In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

08 May

Next week we’ll be hosting a discussion of our own Peter Spiro’s Beyond Citizenship: American Identity After Globalization (Oxford University Press). As readers of this blog know, Peter has many wonderful insights into the way that citizenship and national identity interact in a globalizing environment. (His latest post on Pamela Anderson is just the latest lighthearted example of his much larger project). The book uses citizenship practice as a lens on national identity, with discussions of birthright citizenship, naturalization, and plural citizenship, as well as of citizenship’s place in defining...
08.05.08 | |

10 Apr

...ad bellum appraisal of NATO’s conduct as humanitarian intervention influenced our in bello appraisal of how it conducted the military campaign. 2. In terms of the evidence: I suggest that the DA has been misconstrued or misapplied, sometimes deliberately, but more often subconsciously or tacitly—in part because of natural self-serving biases. I doubt that any belligerent would openly claim that the justice of its cause relieves it of or relaxes the in bello constraints under which it must conduct warfare (although, notably, the Soviet Union, North Vietnam, and others, in...
10.04.09 | |

27 Jan

I know Colombia kinda, sorta backed down in the end, but its President’s response to Trump’s mindless sabre-rattling over deportation flights deserves to be read in full by everyone. Here it is in Spanish: Trump, a mi no me gusta mucho viajar a los EEUU, es un poco aburridor, pero confieso que hay cosas meritorias, me gusta ir a los barrios negros de Washington, allí ví una lucha entera en la capital de los EEUU entre negros y latinos con barricadas, que me pareció una pendejada, porque deberían unirse. Confieso...
27.01.25 | |

25 Nov

...spread of sexually transmitted diseases including HIV due to widespread demands for unsafe sex practices during pornography production are not discussed by Boyce. Nor are the high rates of substance abuse and suicide among performers. He does not engage with any of the scholarly work on this subject at all, nor even the cultural evidence (he could have consulted one of a number of scholarly works, including Sheila Jeffrey’s new book, The Industrial Vagina ). The late (and much missed) David Foster Wallace devoted a chapter of his book Consider...
25.11.08 | |

08 Dec

be strictly and narrowly interpreted, the Court warned that the lawfulness of COVID-19 response measures “do[es] not depend on how laudable … they are”. This judgment makes it clear that expansion of executive powers in response to COVID-19 must be regulated to ensure that they are not misused, and that courts should where necessary intervene to ensure executive compliance with the rule of law. Government response to COVID-19 in Namibia When the first cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in Namibia on 14 March 2020, the Government began to take measures...
08.12.20 | |

15 Apr

I am very grateful to Professors Mitu Gulati and Sarah Ludington for the wealth of information they have gathered about the life of Alexander Sack, the Russian legal scholar who penned the doctrine of odious debts, in their article “A Convenient Untruth: Fact and Fantasy in the Doctrine of Odious Debts.” I have taken note of the authors’ view that an inadvertent error was made by Michael Hoeflich, whom I cited in my book, Odious Debts: Loose Lending, Corruption and the Third World’s Environmental Legacy. I will amend the online...
15.04.08 | |

03 Jun

...therefore may not be interrupted by the coastal State based on such passage being non-innocent; but second, that coastal States could potentially interrupt such vessels as a lawful countermeasure under the law of State responsibility. This response will engage with the first argument on the interpretation of “innocent” passage in Article 19 of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Specifically, in contrast to Cavalcanti de Mello Filho’s interpretation of Article 19(2)(a) UNCLOS, I argue that any threats or use of force in violation of...
03.06.25 | |

10 Sep

Normally, we post our conference announcements weekly, but we just got word of one tomorrow that’s worth flagging. The British Institute of International and Comparative law (BIICL) will be holding a Rapid Response Seminar tomorrow, September 11, from 4-6 pm to discuss ‘Humanitarian Intervention, International Law and Syria’. As the title suggests, the conversation will discuss whether humanitarian intervention falls within the corpus of international law and, if so, whether it can be applied to the current Syrian situation. Robert McCorquodale (BIICL) will chair the panel, with scheduled speakers including...
10.09.13 | |

03 Jul

...the Senate bill appears to contain no such language. On the contrary, it ties detention authority squarely to the 2001 AUMF, and describes the scope of that detention authority precisely as the courts (and Obama Administration) have done in the Guantanamo habeas cases in the federal courts. It also, for the first time, makes express Congress’ intention that detention under this authority be carried out pursuant to the law of war.” In response, Ben asks: “Is there a softening here of opposition to detention legislation? Or is the apparent complacency...
03.07.11 | |

08 Sep

In the first part of my response to Bobby, I argued (after meandering around a bit) that Title 50’s “fifth function” provision cannot be used to authorise the CIA to kill Americans overseas — a necessary condition of any argument that the CIA is entitled to a public-authority justification with regard to 18 USC 1119, the foreign-murder statute. (Bobby kindly responds here.) I thus ended that post by asking where else that authority might be found. Which brings me to the second argument Bobby makes: namely, that the President’s authority...
08.09.14 | |

01 Feb

Thank you to Professor Corn for his exceptionally thoughtful response to the article. His observations illustrate vividly, and persuasively, the apparent choices undergirding the traditional approach my Article critiques. I’ll reply briefly to some of his comments and conclude by highlighting what I perceive to be larger issues in the law of war that our dialogue might provoke. Professor Corn casts application of the traditional four combatant criteria to CNA participants as a presumption, bringing with it the attendant benefits of clarity and predictability. His Miranda analogy suggests that law...
01.02.10 | |

14 Feb

Eugene has graciously responded to my earlier post; you can find his new post here. It’s well worth a read. I just want to offer a few thoughts on Eugene’s response, because I think it fails to address the core of my critique: that it is incorrect to claim, as Eugene did in his first post, that Europe’s opposition to the juvenile death penalty is based on the idea that “minors are not really responsible for their actions.” I argued that, on the contrary, Europe’s opposition to the juvenile death...
14.02.14 | |