Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response
10 Oct On Community, Courage, and Change in the Classroom: A Response to Mohsen al Attar
...on two broad aspects of teaching racial injustice in international law: the timing of such teaching; and addressing one’s own identity in the classroom. Timing As Dr al Attar notes, including racial injustice in the international law curriculum is a worthwhile exercise regardless of whether such material is offered in a standalone module or stranded into existing courses. Yet neither approach is perfect. In the 2021-2 academic year, I piloted a postgraduate taught course titled “Critical Approaches to International Law” at the Utrecht University Law School. More than 25 students...12 Apr The Coming Attack on Syria Will Be Unlawful
...justice, and his corruption. As Trump well knows, Americans love nothing more than high-def images of American bombs falling from the skies. No matter how many innocent civilians die (especially brown ones), an attack on Syria will give his approval ratings a healthy boost. That is all the motivation he needs. That Trump will act with base motives does not mean, however, that an attack on Syria would be unlawful. Illegality has to be demonstrated, not assumed. So let’s start with some basic principles. Syria is a sovereign state. Russia...17 Apr A Response to Margaret Lewis by Nigel Li
...at the outset. The overlooked challenge of efficiency-driven reforms, in tandem with the adversarial system, highlights a compromise between the reformers and their powerful and persistent opponents that creates the appearance of a serious reform but leaves substantially intact the turf that had been occupied by the prosecution before the Grand Justices’ 1995 decision stripped off the prosecutors’ monopoly on imposing pre-indictment detention. The outgrowth of the 1995 decision, among others, was the 1999 conference launching judicial reform and setting the stage for the new adversarial system, but the needed...08 Dec A Response to Odette Murray, David Kinley and Chip Pitts by Justine Nolan
[Justine Nolan is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales] I am in concurrence with the timely article co-authored by Odette Murray, David Kinley and Chip Pitts in the Melbourne Journal of International Law and agree that the death of the Alien Torts Statute (‘ATS’) owes more to exaggerated rumours than legal substance. The article dissects the legal reasoning of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Kiobel v Royal Dutch Petroleum [1] and argues that the majority...02 Dec A Response to Milanovic
In Extraterritorial Application of Human Rights Treaties: Law, Principles, Policy, Marko Milanovic has written an illuminating and comprehensive analysis of the increasingly contested question of the geographic scope of human rights treaties. Of course, this is a dynamic area of law—as Marko notes, many of the cases he examines are of quite recent vintage—so undoubtedly he will be at work on second addition in a few years. But for now, this book provides a closer reading and a more detailed, one might even say exhaustive, survey of the relevant issues...17 Apr A Response to Mr. Li and Professor Wang
I am grateful to Mr. Li and Professor Wang for their thoughtful comments and am flattered by their praise. The very fact that a lawyer and a law professor speak of their criminal justice system with such insight and candor highlights one of the most laudatory aspects of Taiwan’s legal reform project: A transparent, open debate over the best path for Taiwan. During the course of my research, I was deeply impressed by the transcripts of lengthy legislative debates during which a number of experts from the judiciary, executive branch,...12 Jun A Response to Daniel Bodansky
Professor Bodansky is absolutely right that the success of U.S. climate change policy depends on whether our leaders can align domestic and international efforts. Unless the United States does its fair share, other nations will not do theirs. And yet a purely international solution – untethered to domestic political realities – has little chance of securing U.S. participation. Bodansky’s own solution is a two-tier target – an initial level of effort that the United States pursues unilaterally, without pre-condition, and a second, more ambitious, mitigation target that the...12 Sep The Fallacy That Attacking a Judicial Institution and its Personnel Protects Americans: A Response to John Bolton’s Speech
[Jennifer Trahan is a Clinical Professor at the NYU Center for Global Affairs.] Monday, at the Federalist Society, National Security Adviser John Bolton delivered a major foreign policy address, devoted almost entirely to attacking the International Criminal Court, a court established to prosecute the most egregious crimes of concern to the international community. At a time when the US does indeed face many national security challenges, including North Korean nuclear weapons development, the topic was in itself an odd choice, but consistent with Bolton’s earlier preoccupation with the...16 Apr Exploring Diagonals Further: A Response to Professors Ruhl and Sayre
...& Policy symposium organized by Dan Mandelker and Dan Tarlock on New Directions in Environmental Law. The symposium explored how U.S. environmental regulation should develop through paired presentations on the history of major statutes and possibilities for the future. One thing that struck me throughout the dialogue was the complex interplay of science, scale, and law taking place in each of these substantive contexts. I think that we can learn from the experiments in horizontal, vertical, and diagonal governance that these statutes create—both in the provisions themselves and in the...12 Jun How to Achieve US Ratification of a New Climate Agreement: A Response to Nigel Purvis by Daniel Bodansky
[Daniel Bodansky is a Professor at the University of Georgia Law School] In the international climate change negotiations, new ideas are a scarce commodity. After almost twenty years of intensive work, most of the low-hanging fruit have already been plucked, and progress tends to be more incremental – a refinement to the possible types of emissions targets here, a new variation on a financing scheme there – these are the focus of attention. So Nigel Purvis’s proposal to enact US Climate Protection Authority legislation is no small achievement....