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Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

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 | |

25 Apr

for two key reasons. Firstly, the political picture with the powers at force is not in favour of such a response. Secondly, the lapse of time between the attack and the response along with the limited impact of the attack would prove difficult to ascertain that the actions taken pursuant to the right of self-defence are necessary and proportionate. The second potential consequence relates to the law applicable to the conflict that is affecting Syria. Until today, there was a conflict between ISIL and the Assad regime together with a...
25.04.17 | |

05 Oct

...easy to appreciate the intellect of someone you agree with. To extol the intellectual of abilities of someone you disagree with must be one of the best compliments that can be paid to a thinker – and I am paying that compliment to Harold today. When Kevin Jon Heller asked me to contribute to this symposium in honour of the launch of Koh’s new book, The Trump Administration and International Law, I agreed without hesitation, both because of my respect for the man and because I knew, there was probably...
05.10.18 | |

09 Feb

...justice, into IHL itself), ignoring the comparative justness of the parties’ causes becomes even less normatively attractive. Indeed, as Prof. Heller surmised, I am generally sympathetic to his position. I agree that it is difficult to accept the complete divorce of the jus in bello from the jus ad bellum as a moral matter; this is especially true concerning the equal status of combatants, i.e., that no soldier commits a crime when he fights other soldiers, even if he fights an unjust war. Unless we believe that individuals bear no...
09.02.11 | |

09 Apr

...the WHO and scientists have long been warning of the increasing risks of zoonotic diseases. ‘The ultimate test of preparedness is response’ and certainly governments’ responses are now being considered and, as noted above, should be comprehensively reviewed ex post facto. Lessons must certainly be learned. However, national preparedness must also be honed and tested for future pandemics. This means reviewing and updating pandemic preparedness plans, generally that being those for seasonal influenza. Writing in December 2020, on the African response to COVID-19, Justice King highlights the importance of socio-economic...
09.04.21 | |

25 Jan

...fact, I did mean “lawfare” in the sense Kevin’s discussants (Dov, el roam, and Mendieta) are using it: “lawfare” as strategic utilization of the law, which for me isn’t negative but rather value-neutral, and this is why in the post I contrasted it with “the quest for justice” or “embracing the law.” Strategy is simply neither of those, just as it isn’t “good” or “bad” – Strategy is only successful or unsuccessful. And as my original post indicated, to me the only plausible strategic role for the ICC in the...
25.01.15 | |

23 Jul

...about ethnocentricity. He noted it when I first work-shopped the paper a couple of years earlier, and made me rethink my own position about crimes against humanity, and focus upon World War II and particularly the Nuremberg precedent. While the horror of the holocaust will never leave us, it is undoubtedly important to understand the terrible suffering of today’s victims of atrocity crimes and not to minimize their sufferings or their claims to justice. Today’s ICC owes much to the Nuremberg (and Tokyo) precedents; but its establishment, mission and mandate...
23.07.13 | |

08 Mar

First and most importantly, my sincere thanks to Marko Milanovic and Pierre-Hugues Verdier for taking the time to offer such careful and insightful reactions to my work. I’m extremely fortunate to have them as “virtual” colleagues, and I appreciate the efforts of the YJIL editors and folks at Opinio Juris in creating a forum for this online exchange. As Marko and Pierre-Hugues note, I focus on the interpretation and application of constitutional and quasi-constitutional rights — what I call “domestic rights regimes” — by domestic courts. This is...
08.03.11 | |

29 Sep

As a pastor of a church I find Professor Guiora’s words both challenging and problematic. Here are four points: 1. Professor Guiora writes, “Society has historically – unjustifiably and blindly – granted religion immunity.” What society? Separating “society” from “religion” is very much a modern issue. Society didn’t grant immunity to anything. Rather, society was shaped by religion and was pretty much identified religiously in the West and in the East until the beginnings of the critical/historical/scientific “Age of Reason” stirrings. In the West it was the Church...
29.09.10 | |

05 Feb

[Dr. Ulf Linderfalk is a Professor of International Law at the Faculty of Law at Lund University, Sweden. The first part of his comments can be found here.] In what sense does the VCLT give a description of the way to understand a treaty? The way Julian describes prevailing legal doctrine, the presumption against preparatory work is effectuated “by a set of threshold restrictions that relegate drafting history to ‘a carefully bounded and contingent role’, for use only … ‘when the text [of a treaty] cannot, in itself,...
05.02.14 | |

23 Nov

I would like to thank Professor von der Dunk – who is a close friend and highly respected colleague – for taking the time to provide his thoughtful responses to my article ‘Fly Me to the Moon: How Will International Law Cope with Commercial Space Tourism’, published recently in the Melbourne Journal of International Law. Professor von der Dunk and I have worked in collaboration on several research projects and he is a very highly regarded scholar in matters relating to the international, and national, regulation of the use and...
23.11.10 | |

05 Dec

...to assert the applicability of human rights law to address concerns over the existence of legal “black holes.” As a result, although the trend had begun well before 9/11, in the last decade the International Court of Justice, the European Court of Human Rights, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Human Rights Committee (“HRC”) and the Committee Against Torture, the Human Rights Council, the General Assembly, and national courts and governments have been increasingly assertive in publicly recognizing that at least some human rights treaty obligations apply extraterritorially. The...
05.12.11 | |