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Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

03 Apr

...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....
03.04.18 | |

28 Oct

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...
28.10.24 | |

06 Jul

...the 1903 Royal Commission on Alien Immigration and the Alien’s Act 1905. The book contains the most detailed legal analysis of the 1915-6 Hussein-McMahon correspondence, as well as the Balfour Declaration, and takes a closer look at the travaux préparatoires that formed the British Mandate of Palestine. It places the violent reaction of the Palestine Arabs to mass Jewish immigration in the context of Zionism, highlighting the findings of several British commissions of inquiry which recommended that Britain abandon its policy. The book also revisits the controversies over the question...
06.07.11 | |

17 Jul

intelligence. (p.4) Hill’s book is a treatment of the lessons in statecraft that one can glean from great literature. (However, note this criticism of Hill and his book.) If it “has not been much recognized” that those books can have lessons in statecraft, I’d like to propose that it has been even less recognized that there are some great insights to be learned from fantastic fiction. Science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction, books described in this way are rarely described as “great literature.” And when they are, it is sometimes as...
17.07.13 | |

03 May

...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?...
03.05.12 | |

14 Jul

[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...
14.07.11 | |

24 May

...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...
24.05.06 | |

31 Jan

Catherine Rogers Both Jacob Cogan’s interesting essay, and Larry Helfer’s thoughtful response, address issues of competition and control in international adjudication, focusing on public international law tribunals. While these are an essential part of the story, there are other tribunals and cases that rightly fit in the general category of “international adjudication,” including international arbitral tribunals and national courts. As an initial matter, under virtually any definition, most notably Lon Fuller’s classic formulation, arbitration constitutes a form of adjudication. While ostensibly private, even when States are not parties, international arbitration...
31.01.08 | |

04 Sep

...law in any year unless you want to work as a lawyer in the State Department or certain obscure precincts of the Justice Department, hope to work for an international organization such as the United Nations or an international NGO with a legal agenda such as Human Rights Watch, or have an academic or intellectual interest in international law and international relations. If you are in any of these categories, wait till your second year. For most law students, who aspire to work in regular law firms, or in prosecutor’s...
04.09.09 | |

17 Apr

[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...
17.04.11 | |

16 Nov

[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]...
16.11.12 | |