Search: self-defense
22 Jan Massachusetts High Court Finds Vienna Convention on Consular Relations Self-Executing?
Actually, I am not quite sure, since all I have is this report on the recent decision of the Supreme Judicial Circuit of Massachusetts holding that the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations gives foreign nationals legal rights to the notification of their consular officials if they are arrested by Massachusetts authorities: Massachusetts, Cordy wrote, will take steps now to bring the state into compliance: “In order to enable the full effect to be given to [the Vienna Convention], we conclude that the notifications it requires must be incorporated...
31 Jul When Neurotechnology Erodes Freedom of Thought: The Habeas Cogitationem Writ
...Habeas Writ Habeas corpus (‘you shall have the body’) is a well-known urgent procedural mechanism for protecting the physical/bodily self-determination of citizens in situations such as illegal detention or torture, among others. The Oxford Dictionary of Law defines this mechanism as [a] prerogative writ used to challenge the validity of a person’s detention, either in official custody (e.g. when held pending deportation or extradition) or in private hands. This writ, widely used throughout the world, is complemented in various countries by a similar mechanism intended to protect the informational self-determination...
06 Sep Once Again: Drone Killings and International Law
...because of effective control, or if the State of sojourn offers the terrorist actor protection and is unwilling or unable to take effective action against it (cf. once again BVerfG, 2 BvE 2/16, paras. 50–51). In this case, an international armed conflict may even arise between the attacking State and the State of sojourn (ICRC Commentary, para. 511). A prerequisite for invoking self-defence, however, is that the use of force against which the attacking State is defending itself exceeds the threshold of an “armed attack” within the meaning of Article...
02 Sep Back to the Drawing Board of the Partition Plan: Vice-President Sebutinde’s Erroneous Account of Palestinian and Israeli Claims of Title to the Territory of Mandatory Palestine (Part One)
...The odd judge out is Vice-President Sebutinde, who in her dissenting opinion opines (para. 1; see also paras. 67, 69): the Court has not received arguments or evidence on the territorial scope (i.e. borders) of the State of Israel as on the eve of independence; nor of Israel’s competing territorial claims in relation to the disputed territory. These are issues that must first be addressed before the legal consequences of the alleged occupation of territory by Israel, or the territorial scope of Palestinian self-determination, can be determined. She then complains...
24 Aug Symposium on The Sentimental Life of International Law: Review
...in favour of an intellectual amateurism, ‘an activity that is fuelled by care and affection’, in Said’s words. This ‘rather sentimental’ (also Said’s words) approach to intellectual life is not, however, an inward-facing act of self-care or self-enrichment. On the contrary, a sentimental international law may be ‘an apt way to think about and change the world’ (3). Writing and reading appear in The Sentimental Life as intellectual practices with which to effect such a disciplinary refashioning, which is to take place, therefore, through language. The gravitational pull of structuralism...
10 Oct Rethinking International Law After Gaza Symposium: A Thought Experiment – What if we Tried to Organise the “Rethinking International Law after Gaza” Conference in the UK?
...The Institutional Framework for Holding Events in the UK The UK prides itself on being an “open society” and academic comment receives a high level of protection in the law. Despite this, the previous government acknowledged that many scholars were self-censoring on a range of topics and that something needed to be done. This was one of the reasons Parliament passed the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, which, inter alia, created a new statutory tort that would allow students, academics and visiting speakers to bring civil proceedings against...
08 Jul The Sum of Four Fears: African States and the International Criminal Court in Retrospect–Part II
...strategy of soliciting self-referrals and ‘selective, self-serving readings of the Statute’s complementarity provisions’, the Court and its supporters have deliberately sought to abandon the ‘horizontal framework’ contained in the Rome Statute (‘rooted in State consent and deferential to the State’s primacy of action regarding criminal prosecutions’) in favour of a ‘vertical framework [where]… the Court enjoys priority over the national jurisdiction, incorporating notions of superior supra-nationality as an international body and implying a relationship of authority by intervening in the domain of domestic affairs’. Such a shift would be the...
15 Dec Why Ukraine and the International Community Should Demand that Russia Renounce Territorial Expansion
...Obligations: Russia recommits itself to never expand its de jure or de facto borders, either through aggression, accepting union with another entity, or any other means. It will never again invade or occupy territory, nor displace the sovereign authority of another outside its own territory. No additional numbers of military personnel under Russian control will leave Russian soil. 3.2 Interpretation: No conduct by any other entity shall be used as an excuse for a violation of this commitment, including preparations for self-defence against Russia. 3.3 Enforcement: This shall be enshrined...
05 May Symposium on the UNWCC: Defences and the UNWCC
...finding was exceptional; the only reported example of a successful defence argument in the 15 volumes. In another similar example where self-defence was attempted [Hangobl, vol. 14], involving an airman who had bailed from a faltering plane and found himself in Austrian territory in 1944, and a civilian who was part of the local defence force found him, the defendant reported that on seeing the airman reach towards his jacket, him shot him once as he faced him and once in the back as the airman turned to run away....
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....