Search: self-defense
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...
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...06 Sep Towards Neutralizing the Jihadi Narrative: Settlement (No Pun Intended) of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
...as a shapeless abstraction which claimants of all kinds can shape Humpty-Dumpty-like to the needs of their particular causes). Palestine is the last of the Non-Self-Governing territories recognized as such at the inception of the UN. The others have experienced some process of self-determination, even if nothing more than “one person, one vote, once.” In the case of Palestine, the appropriate organ of the UN, the General Assembly, concluded (in 1947) that there were two People ( a politically sensible simplification, of course) in the territory and that in the...
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)...
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...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...