Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

Jean d’Aspremont’s supremely kind comments on my article require little response other than an expression of appreciation. Jean’s knowledge in this field is second to none, and the differences in our perceptions of these topics are minute. But it is, perhaps, worth clarifying my position on the recognition of coup regimes and the question of a democratic entitlement in international law.   There is no question that the international order has departed from the strict anti-interventionism that underlies what I have termed ‘the effective control doctrine’. Coups against ‘freely and...

Seth has finished his very successful tenure as a guest-blogger here at Opinio Juris and his legacy goes on. One of his posts on the potential for universal human rights deeply intrigued a colleague of mine at Hofstra, Bernard Jacobs, a professor of constitutional law and a classics scholar. His thoughtful and interesting response to Seth’s post is below: I read with interest Professor Weinberger’s piece marveling at the possibility of conflict between International Human Rights and ‘local practice, custom and tradition in the developing worlds.’ Since I live in...

Many thanks to Ingrid Wuerth for her thoughtful response to my Article. I agree with Ingrid that the importance of maintaining a uniform international standard in the interpretation of incorporative statutes may be especially salient in the context of treaties, like the Hague Rules, that address coordination problems. I disagree, however, that the borrowed treaty rule is of little salience in the context of human rights treaties that seek to establish minimum international standards. An international standard contained in a human rights treaty is typically invoked by domestic litigants only...

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...

...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...

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...

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...

The United Nations Team of Experts on the Rule of Law and Sexual Violence in Conflict and its partners launched in July 2020 a series of webinars, the Digital Dialogue Series . It is designed to allow academics, policymakers and practitioners to have open discussions, provoke critical reflections, and hopefully inspire a community of practice for the delivery of truly accessible and effective survivor-centered justice. On 17 November 2020, the fourth Digital Dialogue focused on the justice response to sexual violence committed in the Central African Republic (CAR) , and...

...imagine it to be but does not reflect what CIL is “as a real-world sociological phenomenon.”  Accurately understood, CIL is more unstable, fragmentary and disorderly than any rulebook would be.   In the everyday practice of international law, she tells us, CIL “looks nothing like the rulebook conception.” It does not derive from intelligible and generally applicable secondary rules but instead emerges more organically, through an unstructured and “heterarchical” process in which the participants apply variable criteria to justify their normative positions in CIL.  Its content is neither fixed nor...

...capital markets. It is also important to note that they provide an analytical framework for analyzing different modes of business law reform in general, from the perspective of demand- and supply-side factors, which could be applied to a wide range of legal reforms. The article starts by raising a good question of why the regulatory responses to hostile takeovers are very different among the three countries who share the similar capital markets (the United Kingdom, the United States and Japan). After applying their analytical framework to the three countries, the...

...question for each reader of the article to judge. This being said, I would vigorously defend my emphasis on the failures of the Basel Committee. I would do so in light both of the disagreements of the 1990s and of the Committee’s resolute insistence, throughout the 2000s, in going forward with a capital adequacy model that is now widely regarded as theoretically flawed and overly responsive to the banks’ preferences. For more detail, I highly recommend Daniel Tarullo’s recent book on Basel II. Second, David raises the crucial question of...

...(a point acknowledged in the above commentary but not in the article itself). Nor does IHL provide national authorities with any authority to capture and detain individuals engaged in non-international armed conflicts without the privilege of doing so. Rather, such responses will continue to be governed by other sources of national and international law, including the law of the sea and international human rights law. So, even applying IHL to this potential scenario results in a renvoi to a law enforcement model of capture, detention, and prosecution. Regardless of the...