In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

01 Mar

[Anthony Clark Arend is a Professor of Government and Foreign Service at Georgetown University]. When the Obama Administration came into office over a year ago, it was faced with a daunting task. The previous Administration had run rough-shot over international law dealing with the use of military force. A man that would be Attorney General would call the Geneva Conventions “quaint,” torture would be defined away by the Vice President and others, the United States would launch an invasion of Iraq in a move that many believed...
01.03.10 | |

15 Apr

As with the earlier comments by Ed Swaine, I greatly appreciate Michael Ramsey’s astute observations regarding how political commitments fit into the constitutional discourse. I’ve endeavored to provide my initial responses to each of his suggestions below, although surely Duncan and I will build from his comments as we develop our theories going forward. We are pleased that Professor Ramsey agrees with our overarching proposition that the practice of making political commitments should be subject to analysis on a constitutional dimension. Our disagreements, therefore, primarily lie in constitutional methodology. How...
15.04.09 | |

21 Oct

Elena Baylis Thanks to Opinio Juris and to YJIL for giving me the opportunity to comment on Tara Melish’s article, From Paradox to Subsidiarity: The United States and Human Rights Treaty Bodies. I have long been a fan of Tara’s work, and so it’s a pleasure to have the chance to respond to her new piece. In this article, Tara persuasively argues for two fundamental shifts in our understanding of the “U.S. human rights paradox.” She claims: 1. That the US position on international human rights is...
21.10.09 | |

20 Nov

...of the applicable law. Like the European Court of Justice, Professor de Wet seeks to apply European legal standards to the Security Council context: here, the right to effective judicial protection under EU law. Yet it is important to ask: is judicial review really an appropriate model of recourse against Security Council decisions? One need only contemplate the likelihood of the European Court of Justice being able to achieve the hurdle it sets for itself (and other domestic courts) in paragraph 115 of the Kadi II judgment (namely, to obtain...
20.11.13 | |

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 | |

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 | |

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 | |

07 Jun

The Office of the Prosecutor has filed its response to Libya’s challenge to the admissibility of the cases against Saif Gaddafi and Abdullah al-Senussi. There are a number of interesting aspects to the response. First, it says nothing about the case of al-Senussi. That’s a curious omission, given that the response specifically points out with regard to Saif (para. 41) that he remains in the custody of the Zintan rebels, making it possible that Libya is “unable” to prosecute him. If there is an open question about Libya’s ability to...
07.06.12 | |

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 | |

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 | |

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 | |

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 | |