In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

10 Apr

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...
10.04.09 | |

11 Jun

My thanks to Mohsen al Attar for his comments on my Article, and to the editors of Opinio Juris and the Yale Journal of International Law for organizing this symposium. Mohsen al Attar’s comments bring the historical critique of global capitalist arrangements to the contemporary project of human rights, particularly the under-recognized “sub-set” of economic and social rights. He responds to the conceptual micro-study of the minimum core idea, demonstrated in Parts II to IV of my Article, by emphasizing its final conceptual step. This analysis moves upwards and outwards,...
11.06.08 | |

11 Oct

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...
11.10.11 | |

31 Aug

...— we have heard this, and been horrified by the results, so many times before. Despite what the title of my op-ed implies, there are numerous ways the US could continue to try to limit Assad’s capacity to harm his people that do not involve bombing Syria. Hathaway and Shapiro suggest some of the possibilities. Richard Falk has outlined clearly the risks, drawbacks, and dangers of a military response against Assad. The more considered response would be to intensify economic and diplomatic pressure on Assad and his supporters abroad. My...
31.08.13 | |

06 Nov

...Prevention of Genocide Juan Mendez. It is also the subject of a standing and reaffirmed order by the International Court of Justice against Azerbaijan to end the blockade, which Azerbaijan has refused to comply with.  Nor does Dr Bagheri take into account the widely reported background of long-standing Azerbaijani state-sponsored incitement of hatred against Armenians when Nagorno-Karabakh fell under Azerbaijan’s exclusive control (see e.g. ECRI Reports 2002, 2006, 2011, 2016, 2023; CERD Committee 2022, para. 4(d)). Live witness testimony during the mass exodus further confirms the Armenians’ experience of having left...
06.11.23 | and |

02 Mar

The issues Professor Waxman raises about the relationship between international humanitarian law (IHL) and international criminal law (ICL) are of the highest importance to anyone interested in the regulation of warfare, or, indeed, in international regulation more generally. Certainly, the division of labor between IHL and ICL is not an inevitable one. To some degree, it is the consequence of the historical evolution of international law. To some other degree, it reflects the necessary adaptations of state-based obligations turned into individual-oriented duties. Explanations of its origins notwithstanding,...
02.03.10 | |

21 Feb

[Jens Iverson is an Assistant Professor at Leiden University and a Visiting Professor/Lecturer at Vermont Law School, Santa Clara University School of Law, and University of California College of the Law, San Francisco] A previous post on Opinio Juris, Threats of Force and Attribution: The Case of Incoming Heads of State, casts doubt on the legal seriousness of Trump’s statements before returning to the US Presidency. The apparent sources of the doubt are twofold: first, whether the threats are “credible,” and second, “whether statements made by an...
21.02.25 | |

02 Mar

[Matthew Waxman is an Associate Professor of Law at Columbia University Law School.] I am delighted to comment on Professor Blum’s provocative and thoughtful Article . The Article highlights in new ways a fundamental tension within international humanitarian law (IHL): that this body of law that disallows “lesser-evil” analysis in many contexts is itself a giant exercise of lesser-evil judgment, that the risks of prolonging and legitimizing warfare are worth the cost of protecting some humanitarian interests during it. Professor Blum injects new thinking to some long-running...
02.03.10 | |

03 Apr

[Daragh Murray is a Lecturer at the University of Essex School of Law and Human Rights Centre.] Thanks to Kevin for his post engaging with some of the issues discussed in my recent article on detention authority in non-international armed conflict. I would like to take this opportunity to provide a quick overview of my argument as relevant to this post, to discuss Kevin’s prohibition v. regulation argument and some of the other points he raised, and to highlight a key proposal developed in the article but not...
03.04.17 | |

23 Nov

...its mandates and guidelines. On the other hand, legitimacy is less than law since without the “officialization” and the operational dimension that law constitutes, legitimacy is no more than an idea and cannot be made a reality. A second element which requires further elaboration is the relationship between legitimacy and justice. Professor Thakur alludes to the link between justice and legitimacy, the latter being namely an expression of the former. But what about the connection between power and legitimacy and what this means for legitimacy’s ability to serve a justice...
23.11.10 | |

12 Feb

I thank Professor C. Ford Runge for his comment on my article and agree with his analysis that places biofuels within a larger picture. From the Brazilian perspective, such heavy subsidies used by the United States and the European Union constitute the very “Gordian knot” of the negotiations in the Doha Development Round of the World Trade Organization. Naturally, that does not apply only to Brazil, but to all developing countries whose agricultural exports are heavily taxed. Ethanol from Brazil is just the newest product to face that...
12.02.10 | |

12 Feb

[C. Ford Runge is the Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Applied Economics and Law at the University of Minnesota.] Mairon G. Bastos Lima is to be congratulated for his coherent and ambitious proposal to rationalize the governance of biofuels through multilateral applications of the Rio and Good Governance principles. As he correctly observes, biofuels policies are highly nationalistic and lack even a rudimentary multilateral structure. Although he is right in his criticism, and constructive in his proposed alternatives, the analysis should be placed in a larger perspective. Biofuels...
12.02.10 | |