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Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

19 May

...accountability response and can it be both? We conclude here that it can, and indeed, should be both. This issue will be discussed further in GRC’S expert webinar on 19 May. Given the array of conflict settings where food is being weaponised against the civilian population, UNSC 2417 faces a test as to its agility and efficacy (see GRC’s piece related to this on Tigray and Alex de Waal’s damming account here). Scope and purpose of UNSC 2417 The resolution creates a mechanism for UNSC action on the issue of...
19.05.21 | |

27 Sep

[William Partlett is an Associate-in-Law at Columbia Law School and a Nonresident Fellow at the Brookings Institution.] This post is part of the Harvard International Law Journal Volume 53(2) symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. The Democratic Coup d’Etat is an important article. First, and most obviously, this Article carries significant policy implications. The political transformations sweeping the Middle East and North Africa – known as the “Arab Spring” – have presented a wide range of conceptual challenges to policymakers and political...
27.09.12 | |

25 Jul

[Eyal Benvenisti is the Anny and Paul Yanowicz Professor of Human Rights at Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law and Global Visiting Professor at New York University School of Law.] I am grateful for the three incisive and insightful comments. Due to space limitations I will not be able to do justice to any of the comments in this response, but they will certainly help in my future work on this subject. I will use this brief response to clarify some parts of my argument and to situate the article...
25.07.13 | |

04 Mar

[William W. Burke-White is Deputy Dean and Professor of Law at University of Pennsylvania Law School.] This post is part of the Harvard International Law Journal Volume 54(1) symposium. Other posts from this series can be found in the related posts below. Natalie Lockwood’s article, “International Vote Buying,” recently published in the Harvard International Law Journal, makes an important contribution to a set of understudied questions around the legality and appropriateness of international vote-buying. Lockwood quickly admits that international law itself says little about the legality of such vote buying...
04.03.13 | |

12 Mar

Professor Ku’s review of When International Law Works is most insightful. I thank him for it. His “short bloggish description” of its thesis is as clear a summary of my book as I’ve been able to muster in two sentences. I confess I will probably appropriate it when I present the book at Temple Law School later this week. Professor Ku raises a good question about how predictive my “theory” is. Certainly theory in the hard sciences is often predictive. Many such theories are expressed as falsifiable hypotheses. In contrast,...
12.03.12 | |

16 Mar

same words that conclude my book: The justification for international law does not depend on whether it is law. It depends on whether the international legal system is effective and good. . . . On final analysis, international law is what we make of it, for it is nothing more or less than the sum of our decisions. If my book provides a framework to clarify our disagreements and find solutions, as we have begun to do in this Roundtable, then I have achieved what I set out to do....
16.03.12 | |

25 Jun

...to Influence States: Socialization and International Human Rights Law” has lead many international lawyers to focus not only on only political science and economics, but also on sociology. It inspired me to write this book. Their comments invite debate on several empirical issues, as well as on two major theoretical questions: 1) Do diffusion studies imply that “international law is weaker than generally recognized”? 2) How does my theory of diffusion through democracy connect to theories of state socialization, and more generally to research on constructivism and sociological institutionalism? Which...
25.06.13 | |

03 Dec

Austen Parrish is a Professor of Law and the Vice Dean at Southwestern Law School. I’m grateful to Opinio Juris for inviting me to comment on Marko Milanovic’s book on the Extraterritorial Application of Human Rights Treaties. The book makes a meaningful contribution to an increasingly important issue of treaty interpretation, and the book’s sweeping treatment of how different courts and entities have addressed whether treaty-based human rights obligations apply beyond borders deserves praise. Few authors have provided this sort of detailed doctrinal description, and none to this degree of...
03.12.11 | |

04 Dec

...points of view might be quoted. Speaking in front of the Peel Commission in 1937, Winston Churchill made it clear for instance that there was nothing in the definition of the “National Home” that might have precluded “the establishment of a Jewish State.” (Palestine Royal Commission: Command Paper 5479 of 1937.) As noted by Isaiah Friedman in his British Pan-Arab Policy, 1915-1922: “Whether [the first British High Commissioner for Palestine Herbert] Samuel had this ultimate aim in mind when conceiving his policy is dubious. But Churchill, as his response of...
04.12.15 | |

11 Feb

I have addressed treaty formation in the book. To that question I would answer “sort of.” As the last paragraph in my response to Roger indicates, the book does explore some of the relevant issues, but not all of them. There is much more to be said on this issue, and it strikes me as important for our understanding of international law and international relations. And if someone has a good explanation for why states sign human rights treaties, I invite them let me know and we can co-author the...
11.02.08 | |

03 Jan

...authority of a neighboring territory, what would you consider a "proportionate" military response, morally, legally, or both? Marko Milanovic If I may venture to offer a response to Prof. Bernstein's question on human shields: Art. 28 of the Fourth Geneva Convention provides that "The presence of a protected person may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations." Art. 51(7) of Additional Protocol I further provides that "The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain...
03.01.09 | |

16 Jan

...the United States asserted response in self-defense over the past five plus years to the attack of 9/11 and other attacks attributed to Al Qaeda? Was the war in Iraq a proportional response and why? Were the secret prisons a proportional response and why? Were the extraordinary renditions to nations known by State to torture a proportional response and why? What are the legal limits on the United States or any states' reaction to an attack by a non-state actor? Does anything go? Can we round up 100 civilians to...
16.01.07 | |