Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

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...

...regulative goal is to spell out what it means to do justice to distinction and proportionality by protecting civilians as much as militarily possible. It does not spell out how the attacker’s obligations fall by the wayside if the presence of the civilian population interferes with a belligerent’s ability to conduct effective military operations. A second concern is not that warnings are used to weaken other legal obligations, but that the practice itself violates international law. In circumstances in which the civilian population has in fact no means to leave...

is not and cannot be an Article II “natural born citizen.” Since he is neither “a natural born Citizen, [n]or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution,” he is not eligible to be President and Commander in Chief of the Military. For my response to Neal Katyal and Paul Clement article, see Mario Apuzzo, A Response to Neil Katyal and Paul Clement on the Meaning of a Natural Born Citizen , accessed at http://puzo1.blogspot.com/2015/03/a-response-to-neil-katyal-and-paul.html . Mario Apuzzo, Esq. Ray Peter Spiro at...

In all the amused press notices about George Washington’s (very) overdue library books, one small detail is worth noting. The library’s ledgers show that Washington took out the books on 5 October 1789, some five months into his presidency at a time when New York was still the capital. They were an essay on international affairs called Law of Nations and the twelfth volume of a 14-volume collection of debates from the English House of Commons. (Emphasis added). Actually, the “Law of Nations” as most of our readers know, is...

...or individuals in (or even outside) their territory (e.g. a country forcing Facebook to hand over certain data or “spying” on data transferred over the internet). Are today’s WTO rules able to reign in these two types of government interventions with the toolbox of either rules on “trade in goods” or “trade in services”? Prof. Chander calls for two broad principles: technological neutrality and dematerialization, both basically stating that governments should, in principle, not make a distinction between trade that happens online (brick & mortar) and trade that happens offline....

...and justice: he demonstrates the absurdity of international criminal law’s quest to ‘discover precedents of the unprecedented’ because the legalist attachment to analogy co-exists with the declaration that certain forms of atrocious violence neither have nor require any precedent. “In an uncertain, bootstrapping move, the atrocity that has never been experienced before must….be situated in a trajectory of juridical activity in response to analogous historical acts”. (92) Yet that trajectory erases both certain forms of violence and past practices of law. For the sake of legality, there must be a...

Many thanks to Peter, Kal and Scott for their very thoughtful comments. As Peter notes, The Art and Craft of International Law focuses more on process and design than on doctrinal issues. Whether or not he is correct that international environmental law lacks common principles or norms that give it substantive coherence, the premise of my book is that it can be studied coherently from a process standpoint. Peter, Kal and Scott all focus on what makes international environmental law effective. Peter emphasizes the role of social learning, and I...

Michigan Law Review‘s “2008 Survey of Books Related to the Law” is now available on-line. Two OJ’ers have review essays in the issue: yours truly, reviewing Mark Drumbl’s Atrocity, Punishment, and International Law; and Roger, reviewing Ron Krotoszynski’s The First Amendment in Cross-Cultural Perspective: A Comparative Legal Analysis of the Freedom of Speech. The issue also contains a number of essays that will interest international-law types, particularly John Yoo and Roger Delahunty’s review of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (!); Stephen Reinhardt’s review of Richard Posner’s...

[Chester Brown is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Sydney] Thanks to Professor Cheng for his thoughtful response. As a follow-up comment, this discussion should not conclude without mention of another hard case, being the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion in Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons. In its advisory opinion of 8 July 1996, the ICJ (in)famously held that in view of the current state of international law, and of the elements of fact at its disposal, the Court cannot conclude definitively...

[Rob Howse is the Lloyd C. Nelson Professor of International Law at NYU and is guest blogging this week here at Opinio Juris. His first post can be found here; his second, here and his third here.] Today at NYU law we are having a panel discussion, and celebration, of my colleague Liam Murphy’s recent book, What Makes Law Law? (I’ll be racing down from Fordham University, where I’m talking about my own book, Leo Strauss Man of Peace). Liam’s work is important for international legal scholars, because-despite many good...

[Ankit Malhotra is reading his LLM at SOAS as the Felix Scholar and is the co-editor of the recently published book “Reimagining the International Legal Order.” ] It is always a pleasure and honour to read the work of Professor Gerry Simpson. His new magnum opus, “The Sentimental Life of International Law” is no exception. That is because his vivid portrait explores the intricacies of international law and international lawyers in a manner that is easily accessible to every reader. What is truly remarkable is to be able to reflect...

Complex Terrain Laboratory, where several OJ people sometimes participate, is hosting an online discussion next week on PW Singer’s new book on robotics and war, Wired for War. We have mentioned this book in the past, and OJ has a number of posts on battlefield robotics in the last year or so. Singer is participating in the CTLab symposium and, having read his opening post, it looks to be fascinating. It is a terrific lineup of participants. That said, let me comment on why robotics is important to discussions here...