Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

12 Feb Rational Choice and Broader Conceptions of International Law, A Response to Jeff Dunoff

Thank to Jeff for this thought provoking comment and his kind words about my book. I am not sure that my response addresses all his concerns, but I hope it at least speaks to some of them! Let me first state that while I agree with much of what Jeff has stated in his post, I do not agree when he says that my conception of compliance presupposes a particular understanding of international law. My book’s central focus is an attempt to explain how a rule of international law can...

04 Nov A Response to Sasha Greenawalt by Mark A. Drumbl

[Mark A. Drumbl is a Professor at Washington and Lee University School of Law] In Complementarity in Crisis: Uganda, Alternative Justice, and the International Criminal Court, Professor Alexander Greenawalt strikes a cautionary note. He underscores that the ICC cannot on its own effectively serve transitional justice interests. It needs help. In the end, Sasha concludes that “the Ugandan peace process reveals the [ICC] to be a promising but unstable institution, one whose legitimacy may ironically depend on help from external stakeholders, including the very political actor – the UN Security...

13 Feb Why Isn’t There More Soft Law? A Response to Raustiala

In How International Law Works I grapple with the question of how states make the trade-off among the various features of agreements, including hard and soft law. I am not sure I agree that Kal’s empirical puzzle actually exists, but let’s assume it does and see why that might be so. A very similar question is discussed in the book – why are dispute resolution procedures almost never used in soft law agreements? The argument in the book (pp. 157-161) is very close to what follows. One possible explanation for...

14 Apr A Response to Brian Cheffins

Many thanks to Professor Cheffins for his thoughtful response, in which he highlights an important challenge in evaluating the degree of shareholder-centrism in differing corporate governance systems—the difficulty of quantifying the impact of varying legal strategies for protecting shareholders’ interests. In this reply to the issues raised by Professor Cheffins, I distinguish various metrics of shareholder-centrism and consider the degree to which they are amenable to straightforward cross-border comparison. Professor Cheffins agrees that U.K. shareholders possess greater governance rights than U.S. shareholders do, but rightly observes that rules of civil...

08 Mar Jens Ohlin Posts Response to Ryan Goodman Paper on Capture Over Kill

...the title, given the conclusions of the article). Jens has been hard at work, and has just posted to SSRN a response to Ryan, a short, fifteen page paper responding directly to Ryan’s paper as well as taking up some of the issues raised by CBJJ. Here is the abstract (graf break added) to Jens’s paper, The Capture-Kill Debate, at SSRN. Highly recommended (as we Proud Followers of Larry Solum say): In a recent essay, Ryan Goodman offers a vigorous defense of the duty to capture under the law of...

10 Jan Somalia and Self-Defense — “The Lawyers Always Ask For Details”

...to the ongoing investigations in Kenya, Tanzania and the United States to apprehend the perpetrators of these cowardly criminal acts and to bring them swiftly to justice.” But I doubt that “justice” necessarily equates to gunship attacks. And, given that the U.S. explanation seems keyed to the 1998 attacks, I wonder whether that precludes the United States from relying on any later U.N. Security Council resolutions that might have broader language with respect to authorizing the use of force to combat terrorism. And what of self-defense? Certainly, the United States...

27 Jan In Defense of Minimalism: A Response to Vlad Perju

[Dr. Oliver Gerstenberg is Reader in Law at the University of Leeds. Dr. Gerstenberg is one of the leading scholars in this field.] Would the European Court of Justice (ECJ), as Vlad Perju suggests, benefit from a “discursive turn” (338); brought about by “allow[ing] its members to enter separate opinions” (309); in an effort to “politicize” EU law (327)—with the long-term objective of “enhanc[ing] the citizenry’s sense of a shared political identity” (329)? Consider some background: The ECJ is primarily an economic court. Yet its role has changed dramatically. Drawing...

04 Nov A Response to Mark Drumbl

if viewed as a general normative framework for evaluating state responses to mass atrocity. I nevertheless reluctantly endorse Moreno-Ocampo’s insistence on traditional prosecutions for the accused because I am skeptical of the ICC’s ability to safeguard its legitimacy while making the kinds of judgments that Mark’s approach demands. In other words, my position hinges on distinguishing the specific institutional setting of the ICC from a general normative framework for transitional justice. To elaborate on the source of my unease, I proceed from the realization that legal responses to mass atrocity...