Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

...4.0 highlights religious teachings from Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism that “echo concepts of human dignity.” It further identifies cultural relativism political interests and enforcement issues as “challenges and critiques.” Critique of the Responses The responses given in both versions closely resemble what my research students and I have observed in our study of textbooks and syllabi of introductory human rights courses, namely, that the origins and history of human rights are largely associated with Western historical events emanating from the Enlightenment and the American and French Revolutions. The content and...

...to have an opportunity to positively influence the development of legal doctrine. It is impossible to do justice to Jenia’s essay in this short reply. I will thus limit myself to pointing out a few of her more remarkable findings. I was very surprised, for example, by how many of the defense attorneys she surveyed believe that “creating an accurate historical record” is one of the most important goals of international criminal trials – 17 out of 44, only eight fewer than the number of defense attorneys who believe that...

Thanks to the editors of Yale Journal of International Law and the hosts of Opinio Juris for the opportunity to comment on Rob Sloane’s terrific article, The Cost of Conflation: Preserving the Dualism of Jus ad Bellum and the Jus in Bello in the Contemporary Law of War. The piece is, in my view, essential reading for law of war scholars. I find myself in broad agreement with much of Sloane’s analysis so in my necessarily brief comments I offer a series of questions aimed at clarifying or...

...League of Nations report and the Harvard commentary during the drafting of what would become the High Seas Convention’s definition of piracy. To her credit, Maggie acknowledges (in the article in the Journal of International Criminal Justice she mentions in her comment) that the Harvard commentary does not limit the “exception” to piracy to recognized belligerencies. But she misunderstands the nature of belligerent recognition (emphasis mine): The commentary to the Harvard Draft suggests the ‘private ends’ requirement was originally intended to exclude from the definition of piracy only the acts...

In a prior post, I responded to some of Kevin Heller’s criticism of the professors’ amicus brief recently filed in the Nestle ATS case. Specifically, that post addressed issues arising from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Here I’ll take up Kevin’s criticism based on rulings of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). To frame the argument, it’s important to emphasize that, as Julian Ku noted earlier, the brief does not see the ICTY as a primary source of customary international law. Customary...

view.. (iv) ‘Higher sentence’ – ‘better justice’ Finally, Heller’s theory operates on the critical assumption that a justice system based on ‘higher sentences’ provides better and more efficient justice than a system with potentially lower sentences. This vision appears to go against the very rationales of sentencing which typically preserves a great degree of flexibility in order to pay adequate tribute to individual interests. It is further ill-suited to provide an appropriate logic for forum choices in situations in which sentence and penalties may be of lesser importance, such as...

First of all, welcome back! I always enjoy your contributions to OJ (and your scholarship generally), even when I disagree with you. So I hope you won’t think me too ungracious a host if I raise some (pointed) questions about your most recent post. I would be genuinely curious to hear your responses. I am, as I have pointed out ad nauseum, not an expert on international human rights law. So I’ll limit my comments to whether any of the actions you discuss would qualify either as genocide or as...

...training in the law school context. Some law schools, such as Berkeley, Cornell, Harvard, Illinois, Leiden University, Northwestern, Penn, Stanford, University of Chicago, Vanderbilt, Washington University, and Yale have classes related to the empirical methods and the law (and apologies for the lack of a complete list in this regard for other law schools with separate courses focused on empirical methods). A casebook with an accessible teacher’s manual, such as the one being developed by faculty at the University of Illinois, goes a long way to filling this particular gap...

Jonathan Turner Many of the points made in this post were addressed in the Statement submitted by ELNET and UKLFI to the ICJ under Practice Direction 12, particularly at paras 36-74: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/engprq05vstavki5829h9/ELNET-Submission-to-ICJ-29-9-23-final.pdf?rlkey=sihxdzppww1wrw6i9ac2ptqlh&dl=0 Tamás Hoffmann I mostly agree with the analysis, but I have one minor correction. I think that the reference to Hungary is not really appropriate. Unfortunately I haven't read Wheatley's book yet but this short allusion to Hungary's statehood during the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy misses a crucial point: it was a monarchy, to be more precise, an Empire where...

[Anne Herzberg is the Legal Advisor of NGO Monitor and the UN Representative for the Institute for NGO Research.] On November 2, 2021, Tara Van Ho, Senior Lecturer at Essex University, posted “The Unexpected Trade and Business Implications of Israel’s Attack on Al Haq” at Opinio Juris. In the piece, Van Ho condemns Israel’s designation of six Palestinian NGOs for their alleged affiliations with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), in particular the designation of Palestinian NGO Al Haq, which she characterizes as the...

[Eric A. Posner, co-author of Universal Exceptionalism in International Law with Anu Bradford, responds to Robert Ahdieh] I am grateful for Professor Ahdieh’s illuminating comments on my paper with Anu Bradford. Ahdieh offers three interpretations of the charge of U.S. exceptionalism: Degreeism: The United States does not always win, but it wins more often than Europe and China do. Exceptionalism is a matter of degree, but it still exists. I don’t think that the traditional notion of American exceptionalism permits this interpretation, but it is possible that people...

...mankind requires that they declare the causes” of their revolution. Securing the “international law” benefits could be done by a simple pronouncement of independence; convincing others that we were serious about it required a recitation of unpardonable sins of Britain. Professor McGuinness suggests that the Founder’s selective definition of “mankind” – basically, France and Spain – undermines my argument that one of the dangers of using foreign law is that judges will use it selectively. What’s wrong with the Justices looking only to the laws of our “friends” to gain...