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Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

11 Feb

...in response to its policy of apartheid, is more controversial: the leading handbook of Schermers and Blokker points out that such a de facto suspension or expulsion would amount to “an illegal circumvention of special procedures such as those laid down in Articles 5 and 6 of the Charter” – action by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council – and would arguably be ultra vires (para. 263). The decision to exclude South Africa from the work of the General Assembly clearly rested upon political support, but...
11.02.23 | |

01 May

...being that is impossible to capture in theory or technocracy. Take Sudan, where the mobilisation of the Sudan Emergency Response Rooms became the backbone of the (extended and ongoing) crisis response providing food, shelter, medical care and protection, largely funded through mutual aid. Despite being ‘forgotten’ by the international community this community-led response, succeeding the neighbourhood-based Resistance Committees integral to the 2018-2019 revolution, emerged in sharp contrast to the judicial response of the International Criminal Court. In the Prosecutor v Abd-Al-Rahman (“Ali Kushayb”) case, one of the victim-witnesses voiced what...
01.05.26 | and |

03 May

...courts read that as meaning consequential damages are included and others read the fact that consequential damages is excluded from the litany of possible damages as meaning that consequential damages are not available to a seller. Both judges would look at the same text and say this is what they mean. Whether that is using the law as a means to an end can be discussed. I think that where the judge is seeking justice is not such a bad thing. I sensed that Stevens was seeking justice. Best, Ben...
03.05.07 | |

09 Nov

...seen before: namely, the insinuation that the African Union (AU) believes international courts do not have to recognise personal immunity. I assume that claim is a response to my contrary one in the article mentioned above — opposition that I have cited as a reason to be skeptical of the idea (endorsed by a number of scholars) that the General Assembly will support a Special Tribunal in large numbers. Here is what Coracini and Trahan say about the AU, referencing the Jordan case: It is worthy of note that during...
09.11.22 | |

09 May

[Jonathan Turner is a barrister in London and Chief Executive of UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) ] Practising advocates know that what is not included in reply submissions is usually more interesting than what is there. One of the omissions in the ICC Prosecutor’s recent Response on the issue of the Court’s territorial jurisdiction in respect of Palestine is that it does not address the argument made by the amicus, UKLFI, based on the rights of the Jewish people derived from the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine. Indeed, while...
09.05.20 | |

21 Oct

...State Department?” That is, isn’t it plausible that increased engagement is simply “the result of Congress having ratified a number of treaties with reporting obligations, and authority for fulfilling those obligations having been turned over to the Legal Advisor’s Office”? There are two distinct responses to this important question. First, it is useful to underscore that my article does not in fact make any claim about the cultures and roles of the U.S. Congress and the Office of the Legal Advisor. To the contrary, the crux of my argument is...
21.10.09 | |

15 Jul

[Frédéric Mégret, Assistant Professor of Law at McGill University Faculty of Law and Canada Research Chair in the Law of Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, responds to Philip Alston, Hobbling the Monitors: Should U.N. Human Rights Monitors be Accountable?. This post is part of the Second Harvard International Law Journal/Opinio Juris Symposium.] Philip Alston’s article on special rapporteurs suggests that there may be some merit on hobbling them a little, just not necessarily in the way that a majority of states at the Human Rights Council seem to want. The...
15.07.11 | |

15 Jul

[Philip Alston responds to Frédéric Mégret’s comments on Alston’s recently published article, Hobbling the Monitors: Should U.N. Human Rights Monitors be Accountable?. This post is part of the Second Harvard International Law Journal/Opinio Juris Symposium.] I am grateful to Frédéric Mégret for his very thoughtful comments on my article. Fred’s own excellent work on the accountability of “International Prosecutors: Accountability and Ethics” (available at ) is one of the few sustained and probing analyses of the difficult topic of the accountability of those playing a crucial role in what might...
15.07.11 | |

11 Oct

It’s good to be back battling with my fellow co-bloggers. I still owe Chris and Deborah a response on other matters, but let me just briefly respond to Kevin’s smart but still not entirely convincing post. It’s not that I have any serious rebuttal of Kevin’s legal analysis of the Honduras Constitution (and I apologize for my boo-boo on the Law Library of Congress vs. the CRS). Rather, the point of my post on Koh was that the Honduran constitutional legal question is pretty central – indeed, it might be...
11.10.09 | |

24 Nov

...(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...
24.11.10 | |

08 Oct

[Carsten Stahn is Professor of International Criminal Law and Global Justice at Leiden University and Programme Director of the Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies. He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Leiden Journal of International Law, Executive Editor of the Criminal Law Forum and project leader of the Jus Post Bellum Project.] Harold Koh’s thought-provoking post on Just Security on ‘Syria and the Law of Humanitarian Intervention – Part II’ illustrates the struggles of international law to cope with injustices and violations of legal norms, including the ban of the prohibition...
08.10.13 | |

12 Jan

terms of Article 36 of 1977 Additional Protocol I. OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE RESPONSE TO: Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016. This Isn’t the Petition Response You’re Looking For By Paul Shawcross The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but a Death Star isn’t on the horizon. Here are a few reasons: The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than 850,000,000,000,000,000. We’re working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it. The Administration...
12.01.13 | |