Search: self-defense
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...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...05 Apr The Problem with Saddam’s “The Executions Were Legal” Defense
...al-Jaafari asked Saddam about his approval for death sentences passed against the 148 by his Revolutionary Court, which prosecutors have argued gave the Shiites only a cursory trial. “That is one of the duties of the president,” Saddam replied. “I had the right to question the judgment. But I was convinced the evidence that was presented was sufficient” to show their guilt in the assassination attempt. As I have explained in more detail over at the Grotian Moment, there is a fatal flaw — literally — with Saddam’s defense: at...25 Apr The Legality Surrounding the US Strikes in Syria
...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...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...