Search: self-defense
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...
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...
10 May Rerouting Parts of Ukrainian Internet Traffic – A Violation of the Principle of Non-Intervention?
...on its own is already difficult to determine in practice, even before adding self-determination – another difficult to grasp principle of international law with its own contradictions, particularly in a context involving Russia and Ukraine – into the mix. However, the argument in favour of reconceptualising non-intervention in line with self-determination points to the core of why it seems dissatisfactory that non-intervention does not apply to many forms of foreign election interference: even where activities in question do not digitally alter the result, the ability of voters to independently and...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...
25 Aug Symposium on The Sentimental Life of International Law: On Lateness, Style and Sentiment
...effect and a very difficult one to achieve at that. This is a book that insists on its style, or the sylishness of is prose, and not only that, insists that we read this surface as the ‘thing itself’. And the style is, in turns, ironic, self-deprecating, cosmopolitan, wearing its hard earned learning lightly, self-aggrandizing. It is arch, self-conscious, always aware of the moves and counter-moves; how the game of the academic is played. And yet, also somehow gently nudging itself beyond the certainties of the doctinalist and the ironic...
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...