In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

01 Jun

[Karolina Aksamitowska is a Swansea University Research Excellence Scholar at the Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law, Swansea University, Wales, UK.] The book that is the focus of this symposium, Ensuring Respect for International Humanitarian Law, is an important contribution to international law and practice. Generating respect for international humanitarian law (IHL) is one of the most difficult challenges faced by humanitarian actors nowadays and the book edited by Eve Massingham and Annabel McConnachie constitutes essential reading for academics and practitioners wishing to understand the many different aspects of the...
01.06.21 | |

14 Nov

...commentary. However, Erin Pobjie notes, cases at the “lower end of the intensity spectrum” present serious difficulties insofar state authorities are usually reluctant to position themselves where both the facts and the law are deeply uncertain. (In turn, most institutional and academic efforts have been concerned with the notion of an armed attack, a subset of all the violations of the prohibition to use force, given its momentous implications, most notably the fact that it unlocks an armed response in self-defense.) The book thereby develops a framework to better account...
14.11.24 | |

20 Oct

as well as most legal scholars. The book also does something almost unprecedented: tell the story of the IMT and NMTs together, which is necessary for understanding both. The book’s only competitor in that regard is Telford Taylor’s wonderful book The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir — but Taylor’s book is, as the title indicates, a memoir, not an “objective” legal history. Anyone interested in Nuremberg, international criminal law, or transitional justice will want to pick up a copy of The Betrayal. To appropriate Larry Solum: read...
20.10.16 | |

15 Dec

The West has shown an impressive display of shock and disgust in response to Ahmadinejad’s remarks yesterday that the Holocaust is a myth. But as reported here, the silence from the Arab world has been deafening. “While official Arab reaction in such cases is usually slower than international reaction, any issue involving a defense of Israel is a thorny one for Arab governments, who risk appearing to side with Israel against a Muslim nation.” Why is an admission that the Holocaust actually occurred and that millions of Jews actually were...
15.12.05 | |

01 Jun

and curtailing public health emergencies, culminating in the failures in the COVID-19 response. Findings from all three of these reports converge on the role of early and decisive action at the outset of an outbreak to strengthen robust responses to pandemic threats. On this point, criticism is rightly addressed at both the substance and implementation of the International Health Regulations (IHR). Despite their relatively recent revisions in 2005, under a similar but less amplified moment of crisis in the aftermath of SARS, the IHR have come under scrutiny inter alia...
01.06.21 | , , , and |

09 Jul

I thank Kevin for his extensive and thoughtful response to my post. You touched on many issues which I hope to address systematically in subsequent posts, such as the illegality of the settlers presence. I’m going to try to avoid getting into those issues right now, since this post (like yours before it) is already quite long. I apologize in advance for typos. Two points of clarification. What prompted my post is a comment by Sen. Mitchell that the administration wants to see a freeze in settlement growth as measured...
09.07.09 | |

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 | |

22 Oct

Kevin and I have still never met in person, but we’ve already had our first twitter encounter last week on the legality of a U.S. military response to the attacks that killed the U.S. Ambassador in Libya (as well as three other Americans). Although the news reports on the attacks are not exactly clear, some have suggested that there is no Al Qaeda link to the groups behind the Benghazi attacks. This does suggest a new wrinkle to the legal analysis of any U.S. military response. First, under domestic American...
22.10.12 | |

21 Jun

...Authority (ISA) regulations, and effectively veto ISA financial plans with which the United States disagrees. U.S. acceptance of the LOS Convention would also help assure certainty and stability with respect to the extended continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles from baselines. In response to my earlier post Mr. Groves focused on continental shelf resources, and my comment today explores continental shelf issues. When we consider oil and gas activities on the continental shelf, it is important to distinguish between, on the one hand, continental shelf boundary delimitations between neighboring states...
21.06.12 | |

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 | |

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 | |

25 Jul

...Contemporary Jerusalem. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. *Rose, John. The Myths of Zionism. London: Pluto Press, 2004. *Saad-Ghorayeb, Amal. Hizbu’llah: Politics and Religion. London: Pluto Press, 2002. *Said, Edward W. The Question of Palestine. New York: Vintage Books, 1979. *Said, Edward W. The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After. New York: Vintage Books, 2001 ed. *Said, Edward W. and Christopher Hitchens, eds. Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question. London: Verso, 1988. *Sayigh, Yezid. Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement,...
25.07.08 | |