In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

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 | |

22 Mar

Over the past couple of years, a number of scholars — including me — have debated whether IHL implicitly authorises detention in non-international armed conflict (NIAC.) The latest important intervention in the debate comes courtesy of Daragh Murray in the Leiden Journal of International Law. As the article’s abstract makes clear, Murray is firmly in the “IHL authorises” camp: On the basis of current understandings of international law – and the prohibition of arbitrary detention in particular – it is concluded that international humanitarian law must be interpreted...
22.03.17 | |

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 | |

01 Mar

It’s an honor to have two so distinguished scholars comment on my article. As always, I learn from reading their commentary and I thank each for his insights. Two quick reactions. First, Professor Johnson raises an interesting semantic question (which I do not address in the article): If a state “unsigns” a treaty, is it still a signatory? Professor Johnson is surely correct that a state cannot re-write history by purporting to expunge its signature as a matter of official record. Further, liability that a state incurs...
01.03.10 | |

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 | |

16 Apr

[David Orozco is an Assistant Professor of Business Law at Michigan Technical University] Professors Bird and Chaudhry provide an insightful and timely analysis of European Law related to the repackaging and relabeling of grey goods, specifically pharmaceutical products. The analysis navigates readers through the morass of legal confusion and uncertainty in this area of international law. A couple of questions were raised by the paper that I would specifically like to address to the authors. First, given that the property system has provided little legal certainty in this...
16.04.10 | |

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 | |

01 Mar

...of Justice (ICJ), assuming the proper jurisdictional and other requisites are met. The “circumstances precluding wrongfulness” provisions of the International Law Commission’s 2001 draft on State responsibility provide the following among such circumstances: consent, force majeure, necessity—and self-defense “in conformity with the Charter”. All could be invoked as defenses by a person accused of having committed the crime of aggression before a trial chamber of the ICC which would presumably have to decide on the merits of such defenses and, in that event, would inextricably be called upon to decide...
01.03.10 | |