Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

[Katharina Pistor, Michael I. Sovern Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, responds to Olivier De Schutter, The Green Rush: The Global Race for Farmland and the Rights of Land Users. This post is part of the Second Harvard International Law Journal/Opinio Juris Symposium.] I would like to thank Opinio Juris for the opportunity to participate in this debate about one of the most pressing issues of our time: the battle for control over increasingly scarce resources, including land, water, and natural resources. The Olivier de Schutter’s “Green Rush” addresses...

I would like to thank Opinio Juris for hosting this book discussion, and I would like to thank the several contributors for their insightful and provocative posts. This post responds specifically to Andrew Kent’s skeptical reaction to David Golove’s claim that the judiciary had an active role in policing executive branch compliance with the laws of war. I believe that the book provides a fair amount of support for Professor Golove’s claim, at least through the Spanish-American war. After the Quasi-War with France, the Supreme Court invalidated wartime seizures of...

...to property. CarrieLyn Guymon Response... The ECJ's decision in Kadi is interesting, but it did leave in place the asset freeze, providing an opportunity for the sanctions to be maintained so long as some additional post-hoc process is afforded. My article recommends that the US also provide more information regarding the basis for designations under E.O. 13,382. The ECJ agrees that this need not be done in advance nor should it jeopardize the need to protect classified information. I think that the process in the EU can be tweaked slightly...

Peter Spiro Mike, Thanks for the response. All points well taken. I don't for a minute mean to imply that this isn't a worthwhile project. The fact that others clearly see value in historical textualism alone makes your book an important one, and it's interesting history to boot. Nor would I argue that text and its historical meaning is completely irrelevant in confronting contemporary controversies. But I would discount it pretty steeply. Only where founding materials work to establish a norm's pedigree do I think it serves much purpose. Any...

...Bagram) actually imprisoned? And, who, lawfully, in the United States, gets to decide - not years later in response to better-than-nothing habeas petitions, but initially - and how, that persons captured out of uniform, without a weapon, and away from any actual hostile enemy action, are "combatants" for a NON-State party in a NON-international armed conflict whose detention the international law of war evidently leaves (both in theory and in practice) almost entirely to the discretion and supervision of the domestic law of the individual State party holding the prisoners?...

...Wahid thinks the best response is better jurisprudence Filali-Ansary thinks the best response is better politics. There is a middle ground. Wahid suggests that outside the four corners of the Qur’an Islamic law is highly indeterminate and largely reflects past or present political choices. Perhaps both authors would be satisfied with an interpretive approach that opened up space for political discourse by emphasizing ambiguity and narrowing the reach of Islamic law to its clearest applications. Such an approach would deny clear legal support to progressives and their opponents alike, leaving...

[Susan Kneebone is a Professor at Monash University] This post is part of the MJIL 13(1) Symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. In her article Associate Professor Michelle Foster argues that there are limits imposed by the Refugee Convention and international law to the circumstances in which states may lawfully engage in transfer arrangements for asylum seekers, euphemistically known as ‘responsibility sharing’. In that and an earlier article,[1] to which French CJ in the High Court in Plaintiff M70 referred with approval,[2]...

[insert here] delenda est Fear not, KJH, we believe you - a snarky post would have focused on how you deeply frustrating you find the lack of a gap between the rhetoric and actions of the other side mentioned in the Goldstone report... Whilst I too am glad to see this substantive response, I don't really mind Israel's negative rhetoric to the Goldstone report. It was a tremendous folly to think that that report could ever be other than a weapon to use against Israel...as events have proven. This folly...

Andreas Paulus Julian, Thanks for your response, which I think is very helpful to clearly understand what the debate is about. But there is one point that troubles me in your argument: You argue in favour of dualism (and for the control of the executive branch over international law - government by men, not law, in that sphere), but the Constitution has decided otherwise. That is what Article VI is about. Of course, later case law has it that a treaty must be self-executing, and that makes perfect sense as...

...peer review articles is that while your journal articles are peer reviewed (and this subject to the political self-interest) you also have "books" published through Oxford. Well it seems like the books are the subject to the same "peer reviewed" approval process. https://global.oup.com/academic/authors/submissions/?cc=il&lang=en& I also understand that in the peer review process you can "suggest" peer reviewers - ??? Is this true? So one can "suggest" people one knows will be partial to approving because the author cites to them in the paper or suggests personal friends or known political...

of the Modern Position, 110 Harv. L. Rev. 815 (1997). In response to this line of criticism, see, among other responses,Harold Hongju Koh, Is International Law Really State Law?, 111 Harv. L. Rev 1824 (1998). Martii Koskenniemi, From Apology to Utopia (1989). This book is the antecedent to The Gentle Civilizer of Nations, which I mentioned above. It is a more theoretical discussion of the need of international lawyers to not be overly-technical but rather to use social theory to assess the “deep structure” of international legal discourse. As with...