Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

raising the legal and political stakes in advocacy, litigation, and engagement with UN mechanisms. Indonesia’s Response as a form of Torture When evaluated against the CAT’s four-prong criterion, Indonesia’s response to the August 2025 protests undeniably meets the threshold for it to be considered torture.  First, the severity of suffering is unmistakable. The death of 21-year-old Affan Kurniawan, at least eight other confirmed fatalities, and hundreds of reported injuries, including beatings, tear-gassing of university campuses, and the hospitalization of students, demonstrate the grave physical and psychological harm inflicted.  Second, the...

Alexander Panayotov I agree with the argument that extraterritorial regulation creates a danger of democratic deficit. Prof. Ryngaert tackles this argument in details in his superb book “Jurisdiction in International Law” (pp.188-190). This is one of the aspects of normative theorizing about extraterritoriality that is worth debating. What I see as a problem, however, is the fact that democracy in itself is an essentially contested concept. There are several theories of democracy: participatory, minimalist, and deliberative to begin with. If we make a claim about extraterritorial regulation’s effect on democratic...

I’m grateful to Professor Ochoa for her thoughtful contribution. By way of reply to her post, I want to mention a couple of issues that I think are difficult puzzles for those of us who write in this area. First, I particularly like Professor Ochoa’s suggestion that I include information about corruption and governance when assessing whether a SWF should be permitted to invest abroad. Doing this would help sharpen my point nicely. This comment—and the weakness in my paper that the comment helps to address—shows the problem...

[Harold Hongju Koh is Sterling Professor of International Law at Yale Law School. This post is a response to the recent Trump Administration and International Law Symposium hosted on Opinio Juris.] Can international law save itself from Donald Trump? Since Election Night 2016, that question has haunted me across many issue areas. Professor Craig Martin and the Washburn Law Journal editors generously invited me to offer an initial answer in their recently published symposium issue in an article entitled “The Trump Administration and International Law.” As I prepare my book-length...

...both case law and scholarly discussion, including this online symposium of the Leiden Journal of International Law, have shown that this is, indeed, not the case. Two main reasons could be identified underlying the different positions: (1) the one relates to the dimension one focuses on in the definition of genocide and the conceptualization of the relationship between the two dimensions, and (2) the other concerns the question of interpretation and the role of the judiciary. Dimensions of genocide The definition of genocide, arguably, has two dimensions: the ‘collective’ and...

[Ingrid Wuerth is a Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University Law School] This Article by John Coyle focuses on U.S. statutes that incorporate treaties into domestic law. As John defines them, incorporative statutes may include implementing legislation for non-self executing treaties, statutes that facilitate the implementation of self-executing treaties, or congressional executive agreements; the key question is whether they give effect to an international agreement. Unlike treaties or the Alien Tort Statute, incorporative statutes do not present obvious constitutional questions, and they have received relatively little attention from...

Both Professor Brooks and Professor Christians have identified important strands and tensions in the consideration of international tax, sovereignty, global relations among states, and universal commitments to humanity. Just reading their comments inspires me to continue researching these questions. Their observations tap into two significant unresolved issues of international tax and international relations: (1) How should the reality of politics, power, and decision making affect our interpretation of political system design? For example, if decisions depend on the accommodation, interaction, and power dynamics of a variety of interest...

[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...

We appreciate Professor Huang’s comments, especially his praise, of course. We probably do not differ with his view that much. We do not believe that the AML will easily become effective – its enforcement in many areas is likely to suffer setbacks, given the looming turf battles that the AML Enforcement Agency (AMLEA) is likely to have with existing economic regulators. Of course, whether the AML can be directly enforced is an important question. Having just heard FTC Chairman Kovacic talk at the AALS Meeting about how,...

...some substantive responses to his article. First, let me discuss my questions about methodology and calls for clarification. Before being asked to evaluate Tushnet’s claims, I would want to know more clearly precisely which countries he is referencing. He talks about “nations that compete internationally for investment and human capital, with classes of lawyers able to assert some autonomous pressure on a nation’s government.” Does that include China, which surely meets the first criteria, and maybe less so the second criteria? Does that include Colombia, which is better on the...

[Ryszard Piotrowicz is a Professor of Law at Aberystwyth University] I would like to make three points in relation to the articles by Prof. Hathaway and Dr Gallagher. First, It seems to me that Dr Gallagher effectively refutes the basic argument of Prof. Hathaway, that the developments in trafficking in human beings (THB) have served to distract attention from what is asserted to be the much wider problem of slavery. I do not wish to comment on the core issue of that debate but rather to focus on...

Until this summer, Brigid Laffan was director and professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies and director of the Global Governance Programme at the European University Institute (EUI), Florence, where she has worked since 20‌13. In 20‌18, Politico ranked Laffan, a long time professor of political science who grew up in Ireland, among the women who shape Europe. Laffan is a leading thinker on the dynamic of European integration. She has published a number of important books on Europe, such as Integration and Co-operation in Europe (19‌92), The...