Search: self-defense
23 Aug Symposium on The Sentimental Life of International Law: On Intimacy and Distance
...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...
03 Nov The Ungovernance of Gaza
...actively seek to encounter, produce, and harness, their own indeterminacy (or the experience and expression of it) as a generative principle’. Such generative forms of ungovernance have been at the heart of Palestine’s predicament for decades. It was the Oslo Accords of 1993-1995 in particular that sanctioned a complex regime of (non)rule across the fragmented non-sovereign space of Palestine. Before this agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), the predominant paradigms for international lawyers had been those of belligerent occupation and self-determination. These two paradigms were further reliant on...
07 Mar Thou Shalt Not Distort the Language of International Law
...the purported “peace support functions” the shortest of their kind in history. On 22 February, President Putin signed the Federal Laws on the ratification of both treaties (see here and here). In accordance with Article 4 of both identical treaties, the Contracting Parties “shall provide each other with necessary, including military, assistance in the exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter”. “Self-Defence” In his televised address of 24 February 2022, President Putin mentioned “self-defence” as a justification for the...30 Aug Why Do Treaties Create Private Rights of Action?
...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....
11 Oct Rethinking International Law After Gaza BILC 2024: Summary and Declaration
...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...
03 Sep Critical Pedagogy Symposium: Teaching Palestine–Recognising and Responding to the Dangers of Online Learning
...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...02 Aug Opinio Juris Symposium: Thoughts in Response to Professors Spiro and Ku
...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...
20 Aug On Second Chances: Discursive Maintenance of International Law Amidst Ukraine and Gaza
prevent its rules from being broken, it can—precisely at the moment of violation—assert its continued relevance through persistent structures and institutional responses. This includes instances where legal language is not rejected but strategically appropriated through co-option— for example, when the vocabulary of self-defence, proportionality, or self-determination is deployed to justify uses of force that plainly exceed legal thresholds. In such contexts, discursive maintenance does not resolve the underlying violation, but works to expose the dissonance by reaffirming legal baselines, challenging justificatory framings, and resisting the dilution of legal standards through...13 Feb The Death of Treaty Supremacy: An Invisible Constitutional Change–Introduction to Opinio Juris Book Symposium
...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....
21 Dec Symposium on Classism and the International Legal Profession: Equality in the Academy
...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...