of Scalia not recusing himself in Hamdan, see here....