Search: self-defense

[ Klaudia Klonowska is a PhD Researcher at the Asser Institute and the University of Amsterdam, and is serving as Managing Director of the Manual on the International Law Applicable to Artificial Intelligence in Warfare. Sofie van der Maarel is Assistant Professor in Military Ethics and Leadership at the Netherlands Defense Academy and affiliated to Radboud University Nijmegen.] Introduction The concept of “deep sensing” has been steadily gaining traction in military discussions and media coverage, especially in the U.S., indicating an emerging buzzword amongst marketing strategies surrounding emerging military technologies....

...is a different one. Instead of enhancing robust interaction between the prosecution and defense, these trial-avoiding and trial-condensing procedures have created a separate track of expedited, prosecutor-dominated justice alongside the adversarial one. The vast majority of defendants see their cases decided at the prosecutor-controlled investigation stage or directed through an abbreviated adjudication stage with little activity by either the judge or defense. Admittedly, that most cases are decided without a contested trial is not shocking. What is concerning is that the trumpeted adversarial reforms are not permeating into efficiency-driven procedures...

the treaties grant investors rights but not obligations, while imposing upon states obligations unaccompanied by rights. Accordingly, he suggests that the corruption defense effectively creates investor obligations, which begin to address the BIT imbalance. I am not entirely persuaded such a perspective adds to the analysis. After all, a corruption defense does not impose any meaningful obligation whose breach entitles states to bring claims against investors; it simply affords states cover from investor claims, cover that is surely undeserved if the states themselves participated in the misbehavior. In closing, let...

...that they will be tortured” – a claim that everyone outside the Administration knows to be patently false. Worse still, he has rationalized his refusal to offer evidence in defense of that mantra with the excuse that “as much as we would like to deny the numerous inaccurate charges made against our government, because many of the accusations relate to alleged intelligence activities, we have found that we cannot comment upon them except in a general way.” And what about military activities? Is it hyperbolic and absurd to be outraged...

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...

...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...

...acting under duress. Article 31 of the Rome Statute, Grounds for excluding criminal responsibility, para 1(c) stipulates that "The person acts reasonably to defend himself or herself or another person or, in the case of war crimes, property which is essential for the survival of the person or another person or property which is essential for accomplishing a military mission, against an imminent and unlawful use of force in a manner proportionate to the degree of danger to the person or the other person or property protected." Israel is infamous...

...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...

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...

...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...

...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...

...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...