Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response
07 May Has the Obama Justice Department Adopted the Bybee/Yoo Interpretation of the Torture Statute?
...takes us” (emphasis added), the Obama Justice Department is relying on the very same legal analysis in order to urge a federal appeals court to reject torture claims. In fact, as the Obama Justice Department argued to that appeals court a little over a week ago, the torture law analysis in question has already been adopted by another federal appeals court. I am sympathetic to Deborah’s criticsm of McCarthy’s recent somewhat over-the-top letter rejecting an offer to participate in deliberations on detention policy with the Justice Department. But his legal...08 Aug Justice Kennedy’s Mystery Speech
...religion gaining a stronghold in governments now is the time for American lawyers to herald the American system of law and governance. (link). So which is it? Roger Alford Dean C. Rowan Sounds like Justice Kennedy is fashioning himself for a career shift, either to writing pulp fiction, greeting cards, advertising copy, or sermons. It's unmitigated malarkey. "Liberating force"...that's a good one. Time to reread Robert Cover's Violence and the Word. Charles Gittings Roger, I don't think I'm finding anything more than what Justice Kennedy said, though perhaps 4.5 years...19 Aug An Opportunity for Judicial Review of the Existence of Armed Conflict?
...an armed conflict. It is has been reported that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued an opinion in which it found the U.S. to be in an “armed conflict” with al Qaeda in 1998. On the other hand, the U.S. has prosecuted alleged participants in the bombings in a federal, not a military court. Given the very indistinct nature of the executive’s response and the lack of any action by Congress, it would be difficult to find these bombings and the U.S. response anything more than limited...21 Jun I Agree with Justice Roberts…
Patrick S. O'Donnell A nice illustration of an appalling lack of empathy (and sympathy, compassion, mercy and the like for that matter) among the majority Justices (in their capacity as judges and in their identity as human beings) and an outstanding example of a fundamental failure to grasp the ethical and legal meaning of the phrase "criminal justice." Moreover, it exemplifies an egregious inability to appreciate the virtues (such as they are or might be) of contemporary science. Alas, as you imply, the ruling evidences a smug commitment to ORDER...23 Apr Want to Prosecute the Lawyers? Cite Ministries — Not the Justice Case
Scholars who believe that the individuals who wrote the OLC memos authorizing torture should be criminally prosecuted — as I do — normally cite the Justice Case, decided by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal (NMT) in 1947, for the proposition that a government lawyer can be held criminally responsible for giving erroneous legal advice to his political superiors. Last year, I wrote a long post for Balkinization explaining why I believe that, in fact, the Justice Case provides much less support for that proposition than most scholars assume. As I said...
16 Dec Symposium: Accountability in the Digital Age – Introduction
the usefulness of open source evidence, particularly material gathered from social media, for proving human rights violations. The roundtable also explored the role of social media companies in preventing, detecting and removing hate speech, and the avenues that are available to hold social media companies accountable for their role in the dissemination of such content. Amidst an increasingly global “techlash”, this symposium broadens the interrogative gaze beyond the specific context of Myanmar to examine accountability in the digital age more generally. Specifically, the symposium explores two core themes. The first...
29 Apr Symposium on Soldier Self-Defense and International Law: Highlighting and Framing the Issue
...doctrine and military doctrine and practice. Recent scholarship, including from participants to this symposium, has greatly contributed to bridging this gap by offering conceptual clarity (see the work of Hans Boddens Hosang, Jan Arno Hessbruegge, Gloria Gaggioli, Camilla Cooper or Chris O’Meara) and by denouncing the over-reliance on the notion of self-defense in military operations (Gary Corn, Randall Bagwell & Molly Kovite, Erica Gaston). This symposium aims to continue the discussion by taking stock of doctrine and practice and by encouraging States to share their understanding of how their soldiers’...10 Feb Melbourne Journal of International Law, Vol. 10-2: Opinio Juris Online Symposium
— issue 10(2) — which contains a symposium feature, entitled ‘Climate Justice and International Environmental Law: Rethinking the North–South Divide’. The symposium intends to analyse the intersections between law and emerging ideas of climate justice, and how international environmental law is shaped by and in turn reshapes (or fixates, or interrogates) our understandings of the North–South divide. As we state in the symposium’s Foreword: In focusing on ‘climate justice’, the symposium places questions of global equity and distributional justice at the core of international debates around climate change mitigation and...04 Jul LJIL Symposium Vol 25-2: Introduction
Opinio Juris show, these are topical issues and we hope that the following few days will contribute to the fruitful debate on these topics. The first discussion revolves around Against Fairness? International Environmental Law, Disciplinary Bias, and Pareto Justice, the thought-provoking article by Mario Prost and Alejandra Torres Camprubi, with responses from Karin Mickelson and Eric Posner. While this constitutes the introduction to our symposium on Fairness in International Environmental Law (IEL), both authors raise issues that touch upon a number of considerations that are most relevant for international law...
26 May Futureproofing Human Rights Symposium: Beyond Ideal Types and Taxonomies – Towards A Relational Conception of Human Rights Accountability
...victims of human rights violations, a wide range of justice actors, policymakers, and scholars alike. Yet this veneration merits scrutiny. What exactly do we mean when we demand ‘accountability’ for human rights violations? The term ‘accountability’ itself carries an illusion of clarity. We speak of ‘holding violators accountable’ as if the meaning, mechanisms, and normative objectives of such a process were self-evident. This blog introduces a collaborative effort to reimagine human rights accountability. It serves as the opening piece in a seven-part blog symposium for Opinio Juris stemming from the...