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Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

19 Dec

...mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of motive.” Here is Scott Horton, who discusses the case in detail at Harpers today: The facts developed in the Rahmatullah case have clarified the circumstances surrounding one of the notorious Justice Department memoranda issued during the Iraq War. In March 2004, Jack Goldsmith, then head of Justice’s opinion-writing arm, the Office of Legal Counsel, was asked...
19.12.11 | |

14 Jul

...(Article 9 of the ILC Articles would not be sufficient - that is not the sort of situation contemplated by the commentaries, cf. the Yeager case before the Iran-US Claims Tribunal). However, I think Israel still has the right to initiate a proportionate response in self-defense, even if this response hurts not only Hezbollah but also Lebanon. This is I believe the classical case of self-defense in response to an armed attack by a non-state actor, as first contemplated in the famous Caroline incident. I discuss this conflation between primary...
14.07.06 | |

09 Jan

...Morocco. This aspect has been confirmed by 1975’s International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) advisory opinion, which, beside upholding the right of the country’s inhabitants to self-determination, pointed out that there were “legal ties of allegiance between the Sultan of Morocco and some of the tribes living in the territory of Western Sahara”. Sahrawis have the full right to self-determinate their future and Morocco should be considered accountable for its violations of human rights. Nonetheless, it is still today a matter of harsh debates to which extent Polisario – the Sahrawi...
09.01.14 | |

16 Jun

JordanPaust Response... This argument seems a bit complex and legally ignorant in several respects. Of course, the better view is on JURIST. http://jurist.org/forum/2011/05/jordan-paust-libya-war-powers.php The magic word is "hostilities" -- and, of course we are directly involved in "hostilities" authorized by the UN SC and we are directly and unavoidably involved in an international armed conflict to which the laws of war apply. If the Obama Administration was not tunnel visioned re: the response to congressional critics it might have contemplated whether the pilots who were shot down and had "boots...
16.06.11 | |

03 Mar

...examples. As Ioannis Prezas acknowledges (chapter 22, 387) there is often an assumption that unilateral coercive measures have an adverse impact on the enjoyment of human rights by the populations of the targeted States.   In this context, the book under review sheds much needed light on the normalisation of unilateral coercive measures in international relations despite (or perhaps because) of the limited applicable legal framework and its political divisiveness. In relation to international human rights, the relevant chapters of the book deliver unique insights on current political debates, legal...
03.03.22 | |

17 Oct

[Tai-Heng Cheng is the international disputes partner of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP in New York. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of his firm or its clients.] Congratulations are due to the authors of Informal International Lawmaking, and especially to the editors, Professors Pauwelyn, Wesssel and Wouters, for their keen observations and appraisals of the global decisionmaking processes as they operate today. Opinio Juris has assigned me the task of commentating on the legal and normative nature of international decisionmaking processes that the authors...
17.10.12 | |

10 Apr

[Philip Allott is Emeritus Professor of International Public Law at the University of Cambridge.] Interpretation of any text – religious, political, historical, scientific, literary, artistic, legal – raises profound philosophical problems. Interpretation of a legal text is in a class of its own, because it can have direct and substantial social effects, determining people’s lives. The philosophy of legal interpretation is the philosophy of a fundamental aspect of social existence. The philosophical problems of interpretation stem from the fact that interpretation is a re-presentation of a presentation of...
10.04.15 | |

09 Apr

[Fuad Zarbiyev is an Associate in the International Arbitration Group of Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP.] The interpretation discourse in modern international law is dominated by a textualist paradigm. This claim may seem empirically wrong if it is taken to mean that nothing other than eo nomine textual arguments features in the international legal discourse. After all, the interpretive regime set forth in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties seems to put the terms, the context, and the object and purpose of the treaty on...
09.04.15 | |

28 Jul

I will join the chorus of praise for this terrific book. But I want to add briefly to Peter’s critique of Ben’s premise that the current threat from transnational terrorism has us in a “long war,” by looking at what this means for broader foreign policy – one that encompasses, but it is not driven by, domestic legal policy. The book correctly, and refreshingly, recognizes two important points: (1) that addressing the threat of terrorism requires approaches that encompass domestic law enforcement and regulation as well as applications of armed...
28.07.08 | |

08 Apr

[Julian Arato is an Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School.] Interpretation in International Law is something of an iconoclastic volume, from its critical ethos to its provocative structure around the metaphor of the game. The object of its revisionism, above all, is an apparently stagnant formalism that seems too prevalent in the theory and practice of interpretation in international law today. Symbolic of this antiquated formalism – for the editors and for many of the contributors – are the rules of interpretation embedded in the Vienna Convention on the...
08.04.15 | |

07 Apr

...Law’s Main Challenges” in D Armstrong (ed), Routledge Handbook of International Law (Routledge 2009) at 404. Schachter’s “invisible college” of international lawyers seems to have largely disappeared and has been replaced by a patchwork quilt of specialized international lawyers. Diverse interpretive communities have come to play an increasingly important role in treaty interpretation. This development raises concerns about the unity of international law, not just in relation to its interpretive methods, but also in relation the system as a whole. The challenge going forward is how to achieve a reasonable...
07.04.15 | |

18 Oct

[Jan Wouters is Professor of International Law and International Organizations, Jean Monnet Chair Ad Personam EU and Global Governance, and Director of the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies and Institute for International Law at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven).] Once we conclude that IN-LAW is not devoid of impact and cannot be ignored as a normative process, the question of the accountability of the involved actors, processes, and output may be raised. This question is addressed in Part IV. Eyal Benvenisti (Chapter 13) ‒ one of...
18.10.12 | |