Search: self-defense
24 Apr In Reluctant Defense of the Law of Occupation
[Sari Bashi is Executive Director at Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement.] This is the second post of our Symposium on the Functional Approach to the Law of Occupation. Earlier posts can be found in the Related Links at the end of this post. I am grateful to Opinio Juris for hosting this symposium in its best tradition of fostering robust debate on cutting-edge issues in international law and to Aeyal Gross for providing the theoretical framework for understanding Israel’s obligations in Gaza. As the director...31 May VJIL Symposium: Introducing “Investment Treaties and Investor Corruption”
quite limited. There was little in the Siemens award itself to suggest that Argentina had much, if any, chance of convincing the committee to annul the award. Bilateral investment treaties (BITs) are famously asymmetric. They grant investors rights but not obligations, while imposing upon states obligations unaccompanied by rights. Recent cases suggest, however, that BIT tribunals are poised to recognize a defense to state BIT liability that, in effect, imposes upon investors the obligation to avoid involvement in public corruption in the course of making a treaty-protected investment. In this...27 Feb Kenyan Appeals Court Strongly Affirms That al-Bashir Cannot Claim Immunity As a Defense Against the ICC’s Arrest Warrants
...the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa too concurred with this approach, noting that allowing immunity to prevent arrest in such situations “would create an intolerable anomaly”. Highlighting the irony that Kenya’s government disregard of its international obligations in inviting al-Bashir to the inauguration of Kenya’s progressive Constitution, the Court also notes that the government’s actions violate a specific provision of the Kenyan Constitution itself. Article 143(4) of the Constitution reads “[t]he immunity of the President under this Article shall not extend to a crime for which the President...
15 May The Legality of Uganda’s Military Intervention in South Sudan
...(IHRL). In addition, there is also a serious question of whether such an intervention in a civil war is compatible with the principle of self-determination. Intervention by Invitation Intervention by invitation, or ‘military assistance on request’ refers to the deployment of armed forces by one state to the territory of another state upon the latter’s request. The request must reflect the expression of will and the consent of the requesting state (Rhodes Resolution, article 1). Intervention by invitation is generally lawful as a matter of jus ad bellum. Article 2(4)...
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...
23 Apr The Political Price of Apologies: Why States Balk at Historical Apologies Despite Limited Legal Risk
...described apologies as Apologies are speech acts that have the power to, in the words of Barkan, “amend the past so that it resonates differently in the present for those who feel aggrieved by it or responsible for it.” For the magic of these speech acts to be realized, however, it must be preceded by an internal process of critical self-examination and self-interrogation that makes the political event of an apology possible. For colonial states, this usually means reckoning with significant parts of their history, their self-image and their political...26 Feb International Law and China’s Domestic Reform – A Good Mix or Self-Defeating?
...group in particular — Zdenek Mlynar, Jiri Hajek, and Ladislav Hedjanek — seem to have developed the strategy of tying their advocacy directly to the Czechoslovak regime’s adoption of the Helsinki Accords into domestic law. The group called itself Charter 77, and its declaration expressly invoked both the human rights obligations the regime had agreed to as an afterthought, and the right of citizens themselves to monitor compliance with those obligations and report their findings to the world at large. Framing Charter 77 as a supportive response to Czechoslovakia’s adoption...
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...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...
08 Jul Customary International Law Symposium: Rules Everywhere and At All Times (Whether You Like It or Not)
...where diagnoses about world problems and scholarly therapies always confirm one another, making one another look natural and self-evident. This genre has been flourishing in relation to customary international law. Professor Hakimi’s piece whose title is an explicit reference to such problem-solving and elucidatory agenda, follows that literary tradition. A defence of the International Law Commission (yes, this is possible!). Having myself taken issue with the work of the International Law Commission in no mild terms and on multiple occasions, I hope I can defend the Commission without being suspected...