Search: Affective Justice: Book Symposium: A Response
26 Jul International Law in the U.S. Supreme Court: A Response to Professor Golove’s Essay
“response essay” to David Golove’s fascinating essay on “The Supreme Court, the War on Terror, and the American Just War Constitutional Tradition.” Like Mike Ramsey (Response Essay in Part V.E.) I find much to admire but also some things to question and debate in Professor Golove’s thought-provoking contribution to this volume. Professor Golove argues that the war-on-terror decisions in Hamdi, Rasul, Hamdan and Boumediene were striking departures from more recent precedent and principles, but were fundamentally consistent with three deeper themes from earlier periods of American constitutional history, what Professor...
05 Sep Iran’s Threat of Retaliation
...sparking concerns in Israel about the possibility of an imminent attack. This situation further coincided with the killing of Fuad Shukr, a senior Hezbollah commander (also supported by Iran), in an Israeli airstrike on a suburb of Beirut, the Lebanese capital. Time has since passed without any major response to those initial threats by the international community leaving Israel and the broader Middle East in a state of on-going hostility and tension. While the nature and severity of Iran’s overall response remains unclear, Iran has issued a prime facie threat...
04 Jan A Response to Mariniello About the Palestine Investigation
all of its investigations and cases. Conclusion There are other problematic claims in Mariniello’s post — that Khan has focused on crimes allegedly committed by non-state actors (such as Hamas and Israeli settlers) more than on crimes allegedly committed by Israel; that Khan has suggested the evidence against Hamas is stronger than against Israel; that Khan has predetermined that Israel’s justice system is adequate to address alleged Israeli crimes. But this response is long enough, so I will simply refer readers to my earlier post responding to the Open Letter,...
24 Jun Options for a Peace Settlement in Ukraine: Options Paper VIII – Sanctions in the Ukraine–Russian War: Proposed Solutions for the Peace Process and War Crimes Prosecutions
...unlikely to be forfeited in conjunction with criminal proceedings and creating a temporary cash flow to provide immediate relief and rebuilding of the most necessary structures. The Role of the ICC in the Peace Settlement Proposal As sanctions are being imposed amidst the commencement of investigations and prosecutions before domestic courts and the ICC, the interplay and cooperation between sanctions, asset recovery, and international criminal justice is crucial to an effective peace settlement and post-conflict justice to ensure funds are available for reparations to victims. Thus, the operation of sanctions...
27 Aug Rohingya Symposium: The UN Security Council, the Rohingya Genocide and the Future of International Justice
...take Myanmar to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for breaching the Genocide Convention. The public announcement of this historic case was made by Gambia’s Justice Minister, Abubacarr Tambadou, at an event co-hosted by Bangladesh and the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect on the margins of the UN General Assembly. When the case commenced at the ICJ in December 2019, The Gambia immediately submitted a request for the Court to issue provisional measures in order to protect the Rohingya people and secure evidence of the crimes that had...18 Oct Philippine withdrawal from the International Criminal Court: “Much ado about nothing” at the Philippine Supreme Court? (Part II)
...hearings, that indicated anxieties about the prospects of international justice, as well as Asia-Pacific neighbourhood regional dynamics. In the Petitioners hearings, while seemingly at a tangent, the court veered into the realm of realpolitik – asking whether the Philippines would get “justice at the United Nations”, and whether the U.S., China and Russia were parties to the Rome Statute. However, this is not irrelevant as it reflects real anxieties of the “imperialist” nature of the ICC and its impact on sovereignty – echoed increasingly forcefully across multiple jurisdictions in the...
09 May Why Does the United States Continue to Oppose International Courts?
pursuit of criminal responsibility and accountability. This is particularly instrumental in conflict-torn societies, whose rebuilding and stabilization efforts rest on political reconciliation through an apolitical execution of justice. These lofty ambitions vested in the ICC are the natural extension of the liberal notion of justice, which the United States’ own eminently rich constitutional tradition has historically upheld. Yet, the ICC’s limited jurisdiction presents an enormous challenge to international justice and is typically delimited by: (i) States accession to treaties; (ii) the UN Security Council’s political alignments, configurations, and the power...
14 May How did the Israeli Supreme Court Legitimise Starvation as a Weapon of War? An Autopsy of a Ruling (Part 1)
...On March 27, 2025, over a year after it had been submitted and over three weeks after Israel imposed a complete blockade on the Gaza Strip, three Supreme Court justices unanimously rejected the petition. Chief Justice Yitzhak Amit, who is associated with the Court’s liberal camp, authored the leading opinion, and deputy Chief Justice Noam Solberg and Justice David Mintz, both associated with the conservative camp, concurred and added a few observations. An autopsy of the ruling lays bare how the Court deployed three major strategies to legitimise Israel’s deprivation...07 Mar Alan G. Kaufman Reviews Stephen C. Neff’s ‘Justice in Blue and Gray’
Alan Kaufman, a career national security lawyer and retired Navy JAG, has a fine review-essay of Stephen C. Neff’s Justice in Blue and Gray: A Legal History of the Civil War over at Lawfare. Alan, who is a former student of mine a really long time ago at Harvard Law School as well as an occasional commenter here at OJ, observes in the essay how the law of the Civil War continues to reverberate in the US approach to its conflicts and counterterrorism today. The book is excellent and likewise...02 Jul Justice O’Connor: A Moderate on Internationalism as Well
I have very little to add to the zillions of articles and blog posts about the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and her likely successor. I did want to point out, though, that Justice O’Connor was (not surprisingly) a moderate in the Court’s recent embrace of foreign and international law. Justice O’Connor appears to see some useful analogies to the relationship between state and federal courts. As she writes in an article entitled “Federalism of Free Nations,” As our country moves toward a more international regime of dispute resolution,...