Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

12 May Guest Post: Strong Words, Weak Arguments – A Response to the Open Letter to the UN on Humanitarian Access to Syria (Part 1)

[Naz Modirzadeh is a Senior Fellow at Counterterrorism and Humanitarian Engagement Project at Harvard Law School. This post is written in her personal capacity and does not represent the views of the CHE Project] There is no shortage of profound questions arising out of the armed conflict in Syria. Yet whether the reported United Nations legal analysis concluding that the UN needs the consent of the Syrian authorities before it can undertake humanitarian relief actions on Syrian territory is not one of them. As international law questions go,...

05 Nov A Response to John Knox by Marc Limon

[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...

16 Jan The Role of the State Department: Response to Posner

...international reaction, with the immediate adverse consequences for our conduct of foreign policy. It will undermine public support among critical allies, making military cooperation more difficult to sustain. Europeans and others will likely have legal problems with extradition or other forms of cooperation in law enforcement, including in bringing terrorists to justice. It’s hard to be more prescient than that. Eric is of course right that personalities and closeness to the President (or, importantly in this administration, the Vice President) can affect who wins or loses the policy fight. But...

21 Dec LJIL Symposium: Response to Samantha Besson

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...

29 Jan A Response to Professor Ochoa

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...

20 Dec LJIL Symposium: Genocide and Discrimination: A Response

...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...

15 Apr A Response to John Coyle by Ingrid Wuerth

[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...

16 Oct A Response to Professors Brooks and Christians

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...

28 Jan A Response to Professor Huang

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,...