Search: self-defense
13 Mar O What a Rogue and Peasant State Am I!
...justified, but his actions do not help him achieve his desired end. He finds himself a miserable, melancholy knave. This scene from Hamlet came to mind yesterday when I attended a fascinating conference at UCLA on the topic of “rogue states.” After listening to the discussion, I could not help but pity (and fear) the poor rogue state. They are full to the brim with self-pity, and self-doubt, utterly consumed by their weakness. Exhibit One was North Korea. The former Thai Foreign Minister, Kantathi Suphamongkhon, presented a wonderful series of...
03 Aug Options for a Peace Settlement for Ukraine: Option Paper XIII – Inclusion and Transparency in the Ukrainian Peace Process
...self-determination, the right to vote and take part in public affairs, and the prohibition of discrimination. As a fundamental rule of international law proclaimed in the UN Charter, human rights agreements and international customary law, self-determination gives peoples the right to ‘freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development’ (Art. 1). The internal aspect of self-determination ‘implies meaningful participation in the process of government’ (p 30). Some scholars have relied on self-determination to argue that in the post-conflict situation there is a need to...
13 Aug Why the Executive Order on the ICC is Unconstitutional and Self-Defeating
...Foreign States Second, the Rome Statute is an international treaty that supplements, but does not supplant each State Party’s right to exercise jurisdiction over criminal suspects who are either their nationals or who commit crimes in their territory. As such, every State Party can choose to exercise that jurisdiction itself or to delegate that jurisdiction to the International Criminal Court. This EO, if implemented, would directly interfere in all 123 State Parties’ own sovereignty by penalizing their right to make that choice. Hypocritically, the US itself is not a State...13 Apr VJIL Symposium: Bâli Answers to Shambayati and Ginsburg
...self-governance from partisan politics. Rather, I argue, self-governance mechanisms that are representative of the judiciary as a whole – not exclusively judges from the highest courts – are an understudied but important feature of institutional design in post-authoritarian transitions. More specifically, I argue that the concept of judicial “independence” should include independence from elite capture when transitioning from the rule of the few to the rule of the many. When mechanisms of judicial self-governance – such as judicial councils that govern appointments, promotions and discipline of judges – are dominated...01 Feb A Few Comments on “Revisiting the Doctrine of Intertemporal Law”
...perhaps arrive at a similar, yet broader, conclusion, through different means. When discussing the British position in the Chagos Islands case, Prof. Wheatley points out that the UK’s B-Series position rests in the conviction that the International Court of Justice “should decide the case in the same way it would have done in the late 1960s, a time when the legal status of the self-determination norm divided states”. For him, this is incorrect due to the inherent limitations with B-Series thinking. International law is not a “brute fact” static in...
17 Jan Symposium: Should a State’s Own Citizens Become Protected Persons During an Internationalized Conflict? Criticism Couched in Shameless Self-Promotion
...grant protected person status even to its own nationals if they have differing allegiance. Kubo claims that this interpretation is both in line with the spirit of humanization and also practical (or at least not completely unpractical), while attempting to refute a number of disagreeing authors, including myself (which probably explains why I chose this somewhat arcane topic). In the post I will first summarize the Tribunal’s position, then the arguments defending the ICTY jurisprudence, and I will try to demonstrate why I don’t find them particularly convincing. Needless to...23 Jul Self-Aggrandizement Alert: Two New Publications
I’m delighted to announce the publication of two new essays. The first is “The Use and Abuse of Analogy in IHL,” which is a chapter in Jens’s edited book for CUP, “Theoretical Boundaries of Armed Conflict and Human Rights.” I’m very proud of the essay — and all of the contributions to the book are excellent. The second publication is my article “Radical Complementarity,” which has just appeared in the Journal of International Criminal Justice. Here is the abstract: In March 2015, a domestic court in Côte d’Ivoire...13 May Is Democracy Possible Beyond the State?
of your book appears to be a little “determinist” to me. You are saying certain trends are inevitable and there is nothing that we can do about it. This sounds like a negation of free will and democratic self-government. You appear to be saying that there is nothing that a free people (who would be upset) by the decline in the meaning of citizenship can do about reversing this negative trend. We are not free, we can not exercise democratic self-government appears to be the message. This is the opposite...
20 Aug Muddying the Waters Still Further: A Response to Steven Kay and Joshua Kern
...each group acquired rights which it could not be forced to renounce.” (UN Doc. A/C.1/SR.127, 27 April 1948, p. 108). The Palestinian state established over the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, including the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza strip, is in exercise of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination as recognized by the international community. The right of self-determination is widely acknowledged as a peremptory norm of international law. Only the Palestinian people and their political representatives have a legally valid claim to any part of these territories....