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Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

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 | |

26 Jan

...international law scholars are discussing in these days and how all of this is evidence that a Tallinn Manual 3.0 is needed, but will not give any definitive answer to the issues that still involve international (cyber) law. The politicians The Hill published an interesting article that summarizes some first responses by US politicians to this act. It is striking as their positions do no align with past actions conducted by the US Government in cyberspace and do not reflect international law. Sen. Dick Durbin’s statement that “[t]his is virtually...
26.01.21 | |

05 Nov

[Marc Limon is Counsellor of the Mission of the Government of the Maldives to the United Nations, in Geneva, Switzerland] As Professor Knox recognises in his paper, international human rights law is essentially concerned with the relationship between an individual and his or her own State. This makes it difficult to usefully leverage human rights law in the context of global climate change, beyond noting that, irrespective of their level of responsibility for global warming, all States retain an obligation to protect the human rights of their...
05.11.09 | |

18 Oct

...“state” (because I had the privilege of looking through some of the books from his personal collection and some notes that he wrote in some of the books – which were housed in the Judge Advocate General’s School in Charlottesville). It is enough to know that Oppenheim was wrong. Perhaps “readers” here can disclose other examples of treaties involving non”state” actors Christiana quotes the Martens clause (see Martens above) from the 1899 Hague Convention, which was mirrored in the 1907 Hague Convention No. IV (all around the time of Oppenheim’s...
18.10.07 | |

06 Sep

...Red Cross’s Nils Melzer, who so argued in an important book, Targeted Killing in International Law. And also Notre Dame law professor Mary Ellen O’Connell, who has argued this proposition (as well as an associated claim that all participation by CIA personnel in the use of force is an international crime). I cannot say that these claims — although heroically urged by the advocacy groups and their academic allies — have a basis in the law of war as the US (or really, leading war-fighting states) has traditionally understood it....
06.09.10 | |

17 Jan

Jens Ohlin has continued the conversation about IHL and IHRL at LieberCode. Here is a snippet, self-servingly chosen because I want to comment on it: It strikes me as curious that human rights activists are so quick to cabin CIL application of the IHL rules of IAC to NIAC. To my ear, it is one of the great advancements of the last few decades: that the rules of warfare must be respected and that no nation can ignore them simply because the armed conflict is internal. (Incidentally, this...
17.01.12 | |

11 Jun

I appreciate the comments from Professors Fontana and Ahdieh, and don’t have much to quarrel about with them. They offer useful correctives or supplements to my argument. On the question of the scope of the argument – that is, the nations where we can expect convergence in constitutional law – my essay notes one important exception, and Professor Fontana raises a question about another. My essay excepts resource-extracting nations from its scope, largely because such nations do not need to compete with respect to attracting significant numbers of...
11.06.09 | |

06 Dec

Professor Telesetsky, in her generous comments on my article in volume 12(1) of the Melbourne Journal of International Law, raises two pertinent questions. First, why has there been a profusion of cooperative efforts across treaty bodies and second, what are the linkages that are most effective in compelling compliance with treaty regimes? In relation to the first question, Professor Telesetsky disagrees with my observation that MEAs are ‘increasingly regarded as international actors who are “capable of driving a normative agenda’”. She goes on to note that the ultimate...
06.12.11 | |

11 Jun

[Robert Ahdieh is a Professor at Emory Law School] At the outset, my thanks to the editors of the Virginia Journal of International Law for inviting me to contribute to this symposium, to my friends at Opinio Juris for hosting it, and to Professor Tushnet for his valuable contribution to ongoing debates about constitutionalism, globalization, and their interrelationship. Needless to say, Professor Tushnet’s essay posits a bold claim: that we are moving inexorably toward a globalized constitutional law. I am deeply sympathetic to this claim – not merely as a...
11.06.09 | |