Search: self-defense
31 Jul Correcting a Common Misperception of the Espionage Act
...scienter is established. Where there is no occasion for secrecy, as with reports relating to national defense, published by authority of Congress or the military departments, there can, of course, in all likelihood, be no reasonable intent to give an advantage to a foreign government. Notice: the Gorin Court did not limit “bad faith” to obtaining national-defense information with the “intent” to injure the United States; it also considered bad faith obtaining national-defense information while having “reason to believe” that the information could be used to injure the US. Those...09 May US Reaffirms Defense Commitment to Philippines. What Does That Mean?
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...
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...
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...21 Oct Turkey’s Operation “Peace Spring” and International Law
...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...
17 Feb Symposium on Rewriting Histories of the Use of Force: A Rejoinder
...Covenant or UN Charter. They are meaningful, but what we do with them is more meaningful. When I draw a parallel between self-preservation and self-defence, it is to warn against the effects of extensive interpretations of Article 51. If one believes that the uses and abuses of self-preservation ‘eviscerated any putative rule of non-intervention’, then the book is an invitation to reflect critically on what we are doing now. This brings me to two questions, one by Helal and one by Ingo Venzke: Was the narrative successful in resuscitating confidence...24 Feb Self-Execution Beyond Treaties
...Supremacy Clause, when there is no such right under the pertinent statute itself, would effect a complete end-run around this Court’s implied right of action and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 jurisprudence. We have emphasized that “where the text and structure of a statute provide no indication that Congress intends to create new individual rights, there is no basis for a private suit, whether under § 1983 or under an implied right of action.” This body of law would serve no purpose if a plaintiff could overcome the absence of a...
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...
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...
22 Apr Training the RSF? Due Diligence, Unlawful Intervention, and Criminal Exposure in Sudan’s War
...recourse to international dispute settlement mechanisms, rather than forcible self-defence. Armed Attack and Self-Defence The jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice draws an important distinction between the “most grave forms of the use of force,” which qualify as armed attacks, and less grave violations that do not trigger the right of self-defence. In Military and Paramilitary Activities in and against Nicaragua, the Court suggested that providing training or logistical assistance to armed groups generally falls below the armed-attack threshold. If the allegations against Ethiopia concern only the construction of...