In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response

15 Nov

[Darryl Robinson is an Assistant Professor at Queen’s University, Faculty of Law] This post is part of the MJIL 13(1) symposium. Other posts in this series can be found in the related posts below. I am very grateful for James Stewart’s comments on “How Command Responsibility Got So Complicated”. Professor Stewart and I are engaged in similar projects (criminal law theory and international criminal law (‘ICL’)) and immersed in similar literature, so our discussions are always very helpful to me, even though we at times reach different conclusions. Professor Stewart...
15.11.12 | |

15 Nov

might, I cannot follow Professor Robinson down this path. To be sure, there are few scholars whose work I revere more than Kutz and Sepinwall, both of whom bring exceptional degrees of sophistication to a whole raft of issues of great salience to modern international criminal justice. And yet, to my mind, both offer models of individual responsibility that are not available in international criminal justice as presently constituted, precisely because they are not minded to tailor their theories of responsibility to the specific identity of international crimes as they...
15.11.12 | |

14 Mar

...crucial as a moral matter because it promotes minimum world order. Further, the decisionmaking authority that states allocate to judges is not unbounded. It is limited to deciding legal disputes according to laws. It would thus be unethical for a judge to decide a dispute without regard to laws, or worse, based on his personal preferences. But strict legalism, as Professor Howse points out and as I explain in my book, does not exclude moral reasoning about the content of the applicable laws and the practical consequences of applying them...
14.03.12 | |

13 Mar

...do not make fine grained predictions. . . . Our goal is, rather, to give a simple but plausible account for the various features of international law . . . in terms of something other than a state’s propensity to comply with international law. In other words, rationalist theories and my theory try to explain how the international legal system functions or fails. The reader will have to decide for him or herself whether the highly-contextual accounts of international incidents in my book provide useful explanations of decisions and outcomes....
13.03.12 | |

10 May

Finally, I would like to use this opportunity to briefly reflect on a broader normative matter. I am unable to determine with certainty whether Professor Trahan believes that, as a matter of lex lata, a rule has emerged to prohibit vetoes by the Permanent Members of the Security Council in situations of mass atrocities. In her response to my post she stated: “I do not believe my arguments are de lege ferenda.” However, in her response to Professor Kevin Jon Heller, she wrote: “the international system needs to evolve in...
10.05.18 | |

25 Jul

...from the flexible interpretability of the self-defense doctrine and the customary uncertainty surrounding the precise boundary between lawful self-defense and unlawful reprisals. As has been acknowledged, “on several occasions, force was used in response to past events, rather than current or imminent armed actions, sometimes with considerable delay” (p. vii). The timing and purpose of a forcible response are closely interconnected, aiming to ensure “that the right to use force in self-defence is protective in nature”, rather than punitive (p. 255). Still, it has been argued that “[s]ome level of...
25.07.25 | and |

24 Feb

global health emergency has enabled inappropriate and violative public health responses across nations. As the world’s struggle against the coronavirus stretches on, we must begin to consider how global health law and human rights law can be harmonized – not only to protect human dignity in the face future global health crises, but also to strengthen effective public health responses with justice. The necessarily multi-sectoral response to COVID-19 reveals the distinctive nature of interpreting human rights limitations in a global health emergency that (1) is an international (compared to a...
24.02.21 | |

01 Feb

of sterilisation than the rest of the population.  This dehumanisation and ‘other’-ing of oppressed women’s bodies in disparate situations and across history highlights that reproductive justice will always lack under the framework of occupation, colonisation and genocide. Unless Palestine is liberated, there is no possibility for reproductive justice.  Ultimately, as international lawyers it is incumbent on us to ensure our analyses understand and unpack the gendered impact of the Israeli occupation and apartheid across occupied Palestine, and the most recent military assault on Gaza, to reveal the full panoply of...
01.02.24 | and |

02 Jan

of international criminal justice. But an equally compelling goal is to prevent a post-conflict free fall into vengeance, vendetta, or victor’s justice. Moreover, the ICC Statute is a treaty, and standard rules about interpretation of treaties in international law require that its complementarity principle be read along with other international obligations. So when the Statute refers to whether a state is able or willing to prosecute, that should include all that holding trials imply—that is, able and willing to respect the human rights of the criminal defendant. Even those charged...
02.01.12 | |

18 Jan

– passionate about the cause of international criminal justice, boundless in his energy, brilliant at all times and never more so than when facing a challenge. As he leaves the Presidency of the Mechanism, I write this post in celebration of his abiding commitment to international law, humanism, and criminal justice. International law has been the common thread across Judge Meron’s professional life. Before he was a judge, he was a professor of international law at NYU for almost twenty-five years, and before that he spent about twenty years as...
18.01.19 | |

18 Dec

...be (but are not limited to) any of the following subject areas: Broad international legislative rights-based efforts to combat climate change; The role of international, regional, and/or domestic courts in the fight for climate justice; Comparative anthropogenic/ecocentric approaches to climate justice; Social justice, environmental justice, and/or youth justice movements and their influence upon international environmental decisions; International criminal law and the (potential) crime of ecocide; The scope of the proposed United Nations Global Plastics Treaty and how it may shape future climate justice efforts; Incorporating Third World Approaches to International...
18.12.22 | |

22 Aug

Although ICL partly reflects an idealistic version of how the world should be, it is also constantly under the influence of how the world is: a place in which the demands of politics and justice often come into conflict. For better or worse, ICL’s transformative value and potential is affected by the political will of states. It is submitted that the negative influences of politics on international criminal justice (for example, selective prosecutions and the African critique of the ICC) must be regarded as areas of awareness and concern for...
22.08.13 | |