Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

[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...

...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...

[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...

...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...

...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...

...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...

armed conflict without taking into account the comparative justness of their causes. Consider the distributive-justice rationale for CDRs. Blum says that “[i]n transposing distributive justice arguments onto war, the question arises whether the general moral obligations that are owed by one society to another endure when the two societies are at war.” How can that question be answered without considering whether one party to the conflict is an aggressor and one is simply defending itself? As far as I can tell, there is no coherent normative rationale for assuming that...

[Maarten den Heijer is assistant professor of international law at the Amsterdam Center of International Law and member of the editorial board of the European Human Rights Cases (EHRC) and contributor to the Dutch Journal for Human Rights] Praise is due to the collaboration between Leiden Journal of International Law and Opinio Juris in providing this platform for reflection and discussion – in this instance on my paper on diplomatic asylum and Julian Assange. I much enjoyed reading the responses of Gregor Noll and Roger O’Keefe and am greatly appreciative...

I am grateful for the opportunity to read and comment on Peter Danchin’s “Suspect Symbols: Value Pluralism as a Theory of Religious Freedom in International Law.” The tolerance that it advocates reflects a generally healthy human rights impulse. Hence, I wish that I could write a positive response to the article into which a great deal of thought and work has obviously gone. Unfortunately, while it is well-written and literate, I disagree with a number of its ideas – and find some of them especially alarming from a women’s human...

...Ben: I didn't think your question was provocative. I think it's a good question. Patrick S. O'Donnell dmv, Obviously, something new is being said, which was my point. My response was to your specific comments regarding the discussion at hand, which claimed 1) The writers are all repeating the same points on each side, over and over again, and then talking past each other, by and large. That, simply, is not true. 2) You will note, if you read the posts, that no one concedes anything that they were unwilling...

a nuclear bomb to stop the hurricane – an actual idea that former US President Donald Trump once suggested. Due to the ineffectiveness and unreasonableness of the military solutions, one should consider an environmental response. Since Godzilla cannot be destroyed, how can it be stopped from coming to shore? International Environmental Response IEL envisions climate change and environmental destruction as a continuous yet prolonged process and accordingly frames the required action in long-term steps. Godzilla, on the other hand, is an imminent threat which requires an immediate response.  “The international...

...reasoning, the relatively muted international response could suggest that members of the international community might be willing to entertain preemptive self-defense under such extreme circumstances. In sum, the question of whether international law now recognizes a right to preemptive self-defense against nuclear threats remains highly contested. But the evolution of the international position from “Opera” to “Outside the Box,” even after Israel acknowledged its role in the latter, is telling. Both scholars and politicians will likely take this evolution into account in discerning state practice on this question going forward....