Search: self-defense
13 Jun Is US Ratification of UNCLOS Doomed? Former US Defense Chief Rumsfeld Announces Opposition
Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has an op-ed in the WSJ announcing his opposition to US ratification of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The op-ed is probably meant to soften the force of an earlier WSJ op-ed by former Republican Secretaries of State calling for US ratification. He is also testifying on Thursday at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. Rumsfeld’s opposition may make a difference since the question of ratification is really a debate within conservative and Republican circles (Democrats appear to be...11 Jul Goldsmith and Katyal Propose a “National Security Court”
...molesters, people with infectious diseases, and the like — but who have not committed crimes. Congress should draw the national security court’s judges from a pool of current federal judges, the same process used for the special court we already have to issue intelligence warrants. The court would have a permanent staff of elite defense lawyers with special security clearances as part of its permanent staff. Defense lawyers trained in the nuances of taking apart interrogation statements, particularly translated statements, are crucial because often the legal proceedings will involve little...21 May The First Serious Defense of China’s Position on the Philippines UNCLOS Arbitration
...that China has interfered with the Philippines’ right to navigation and other rights in areas within and beyond 200 nautical miles of the Philippines cannot be made without engaging in sea boundary delimitations. I have to admit I am not very persuaded by this analysis. In Prof. Talmon’s defense, the essay is very short and not an attempt to provide a deep legal analysis of the problem. But the idea that any challenge to the nine-dash line is excluded from UNCLOS arbitration is hardly obvious to me, since the basis...
31 Mar Options for a Peace Settlement for Ukraine: Option Paper I – Neutrality and Related Concepts
...NATO’s repeated confirmation that it will maintain in place its ‘Open Door’ policy. However, if Ukraine itself declares that it will not seek NATO membership, NATO could record its understanding of this commitment. Assurances by NATO Members: Second, key NATO members could offer assurances that Ukraine will not obtain membership. This could occur, for instance in the shape of the US side letter to an angreement, provided Ukraine first declares itself that it will not seek membership. Self-Limitation: Ukraine itself would rule out NATO membership. If so, the question arises...
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...17 Feb Guest Post Part I: The Chilcot Inquiry–The Publication Saga of an Official History
...of what international law means to a politician in government such as Jack Straw. We learn that there is a high degree of self-awareness as to the power – and latitude – afforded to state actors in international legal doctrine. This self-awareness appears to translate as authority to speak to what international law actually is, or could be as interpreted by such a state actor. In a sense, this gives a behind-the-scenes affirmation of what scholars and students of international law already superficially recognize as ‘custom’ formation. Here, we learn...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...
17 Jun Prosecuting Aggression against Ukraine as an “Other Inhumane Act” before the ICC Part II: Problems
[ Giulia Pinzauti is Assistant Professor of Public International Law at Leiden Law School’s Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies. Alessadro Pizzuti (Twitter: @Aless_Pizzuti) is the co-founder and co-director of UpRights .] The authors would like to thank Miles Jackson and Daniel Gryshchenko for their help and suggestions for this post. Introduction Framing Russia’s unlawful use of force against Ukraine as an other inhumane act, via the violation of the right to self-determination, is not without implications and raises potential problems that need to be further explored. In this second...
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...
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...