Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response
16 Feb The Digitial Dialogue Series – The Fight against Impunity for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in the Central African Republic
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...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...15 Jul A Response to Philip Alston by Frédéric Mégret
[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 Jul A Response to Frédéric Mégret by Philip Alston
[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...03 Jul A Response to Ben Wittes
...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...23 Nov A Response to Jean-Marc Coicaud by Ramesh Thakur
to organized political communities, including the international community as symbolized by the United Nations, law is a necessary but not sufficient condition for legitimacy. Perhaps the UN University could undertake a project devoted to the theoretical exploration of the relationship by a team of political scientists and international law scholars. Second, rather than the relationship between legitimacy and justice, that between power and justice or, even better, between realism and idealism, will prove more fruitful in the UN context. The organization needs to achieve a better balance between the wish...11 Oct The Difference Between Foreign and International Law: A Very Short Response to Kevin
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...09 Feb A Response to Gabriella Blum by Kevin Jon Heller
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...