Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response
25 Nov Response by Professor Ann Bartow, “Obscenity and Community Standards”
...spread of sexually transmitted diseases including HIV due to widespread demands for unsafe sex practices during pornography production are not discussed by Boyce. Nor are the high rates of substance abuse and suicide among performers. He does not engage with any of the scholarly work on this subject at all, nor even the cultural evidence (he could have consulted one of a number of scholarly works, including Sheila Jeffrey’s new book, The Industrial Vagina ). The late (and much missed) David Foster Wallace devoted a chapter of his book Consider...
08 Dec COVID-19 and Africa Symposium: Lockdowns, the Right to Work and the Rule of Law in Namibia
be strictly and narrowly interpreted, the Court warned that the lawfulness of COVID-19 response measures “do[es] not depend on how laudable … they are”. This judgment makes it clear that expansion of executive powers in response to COVID-19 must be regulated to ensure that they are not misused, and that courts should where necessary intervene to ensure executive compliance with the rule of law. Government response to COVID-19 in Namibia When the first cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in Namibia on 14 March 2020, the Government began to take measures...15 Apr Alexander Sack and Odious Debts: A Response to Ludington and Gulati
I am very grateful to Professors Mitu Gulati and Sarah Ludington for the wealth of information they have gathered about the life of Alexander Sack, the Russian legal scholar who penned the doctrine of odious debts, in their article “A Convenient Untruth: Fact and Fantasy in the Doctrine of Odious Debts.” I have taken note of the authors’ view that an inadvertent error was made by Michael Hoeflich, whom I cited in my book, Odious Debts: Loose Lending, Corruption and the Third World’s Environmental Legacy. I will amend the online...
03 Jun Non-innocence Under Article 19(2)(a) UNCLOS: A Response to Cavalcanti de Mello Filho
...therefore may not be interrupted by the coastal State based on such passage being non-innocent; but second, that coastal States could potentially interrupt such vessels as a lawful countermeasure under the law of State responsibility. This response will engage with the first argument on the interpretation of “innocent” passage in Article 19 of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Specifically, in contrast to Cavalcanti de Mello Filho’s interpretation of Article 19(2)(a) UNCLOS, I argue that any threats or use of force in violation of...10 Sep Rapid Response Seminar: Humanitarian Intervention, International Law and Syria
Normally, we post our conference announcements weekly, but we just got word of one tomorrow that’s worth flagging. The British Institute of International and Comparative law (BIICL) will be holding a Rapid Response Seminar tomorrow, September 11, from 4-6 pm to discuss ‘Humanitarian Intervention, International Law and Syria’. As the title suggests, the conversation will discuss whether humanitarian intervention falls within the corpus of international law and, if so, whether it can be applied to the current Syrian situation. Robert McCorquodale (BIICL) will chair the panel, with scheduled speakers including...03 Jan International Human Rites: A Response to Professor Weinberger
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...
01 May Beyond Containment – Confronting Racial Hierarchies in International Law: Rehearsals in Emancipation
...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...
21 May Pandemic of Hunger Symposium: The Humanitarian Crisis in North-East Nigeria–A Time to Act
...the key reasons aid does not reach them is because ‘government officials took it.’ This is not a new dynamic, but it is an ongoing challenge. The crisis has brought massive resource flows intended to stem the violence and provide life-saving aid to communities, but for some, these became lucrative opportunities, and the crisis became profitable. From Famine to Permanent Crisis The large-scale humanitarian response began in 2016 in response to evidence of a growing humanitarian crisis, and as would later be discovered, conditions of famine. In August 2016, the...14 Nov MJIL Symposium: A Response to Ramesh Thakur and Thomas Weiss by Spencer Zifcak
[Spencer Zifcak is Allan Myers Professor of Law and Director of the Institute of Legal Studies at the Australian Catholic University.] This post is part of the MJIL vol13(1) Symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. I begin this response by acknowledging the two commentators. Ramesh Thakur and Tom Weiss are, together with Gareth Evans, the pre-eminent writers in the field — as well as each having played formative role in the creation of the Responsibility to Protect (‘R2P’) doctrine in the first...21 Oct YJIL Symposium – Response to Elena Baylis
...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...