Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

...for an internationally wrongful act. In response, some have proposed stretching the law of superior/command responsibility to criminalize negligence by commanders, procurers, and others involved in the design and deployment of AI-enabled weapon systems, but this is a misguided and insufficient response. (Misguided because it threatens to further delegitimize international criminal law, insufficient because it would still not address all unintended civilian harms.) When civilians suffer the horrific consequences of armed conflict, they deserve redress. But neither international criminal law nor state responsibility provides any form of remedy when civilian...

[Gregory Shaffer is the Melvin C. Steen Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. Joel P. Trachtman is the Professor of International Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.] This post is part of the Virginia Journal of International Law Symposium, Volume 52, Issues 1 and 2. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. First, we would like to thank the Virginia Journal of International Law for inviting us to participate in this online discussion and...

This week, we are hosting another book symposium on Opinio Juris. This time, we feature a discussion of William Boothby’s new book, New Technologies and the Law in War and Peace, published by Cambridge University Press. In addition to comments from William himself, we have the honor to hear from a list of renowned scholars and practitioners: Kobi Leins, Robert McLaughlin, Melissa de Zwart, Alejandro Chehtman, Rain Liivoja, Markus Wagner, Cassandra Steer, Rasha Abdul Rahim and Opinio Juris’ own Emeritus contributor, Chris Borgen. From the publisher: Policymakers, legislators, scientists, thinkers,...

[Julie Bardèche is a French lawyer and a legal advisor at REDRESS , an NGO that pursues legal claims on behalf of survivors of torture in the UK and around the world to obtain justice and reparation for the violation of their human rights.] The author represented REDRESS at the Diplomatic Conference that led to the adoption of the Ljubljana-The Hague Convention. The right of victims of core international crimes to an effective remedy and to reparation is well-established both in international human rights and humanitarian law. In essence, a...

Over the coming five days, we are happy to host a book symposium on Boyd van Dijk’s new book, Preparing for War: The Making of the Geneva Conventions, published by Oxford University Press. In addition to comments from van Dijk himself, we have the honor to hear from this list of renowned scholars and practitioners: Eyal Benvenisti, Andrew Clapham, Doreen Lustig, Katharine Fortin, Karin Loevy and Alonso Gurmendi. From the publisher: “The 1949 Geneva Conventions are the most important rules for armed conflict ever formulated. To this day they continue...

[Jean Galbraith is an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School] One mechanism through which international law regulates the behavior of states and other actors is deadlines. Although little studied, deadlines appear throughout international law, especially in treaty regimes. Drawing on a future book chapter, in this post I describe some of the roles played by deadlines in international law. I also consider what insights research on the use of deadlines in domestic contexts might have for good and bad ways to use deadlines in international law. Uses...

[ William Schabas is a Professor of international law at Middlesex University London and Professor of international criminal law and human rights at Leiden University. Have a look at Justice in Conflict for a symposium post from Douglas Guilfoyle.] Article 42(3) of the Rome Statute specifies that the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court shall ‘be highly competent in and have extensive practical experience in the prosecution or trial of criminal cases’. Perusal of the travaux préparatoires suggests that this was a manifestation of some of the over-engineering of the...

I’m at Harvard Law School today for a symposium, Cybersecurity: Law, Privacy, and Warfare in a Digital World. I’ll be talking about my e-SOS paper, how international law deals with cyberthreats, and ways it could do a better job. Anyone who’s interested can watch the proceedings; it’s being live web-cast here. I wanted to flag a fascinating debate over the future of the Internet that just occurred between HLS Professor Jonathan Zittrain and Stewart Baker. Baker, of Volokh fame, is well known for flagging the great potential of cyberthreats to...

Albany Law Review sponsored a symposium today on the topic of “Outsourcing Authority: Citation to Foreign Court Precedent in Domestic Jurisprudence.” It included a number of speakers, including Ken Kersch, Susan Karamanian, John McGinnis, John Baker, Mark Tushnet and yours truly. Wonderful debate about Roper v. Simmons, Lawrence v. Texas, Charming Betsy and the general trend toward citation of foreign and international authority. The most revealing comment came from Mark Tushnet on the subject of constitutional comparativism. He said, “If contemporary U.S. liberals have gotten off the rails they should...

...very well. In my symposium contribution, which draws on my other work on reputation as a disciplinarian of international organizations, I seek to explain why. In this post, I focus on two key elements. First, reputation will function as a less effective disciplinarian when the facts are murky. This feature of reputation creates a troubling incentive: organizations may be tempted to preserve good reputations by preventing the release of damaging information. The more control that organizations have over the release of damaging information, the greater their capacity to protect their...

...you may have picked up that this is a day I do not let pass unmarked. I’ve invited my followers to celebrate the Day of the Discovery of Europe every March 4th for the past five years. This year, is no different. Except it kind of is: instead of just noting the day, I want to also share with you my thoughts on Dr. Caroline Dodds Pennock’s wonderful new book, “On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe”. As you can tell from the title alone, Dr. Dodds Pennock’s book...

...the ATS. Kevin Heller revisited his post on the legality of preventive self-defense. From Monday onwards, Opinio Juris brought you a book symposium on the recent book by Professor Tai-Heng Cheng of New York Law School, When International Law Works: Realistic Idealism After 9/11 and the Global Recession. Tai-Heng Cheng introduced his book here. Julian Ku described the main argument of the book in a “short bloggish description” as We should follow formal, positive international law most of time, except when we shouldn’t. In those cases, we should find a...