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Search: self-defense

15 Jun

closed doors this week in the Senate. Because, from all indications, Carl Levin’s Senate Armed Services Committee is conducting its multi-day committee mark-up of the FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Act - concluding late Thursday evening - entirely in “CLOSED” committee session. Jordan Response... The President already has constitutionally-based authority to engage in permissible self-defense under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter -- Obama's duty and competence faithfully to execute the laws, which (of course) include treaty-based and customary international law. Constitutional "principles" do not limit the President's competence to...
15.06.11 | |

01 Nov

...start somewhere!" I actually find it more logical and believable to say that a Jew or an Arab have an intrinsic interest in boycotting Israel specifically over their respective ethnorreligious origins and Israeli policy, but of course this is not a compelling argument for anyone else (and it seems to me it isn't even a compelling argument for most Jews either). Guest KJH: "Israel’s policies toward Palestinians are murderous and discriminatory" Response: Tell us how Isreali policies are "murderous" ... Self-defense is "murderous"? Again, a prime example of an absurd...
01.11.15 | |

19 May

...immunity is a substantive defense, then there is indeed a tension between the attribution point and the 2001 Draft Articles on State Responsibility, article 58 of which expressly states that its rules on attribution are “without prejudice to any question of the individual responsibility under international law of any person acting on behalf of a State.” If immunity is a procedural defense, however, one that does not go at all to individual responsibility but instead to available fora, then the purported tension – or what Bill calls a flat contradiction...
19.05.13 | |

04 Nov

...advice establishes a possible affirmative defense known as entrapment by estoppel in a criminal proceeding. Even if one believes that the OLC's secret opinions are the kind of authoritative pronouncement that would establish the defense, the individual's reliance on that legal advice still must be reasonable. The defense is greatly disfavored even in US courts and is not recognized in the Rome Statute. Ben Milan, "a reliance on legal advice establishes a possible affirmative defense known as entrapment by estoppel in a criminal proceeding." From a purely academic point of...
04.11.10 | |

20 Jun

...dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that...
20.06.07 | |

06 Sep

to engage in permissible measures of self-defense, as even noted in the preamble to the AUMF! The President's authority is based in his/her obligation to faithfully execute the "Laws," which include international law as part of the laws of the United States (which, in turn, include the international law of self-defense). Members of the CIA can be acting on behalf of the Executive and the United States and carry out lawful measures of self-defense under international law. Such lawful measures would not be "unlawful" killings or murder. jens David Ohlin...
06.09.14 | |

05 Dec

Patrick S. O'Donnell I absolutely agree with you that piracy is not equivalent to terrorism and therefore that pirates are not terrorists. However, one premise of the argument also severs the notion of terrorism from nation-states and that doesn't work either. As Robert Goodin makes clear in What's Wrong With Terrorism (2006), "states and state officials can practise terrorism, too. There is nothing in the concept itself to preclude that possibility. And there is much in the historical record to demonstrate that the possibility is a real one. States have...
05.12.08 | |

16 May

...by one belligerent does not free the other belligerent from those laws. What was Israel supposed to do? Only launch proportionate attacks or rely on less indiscriminate methods of self-defense. B A Dear Kevin, You state Israel was supposed to (a) either launch proportionate attacks or (b) rely on less indiscriminate methods of self-defense. What proportionate responses were available? I think the Israelis were already proportionate inasmuch as they did not counter attack immediately but waited months for "international pressure" to work to get Hamas to stop firing rockets. How...
16.05.10 | |

22 Apr

P.S. O'Donnell I wonder if there is any significant difference in the "inequality of arms that exists between the prosecution and defense at the international tribunals" and the selfsame inequality which exists in the U.S. See, for instance, Angela J. Davis, Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). Una Grim LOLz. The ICTR intern horror stories never cease. Una Oh, but apparently the computers provided for everyone who doesn't work for the Defense are old and constantly breaking down....
22.04.08 | |

31 Aug

M. Gross Isn't there a gigantic standing issue with this suit? Jordan Response... For a view that the self-defense paradigm is different than both the mere law enforcement and the mere law of war paradigms and a view that targeted killings in self-defense can be permissible under international law (which, if so, can enhance presidential power, since the President has the constitutionally-based authority, and duty, faithfully to execute the law, which law includes treaty-based and customary international law), see http://ssrn.com/abstract=1520717 Jordan Bemused Response... Bemused " Isn’t there a gigantic standing...
31.08.10 | |

03 Jul

...Goldstone changed his mind about whether Israel intentionally attacked civilians based on evidence that came to light after the report was published. He did not "publicly disassociate himself from the exercise." You can read his op-ed in the Washington Post for yourself here. That said, I encourage you to read NGO Monitor's "analysis" and "refutation" of the new Gaza Report. It's more entertaining, and no less fictional, than the new Stephen King novel "Finders Keepers." shmuel Kevin, this is hardly the case when she writes on Israel/Palestine. The article that...
03.07.15 | |

20 May

The June 2008 issue of Esquire magazine has a feature piece on John Yoo by John H. Richardson, plus an on-line transcript of part of Richardson’s interview and an autobiographical sketch by Yoo himself. Although framed as a cautionary tale, the article clearly seeks to humanize Yoo. The reader gets a view of Yoo the professor, questioning students on what “war” is in an elegant blue suit offset by a shiny tie (sorry, unlike many Esquire articles there’s no brand name given or price tag). We learn about his personal...
20.05.08 | |