Search: self-defense
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...
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...06 Sep Letter to the Editors of the Journal of the History of International Law
...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...24 Feb John Bellinger Comments on “International Law at Home”
...all treaties.) And the Supreme Court’s decision that the U.N. Charter is not self-executing, coming 63 years after its ratification, has sent State Department lawyers scrambling to determine how many other treaties might also not be self-executing. 3. Part III of the article — “How International Law Comes Home” — is an especially valuable and well-documented compendium of the different ways treaties are applied in U.S. courts. 4. Part IV of the article includes several practical suggestions for ensuring enforcement of treaties in U.S. courts. I agree that a Clear...