Search: self-defense

09 Mar Free Speech Curtailed Based on Government Security Interests

...significance of the government interest bears an inverse relationship to the rigor of the narrowly tailored analysis. In this case, there can be no doubt that the City’s interest in providing security to a gathering of defense officials is of the highest order. We also cannot ignore the fact that the City’s chosen method of providing security was part of a security protocol that was created by Department of Defense officials, NATO personnel, and various international defense agencies. Courts have historically given special deference to other branches in matters relating...

04 Jan Padilla versus Yoo

...bar. Non liquet Oops, I didn't even notice that Scott Horton made that point already on his blog at Harper's yesterday! Just Dropping By I suspect, for example, Yoo will argue immunity and get a government-funded lawyer in his defense (although he may well spend some money to retain his own counsel and maybe those costs could add up). Actually, I suspect that even if the government doesn't provide a lawyer, Yoo won't have to pay a penny because many of the same people who paid Scooter Libby's defense bills...

06 Sep We Still Don’t Know Where the CIA’s Public Authority Comes From

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...

01 Sep UN Report Finds Israeli Blockade Legal (But Raid on Flotilla Excessive)

...way they did was one basic and crucial rationale: "This takes foremost into account Israel's right to self-defense against armed attacks from outside its territory". That is it. That is the sole justification of the blockade. Israel's right to defend itself. The fact that a very notable manual was written or that tradition has it that naval blockades were only imposed in IACs does not change this truth. The truth is that we should not force states to fight terror with one hand tied behind their backs. The fact that...

15 Jun Drones and Targeting

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...

20 Jun “I Don’t Love My Country”

...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...

16 May Can Richard Goldstone Be Barred from U.S.?

...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...

19 May Guest Post: Official Act Immunity – Getting the Answers Right

...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...