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Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

14 Mar

[Michael A Becker is Assistant Professor of International and European Human Rights Law at Trinity College Dublin] On 5 March 2025, Sudan instituted proceedings against the United Arab Emirates (UAE) at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in relation to alleged violations of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. Based on allegations that UAE is supporting genocidal acts by the Rapid Support Forces in West Darfur against the Masalit group, Sudan’s claims raise important questions about the nature and scope of complicity in genocide. Nonetheless, it...
14.03.25 | |

07 Mar

...have lived in (and likely participated in the capturing of) the seized houses as well? Without intending to undermine the role(s) of women within ISIL, prosecutorial responses should not manifest in war crimes charges against female returnees disproportionate to the terrorism charges faced by male (foreign) fighters. Particularly, such a strategy crucially lacks an informed gender analysis of ISIL. While it is true to say that women’s roles in ISIL have been significantly underestimated, one needs to bear in mind the extent to which women were subjected to the strict...
07.03.19 | |

05 Sep

Following up on my earlier post, the ICTR isn’t happy that Tanzanian police have arrested Gakwaya. The Tribunal’s Registrar has released the following statement: Following the arrest of Defence Counsel Callixte Gakwaya, Lead Counsel for the accused Yusuf Munyakasi, on Friday 1 September 2006, the Registrar of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), Mr Adama Dieng, expressed his strong concern to the Tanzanian authorities and requested clarification of the reasons for the arrest. Mr Dieng notes that the Tribunal did not receive any prior notice of the...
05.09.06 | |

17 Apr

[Mark Drumbl is the Class of 1975 Alumni Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University School of Law.] Susan Benesch’s VJIL article is timely, thoughtful, and important. She insightfully sets out the catalytic relationship between hate propaganda and genocide. Her comparison of the methodological similarities between the Rwandan and Nazi German contexts is instructive. The mainstreaming of hate-mongering is a condition precedent for genocide to become truly massive. Consequently, if the criminal law could shut down hate-mongering before actual genocide – for example, by incapacitating the conflict...
17.04.08 | |

29 Jan

This is a wonderful opportunity to bring Islamic law into the legal debate in the United States beyond the superficial level at which it usually takes place. This is the more welcome for someone who has written a book on Muhammad Baqer as-Sadr as the most creative Islamic thinker of the 20th century (The Renewal of Islamic Law, Cambridge 1993), and now sees a second generation of Sadr scholars, like Professor Hamoudi, engaging seriously his work in American legal academia. In his article, Hamoudi uses Sadr’s work to show how...
29.01.08 | |

06 Feb

Chris Borgen taxes me with not paying enough attention to the ways in which the responses of non-Anglo-American powers to the Anglo-Americans may reflect their own hopes and plans for the world, rather than a simple dislike of Anglo-American plans or values. I think the two are connected; people dislike the Anglo-Americans both because they don’t like what we have in mind and because our plans and activities frustrate hopes and wishes of their own. God and Gold deals with these issues at some length in the last section; rather...
06.02.08 | |

14 Oct

...to reinforce the argument of Tams and Devaney concerning the relationship between geography and self-defense actions against irregular forces. By way of contrast, several examples can be found during the UN era where a state condemned the remoteness of the response taken in self-defense against both state and non-state actors. For example, when the US claimed that its 1986 aerial bombing of Libyan territory had been validly undertaken in response to imminent attacks from Libyan-sponsored terrorists (UN SCOR, 2674th mtg, UN Doc S/PV.2674 (15 April 1986); Stanimir A. Alexandrov, Self-Defense...
14.10.15 | |

06 Feb

Mike Lind asks in effect, what makes England and America special compared to other commercial powers, especially the Italian city states – and why shouldn’t the Anglo-American political tradition be seen as more closely integrated into the history of republican, humanist letters passing through the Italian states back into antiquity? In effect he is asking whether there isn’t too little Europe in my story – have I insisted too hard on trying to see the Anglo-American story (or Batavo-Anglo-American story given the Dutch dimension) in isolation from...
06.02.08 | |

27 Jan

Nikolas Stürchler, the Head of International Humanitarian Law and International Criminal Justice Section at the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, has a new post at EJIL: Talk! discussing the ASP’s decision to completely exclude states parties from the crime of aggression unless they ratify the aggression amendments — the “opt-in” position advocated by a number of states, most notably the UK, Japan, and Canada. The post is very long and quite technical, so I won’t try to summarise it. Basically, Stürchler argues that the judges are still free to...
27.01.18 | |

27 Apr

But they are non-neutral in favour of international justice, not impunity for the state in which they happened to be born. In fact, there is reason to believe — and this was the basic point of my post, which Sharma ignores — that individuals from the P-3 may be uniquely well-suited to investigating crimes committed by their home states, given their familiarity with the political, economic, and social structures therein. After all, one of the most compelling criticisms of the ICC’s “distant justice” is that OTP investigations, in Africa and...
27.04.20 | |

02 Feb

I would first like to thank Professor Guy Mundlak for generously taking the time to respond to my Article, and Opinio Juris for hosting this forum. Professor Mundlak is very correct to note that over time civil liberties and socioeconomic matters have become more intertwined. What’s more, the overlapping identities and realms in which workers function mean that to be protected and empowered in the sphere of work, they must also be protected in other spheres of human functioning. The same holds true in the inverse. Accordingly, the...
02.02.10 | |

02 Feb

[Guy Mundlak is a Professor at Tel Aviv University Buchmann School of Law] I opted for law school because I wanted to take part in the practice of human rights. Several years later I found myself deeply engrossed in the study of labor law. At the time, Israel was still considered to be strongly collective, solidary, and densely covered by collective agreements. Being organized was not a contested topic. However, the rights of Palestinians, minorities and identity groups were considered to be fragile. Over time, I learned that...
02.02.10 | |